Israel is heading into another election season, and the picture for women is troubling. Before the campaigns have even fully opened, the old boys’ club is already reassembling itself. Party leaders are nearly all men. The parties that speak the language of democracy and equality are still failing to place women where power actually begins. Women who once led parties or shaped the feminist edge of Israeli politics are gone, going, or pushed to the margins.

The portrait of women in Israel is not good – not in terms of representation, and not in terms of being on the public agenda. The upcoming election may be an opportunity to address this – if people care enough.

Let’s look at women’s representation. The Israel Democracy Institute recently reported that women’s representation in the Knesset, which improved significantly between 1999 and 2015, has stalled over the past decade. Women still make up roughly a quarter of the Knesset. But by international comparison, Israel is doing terribly, ranking a pathetic 94th among countries in the world when it comes to women’s parliamentary representation. In other aspects of national government, the regression is even sharper: the current cabinet has only five women among 24 ministers, there is now exactly one woman running a government office (who was appointed just recently after a massive push by the Israel Women’s Network and other organizations), and there are almost no women leading parties running for office. (The exceptions are the new Makom Lekulanu jointly headed by Rula Daoud and Alon Lee-Green, and Einat Wilf’s party, which does not yet have enough supporters to be included in national polling.)

Screenshot: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1igsh39lx#google_vignette typical coverage of the upcoming elections with the all-male contenders for next PM

Local government is even worse. In the 2024 municipal elections, women were elected to head a minuscule 5.8% of local authorities, barely above the previous record of 5.6% in 2018. That means the places where budgets, schools, welfare services, urban planning, transport, religious services, and daily life are managed remain overwhelmingly controlled by men.

This is the backdrop to the coming election. The system is not naturally moving toward equality. It is stuck. In some places, it is moving backward.

Retreating from gender equality

Perhaps the most painful example right now is Hadash. The party that claims equality as one of its defining values failed to place even one woman in its top four slots. That result landed like a betrayal for many of its own supporters, especially women. I have spoken with several long-time female Hadash supporters who are now unsure whether they can vote for the party. These are not right-wing critics looking for a reason to attack Hadash. These are women who have believed in the party, organized around its values, and defended its vision of Jewish-Arab equality and social justice. Their disappointment should worry Hadash deeply. A party cannot ask women to trust its justice politics while asking them to accept male leadership as the default.

Sexism is painful for women always. But it is especially hard when it comes from supposed allies. When places that have vowed to promote gender equality fall back on old inequalities, with men at the top while women are asked to keep hanging on, trusting a process that sidelines them time and again – well, that stings in a whole other way. Jill Filopovic wrote a masterful take-down of this dynamic........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)