Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder was born in 1976 in Beersheba

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder was born in Beersheba in 1976. She is the eldest daughter of Dr. Yunis Abu Rabia, the first Bedouin doctor in the country, from the Abu Rabia tribe of the Negev. She has three sisters and a brother.

She studied in Tel Sheva until grade 7 and then moved to a high school in Beersheba, where she was the only Bedouin among 400 Jewish students. She earned a Ph.D. from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2006. She then held postdoctoral fellowships in gender studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Oxford.

She is an associate professor in the School of Education at Ben-Gurion University, and the first Bedouin woman in Israel to reach that rank. Her research deals with inequality in education and employment among minority groups, and she has published 3 books on the subject. In 2021 she became the university's vice-president for diversity and inclusion.

She is a feminist activist and works for the rights of Bedouin society in the Negev. She is one of the founders of the Forum of Arab Women's Organizations in the Negev and writes opinion pieces in the Arab and Israeli press. She is married to Hassan Abu Qweider, an accountant, has 3 sons and lives in Beersheba.