Prostitution and Moral and Sexual Hygiene in Mandatory Palestine: The Criminal Code for Palestine (1921–1936)

Abstract

This article argues that at the turn of the twentieth century British feminists’ expertise on hygiene, sexuality and morality projected an early prototypical form of governance feminism in Mandate Palestine by producing a common language and a governmental apparatus which reflected racialised and orientalist assumptions, and limited indigenous women’s rights through tropes of progress and civilisation. The article analyses women’s contributions to penal reform in Mandatory Palestine, focusing on the regulation of sex work/prostitution, treatment of prisoners and adultery as proposed for the draft Criminal Code for Palestine between 1921 and 1933. It relies on the correspondence between transnational organisations (such as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene), women’s groups and charities active on gender and women’s rights to reveal how penal reform was discussed nationally and internationally in women’s debates. It offers an analysis of the history of feminist advocacy in criminal justice on the regulation of prostitution and trafficking, adultery and treatment of prisoners, and adultery in mandate international law on Palestine during the interwar period. It contributes to the scholarship reassessing women’s engagements in criminal justice from a postcolonial perspective by highlighting processes of silencing and marginalisation within the geopolitical space of the mandates and the Empire.