Knesset Communiqué:
Filling an Image of Equality
By Jessica Steinberg

In 1948, there were 11 women in the Knesset. Today, there are 18. With Israel’s progressive reputation, why does it continue to lag behind other democracies?

On a cold Saturday night in March, just an hour after Shabbat has ended, Gila Finkelstein is in her hotel room in Jerusalem, still wearing her Shabbat suit and pearls, but with terrycloth slippers on her feet. As soon as she is seated on the couch, Finkelstein delivers a five-minute speech about her legislative plans for the Knesset.

An educator for 30 years, the mother of three is focusing on children’s issues. She wants to introduce uniforms into Israel’s school system, create new welfare legislation for teenagers from low-income families and ban liquor from grocery stores. She thinks that if the law will not tolerate firing men while they are on reserve duty, then women on maternity leave should have the same protection. While this is currently illegal, many employers do it anyway, and get away with it.

Finkelstein, 52, is one of the Knesset’s newest lawmakers, as well as the National Religious Party’s first female Member of Knesset in 21 years. She is a curious combination of traditional loyalties and forthright opinions. When Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the unofficial rabbinic adviser to the NRP, the religious Zionist faction, said that “a woman’s place is not in politics, and certainly not in the NRP,” the one-time principal retorted that she had earned the right. At the same time Finkelstein, who is Modern Orthodox, only began to cover her hair three years ago (she now wears a sheitel) to be more acceptable to her constituency and to combat her female competitors who were covering their hair. She is outspoken and self-confident—and thrilled about her Knesset win after an unsuccessful run four years ago.

Israel’s January 28 elections were more than a success for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party. It seated 18 women in the 120-member Knesset, up from 17 in the last government. Half of the 12 parliamentary parties have at least one woman on their list, and there are three female ministers from two different parties. Likud led the list with 8 women out of 37, Labor with 4 out of 19 and Shinui with 3 out of 15. The NRP, One Nation and Meretz each has 1.

With a labor force that is nearly 50-percent female, Israelis have long been looking for more women in public roles. Though it is more evolutionary than revolutionary, it seems they are getting it—though many remain disappointed in the numbers.

The women are a varied crew. Half are from right-wing, conservative parties, including the Likud; the Russian immigrant party Yisrael B’Aliya (which merged with Likud for this election) and the NRP. The other nine are a diverse group of economy-conscious capitalists, equality-driven socialists, hard-core hawks and peace-seeking doves. They are from left-wing, liberal and socialist factions, including the venerable Labor Party; the secular, left-wing Shinui; the liberal Meretz and the staunchly socialist One Nation Party (representing the national Histadrut labor union). They may have strong political differences and goals, but they have a potent belief in their abilities and strengths as women. Though not necessarily pushing a feminist agenda, they will be using their positions and the political system to exert their combined influence.

Marina Solodkin, 51, a third-term Knesset member who helped establish Yisrael B’Aliya in 1995 with former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, is a veteran lawmaker and pragmatic politician. Yisrael B’Aliya won only two seats in the current Knesset, down from six in the previous one, indicating that in migrating to traditional parties, Russian immigrants have become more Israeli. Since her party merged with Likud, Solodkin, along with Yuli Edelstein, is now officially a Likud MK. Nevertheless, she sees her natural constituency as the immigrant community, whether Russian, Ethiopian, Argentinean, French or Anglo-Saxon, and views her task as creating legislation to ease absorption for that segment of Israeli society. But as a woman, she wants to help guide the development of Israeli feminism, and make sure that this still nascent movement does not become too politicized or too sexist.

“[Gender] problems were solved by the Bolsheviks in the 1930’s,” said Solodkin, who taught economic history and theory in Moscow. “When I came here and participated in the discussions over women pilots, I told the army commanders that women already won that struggle in other countries.”

Maybe in other countries, but not in Israel. While Israel is often at the forefront when it comes to certain aspects of societal progress, such as socialized health care, it also finds itself far behind, sometimes at a 15- to 20-year gap, on the issue of women’s roles. Women are academics but not university presidents; they are engineers, but few head high-tech companies. In 2000, a woman’s average monthly salary was 60.18 percent of the average male wage. Solodkin was surprised by the findings, but her female colleagues, most of them native Israelis, have been challenging such disparities most of their adult lives.

For Yehudith Naot, 59, a Shinui Knesset member and new environment minister, women’s issues can be boiled down to education and economics. She wants more women working as CEO’s and heading academic institutions, to get a higher percentage of women into the government.

“Our aim as women is the same across party lines,” said Naot, who teaches at the Technion Institute and was a deputy mayor in Haifa. “We want to prove that women are equal to or better in their tasks than men, both as MK’s and as ministers.”

Gila Gamliel, 29, a first-time Likud legislator and chair of the Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women, wants to see the same opportunities for men and women throughout Israeli society. She believes that including six men along with the nine women on her committee is a start.

For her part, Colette Avital, 63, a veteran diplomat and Labor MK, is tired of seeing female MK’s serving on the traditional, female-oriented committees: social work and education. However, the former consul general for Israel in New York, a self-described “maven in foreign affairs,” was crowded out of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by men from her own party. The only woman on the committee is Likud’s Naomi Blumenthal.

“A priori...the generals will be on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees,” said Avital. “The men always outnumber the women on the more powerful committees.”

Meanwhile, there are five women each on the Education and Culture Committee and on the Committee for the Advancement of the Status of the Child. Two sit on the powerful Finance Committee and three on the Economics Committee (out of 15 members on each).

Being in the overwhelmingly male Knesset has made the women eager to collaborate on a variety of issues. Finkelstein plans to work with Avital to abolish the sales tax in recession-ridden Jerusalem, while Avital has also joined forces in the past with two-term education minister Limor Livnat of Likud, fighting budget cuts in education. Naot plans to work with Livnat and Likudnik Tzipi Livni, absorption minister.

Both Livni and Livnat have been ministers in other governments. Livnat previously served as the communications minister in the fourteenth Knesset and as education minister in the last one, while Livni was minister of regional cooperation. These positions, however, while significant to Israeli society, are not the most powerful posts. The defense, foreign and finance ministries are considered the most important, and the only woman to have held the position of foreign minister was Golda Meir.

“I don’t see it as a big success,” said Naot. “Eighteen out of 120 isn’t good enough. It’s an improvement, but it’s still far away from achieving our goal of being 40 percent or 50 percent.”

As a country created according to the liberal and socialist ethos of the Zionist movement, Israel has always had an equal-opportunity image. So far, the numbers belie that image. But hope springs eternal, even in the battle-hardened political arena of the Knesset, where ironies abound. After all, if the sixteenth Knesset can include two women under 30 and one who wears a sheitel, who’s to say who will be in the seventeenth?

Jessica Steinberg is a freelance writer living in Israel.