If women working in low-status occupations often have to face censure and rebuke, this is not the case if they are employed in the ‘better’ professions, such as teaching. This chapter addresses women's access to property through such professional work. Since access to (higher) education is a pre-condition for women's entry into the professions, the main trends in women's education will be addressed first. The chapter will then trace the development of professional employment: the opening up of new fields and the professionalisation of other types of work, such as nursing. What such work means for women's access to property ties in with the particular background and position of the women involved. In the mandatory period, professional employment was largely limited to single, urban women from well-known families; gradually, however, some non-urban, married and lower-class women have entered the professions. This change is brought out in the following three labour stories.

Employed in the professions: three labour stories

Sitt Yusrā, an elderly teacher from Nablus

When I asked elderly women who had taught them, they often mentioned the name of Sitt Yusrā. Having started her teaching career in the 1930s, she belonged to one of the earliest generations of Nablus teachers still alive. Born in the late 1910s she was the second girl in a prominent, yet impoverished family of five daughters and one son.