The transition of Yemenite women from a traditional religious society to a western-secular society upon immigration to Israel was marked by a certain ambivalence. Their status and gender roles changed, and they became integrated both economically and socially into Israeli society. However, the new values underwent a certain degree of filtration as Yemenite women accepted some elements while rejecting others.

Estelle Joan Sommers was a designer, entrepreneur, and executive who made her career in retail dancewear, introducing innovative designs for Capezio’s dance and exercise clothing.

Feisty and opinionated, Sylvia Sidney was quite the opposite of the waiflike victim of social oppression she played in Hollywood’s Depression Era films. While she disliked playing the victim, her vulnerability and working-class persona resonated with audiences. She earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, took on a comic role as the caseworker in Beetlejuice, and played a sympathetic grandmother in one of the first TV movies about AIDS, An Early Frost.

Aline Saarinen first gained notoriety as an art critic and served as an associate art editor at the New York Times. Her career in art criticism segued into a career in television as a popular on-air personality. Saarinen’s presence on television led to her appointment as chief of the National Broadcasting Company’s Paris news bureau, the first woman to hold a position of this type.

Ida Cohen Rosenthal not only created the modern bra, she also helped found Maidenform, Inc., and make it the most successful bra manufacturer in the world.

Born in Detroit, Joan Roth has worked with many well-known photographers in her long career and is primarily interested in photographing Jewish women. In 1983, Roth joined the rescue missions airlifting Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Inspired by the photographs she took there, Roth traveled to Jewish communities all over the world photographing Jewish women in rapidly disappearing communities.

Louise Nevelson belongs to a generation of Manhattan-based painters and sculptors whose careers coincided with the development of modernism in America. Nevelson created sculptures that audiences could both experience and see. Several of her pieces are now owned by the Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum, and MOMA.