From the overdue 19th century onward, women and men through the heart East mentioned, debated, and negotiated the jobs of younger women and girls in generating smooth international locations. In Palestine, women' schooling was once pivotal to discussions approximately motherhood. Their schooling used to be visible as having the capability to remodel the kin in order that it may possibly meet either glossy and nationalist expectations.

Ela Greenberg bargains the 1st examine to check the schooling of Muslim ladies in Palestine from the top of the Ottoman management throughout the British colonial rule. depending upon vast archival resources, reliable stories, the Palestinian Arabic press, and interviews, she describes the adjustments that happened in ladies' schooling in this time. Greenberg describes how neighborhood Muslims, usually portrayed as detached to ladies' schooling, truly spoke back to the inadequacies of present executive schooling through sending their daughters to missionary colleges regardless of spiritual tensions, or through developing their very own inner most nationalist institutions.

Greenberg exhibits that individuals of all socioeconomic sessions understood the triad of ladies' schooling, modernity, and the nationalist fight, as informed ladies might develop into the "mothers of the following day" who could bring up nationalist and sleek youngsters. whereas this used to be the purpose of a number of the faculties in Palestine, no longer all informed Muslim women this course, as a few used their schooling, no matter if it was once uncomplicated at top, to turn into lecturers, nurses, and activists in women's organizations.