“This is one more victory in a long string of legal victories challenging the exclusion of women in the public sphere in Israel," said Orly Erez-Likhovski, who represented Rabinowitz along with Ricki Shapira of the Israel Religious Action Center. "Trying to condition public service on the basis of gender is illegal and we are working to facilitate change in all of these contexts.” IRAC, the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform movement in Israel, has been in the front lines of gender exclusion cases involving gender segregation on buses, modesty signs and prayer at the Western Wall. [...]
There have been numerous instances of flights not being able to take off on time in recent years due to ultra-Orthodox men's refusal to sit next to women, particularly on El Al. Public pressure on the company proved unsuccessful: A 2014 grassroots campaign, including an online petition signed by several thousand people, was unable to spark change. At the time, El Al told Haaretz that it dealt with each case individually, had no official policy for dealing with the issue and no intention of putting one into place.
Erez-Likhovski said the ruling still allowed men (or women) who didn't want to sit next to members of the opposite sex for religious reasons to switch to vacant seats or ask other passengers to switch with them – if they made such requests themselves. But she said that the decision made clear that it was illegal for any airline employee to ask a passenger to switch seats in order to accommodate others' gender preferences.
No comments:
Post a Comment