Women-Only Fertility Conference Is No Answer
Pressure against the Pu’ah to abstain from holding a conference for men only on fertility and Jewish law seems to be working. As of this morning, 9 out of 10 Israeli doctors scheduled to speak had withdrawn. In addition, the Ethics Board of the Physicians’ Union announced that from now on doctors will not be allowed to participate in medical events or conferences in which women are excluded, either as speakers or patients. This is an enormous victory by any social activism standards.
A roundtable of 30 social justice organizations convened by the New Israel Fund over the past few months to address the exclusion of women seems to be largely responsible for this success. Dr. Hanna Kehat, founder of the religious women’s forum Kolech, brought the Pu’ah conference to the attention of the other members of the roundtable — and several member organizations helped activate pressure. (Full disclosure: I also sit on the roundtable, representing The Center for Women’s Justice. Everything reported here is with permission).
Lili Ben Ami and Limor Levy Osemi, of the Lobby for Equality Between the Sexes, have been particularly influential in achieving the support of the physicians’ Ethics’ Board, and have been speaking to doctors, Knesset members and members of the media. Mickey Gitzin, director of Be Free Israel, which promotes civil equality, has also been encouraging doctors not to cave into Haredi pressure.
Gitzin rejected claims from Pu’ah that doctors have been threatened by feminist activists. “What can we possibly threaten with?” he said. “Our conversations with doctors are about values, about what it means to speak as an expert in gynecology in a public of all men.”
Meanwhile, Pu’ah announced that they will be holding a second conference in June for women only. This is in some ways monumental, since Pu’ah has been hosting conferences for more than a decade, and this is the first time women have been invited. But separate conferences do not exactly fix the problem. Holding two separate conversations about women’s bodies, one for women only and one for men “experts” only, makes the problem worse. Men, even “experts,” need to hear from women. This is true in all matters, but most importantly on matters relating to women’s health. Having separate conversations merely cements archaic notions that women are objects and that men should not see us, hear us, or be in the same room as us. It’s horrifying for me to think about how such ideas influence Pu’ah’s work in fertility and gynecology.
As of this writing, it is not clear whether the doctors who withdrew from the conference will un-withdraw in response to the Pu’ah announcement. The all-men’s conference is still scheduled to go ahead Wednesday morning, Israel time, though how they will replace all those missing lecture spots is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, the NIF roundtable is planning a demonstration outside the conference hall.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
- 4
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The ADL reversed its support for Trump’s student deportations. You should too
-
Fast Forward Senate rejects Bernie Sanders’ proposal to block some weapons sales to Israel
-
Fast Forward Sotheby’s to auction earliest known kiddush cup
-
Opinion Trump’s new tariffs on Israel are a BDS dream come true
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.