Israel has some of the most progressive feminist legislation in the world: mandatory 14 week parental leave, free state-funded child care up to age three, a prohibition against firing pregnant women, and far reaching laws against sexual harassment. And interestingly, to its shame and credit, Israel is the only country in the world where a former president is sitting in jail for crimes of rape. It's a shame that a president can be a rapist, but enormous credit that he was caught, tried, convicted and treated just like every other sexual predator.
On the other hand, many indicators show Israeli women falling behind. Women make a paltry 66% of what men make - a figure that hasn't moved significantly in over thirty years, placing Israel at seventy-first in the world out of 135 countries on the World Economic Forum's gender index of economic equality (Australia ranks fourteenth in economic equality, and twenty-fourth overall). Although Knesset representation is high, on the local level women's political level is appalling with only six women mayors for 256 municipalities. And there are only three women out of 22 cabinet members, a far cry from the 50% women of Canadian Prime Minister Justin ("because it's 2015") Trudeau. [...]
To try and understand how it is that advances for women coexist with an overall portrait of falling behind, we need to understand where Israeli sexism comes from in Israel. It has two primary sources: the army and Orthodox Judaism. Both of these are deeply patriarchal institutions that are founded on centuries-long boy-club machismo. And both are very powerful forces in Israeli society and in Israeli power structures.
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