מנהיגות בעיני מי? על נזילותו של המונח "מנהיגות קהילתית": חקר מקרה של קבוצת נשים שיישמה תוכנית לדיאלוג בין-תרבותי בפריפריה

This paper tells the story of a group of Ethiopian Israeli women and veteran Israeli women (Mizrahi and Ashkenazi) who ran an urban program to promote intercultural dialogue in Israel's peripheral region. Based on ethnographic fieldwork that followed the group's activities over the years 2016-2019, the paper examines how the members of this group began to see themselves as agents for change, seeking to promote a social-educational agenda in their town. The paper explores the structural and cultural barriers the women faced, and it examines whether, despite these barriers, they managed to position themselves as community leaders. The findings indicate that the members of the group had only limited success in positioning themselves as community leaders, exposing the elusiveness and fragility of their leadership, one trying to navigate a complex set of contradictory social expectations. The contrast between the social expectation stems from the intersection of the group members'gender, class, and ethnicity.