Feminism in Israel is a complex issue in contemporary Israeli society due to the varied demographic makeup of the country and the country's particular balance of religion and state issues. For secular Israeli women, the successive campaigns for women's rights and equality reflect a similar timeline and progression as Western democracies. For Israeli Arabs, however, the issue of feminism is strongly linked to Palestinian causes. And for Orthodox Jews, selected women's rights and women's representation in the Israeli Parliament are issues that are only recently being debated.
Historical development
First-wave
The manifestations of first-wave feminism in Israel began before statehood, during the Yishuv period. These early campaigns were rooted in the ideology of Israeli socialism. A feature of this era is the women who sought to be treated as equals, chiefly in the areas of agricultural labor in the kibbutzim and within the workers parties. This first wave of Israeli feminism reached its peak in the 1920s with the struggle to obtain the right to vote in local Yishuv institutions.
Second-wave feminism
took somewhat longer to manifest in Israel. Questions concerning the need for a new women's rights movement began in the early 1970s, and in 1972, Israel's first radical women's movement was established. Notable events during that era include the establishment of the Ratz political party which won four seats in the 1973 Israeli legislative election. During this period, key early activists were American Jews living in Israel who organised consciousness raising meetings in Israel's major cities.
Arab Israeli feminism emerged following Israel's second-wave feminism, criticizing the dominant discourse as ignoring the double discrimination experienced by the Palestinians of Israel, and demanded their own path to emancipation. Their initial actions concerned work, education, domestic violence. The general stance of Israeli Arab feminists is anti-colonial and sympathetic to Palestinian nationalism, however, no feminist “movement” has been constituted due to internal organizational fragmentation. In Arab feminist literature, a common theme of discrimination concerns childhood experiences of boys and girls in the family. Writings on this trend of feminism tends to neglect the impact on the Israeli Druze community.
As feminism in Israeli society developed, a distinction began to form between Ashkenazi and Mizrachi forms of feminism. A rift formed along ethnic lines, as Mizrachi activists felt excluded and marginalized from mainstream women's movements. The First Mizrahi Feminist Annual Conference was held in 1995, representing the formal recognition of Mizrachi feminism in Israel.
Orthodox and Haredi feminism
In 1981, :he:חנה ספראי|חנה ספראי, established the first institution for advanced study of Talmud by women, where such illustrious teachers as Dr. Nehama Leibowitz and Rabbi Dr. Binyamin Lau were among the faculty. Following the opening of this school, higher Torah learning institutions for women proliferated in Israel over the next four decades. The Ne'emanei Torah Va'Avodah movement took a strong position on the rights of religious women to serve as religious leaders. In 1982 it published a halakhic study in which it highlighted the religious rights of women to serve in the IDF. In 1987, a legal case was brought before the Supreme Court of Israel arguing that :he:לאה שקדיאל|לאה שקדיאל must be allowed to serve on local religious councils. The case was brought after the Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs cancelled Shakdiel’s appointment to the religious affairs committee in Yeruham. After the court ruled in her favor, Leah Shakdiel became the first woman to serve on a religious council in Israel. In ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, one of the first substantive attempts by religious women to organise along political lines was the establishment of the Lo Nivcharot, Lo Bocharot in 2012 which campaigned for the ultra-Orthodox political parties to allow women to join the party. A subsequent initiative was the establishment of the political party U'Bizchutan organized by Haredi women. A major issue prompting efforts for Orthodox women's rights is the issue of agunot, women whose husbands refuse to divorce under Jewish law. Haredi feminism is still an slowly emerging trend but it is distinct from modern Orthodox approaches. Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist efforts include issues relating to religious law such as the question of women prayer groups and access to public rituals such as dancing with the Torah scroll on Simchat Torah. By contrast, Haredi feminism has been concerned with the political sphere and does not address restrictions in religious ritual areas.
