Image by Mako

By Lior Zaltzman March 8, 2016

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and the Israeli news outlet Mako has created a video summing up of a century of Israeli women. Yes, the fashion and styling in it is pretty inspiring, but the facts and history of women’s rights in Israel that it contains are sometimes… less than inspiring.

Here is a choice of 10 facts, some awesome, some somewhat depressing, in this 6 minute video. So far, it’s been viewed over 300,000 times and been shared :

1) Out of the 37 signatories on Israel’s declaration of independence, two are women.
2) A fifth of the fighting force of the Palmach were women.
3) Golda Meir, sworn in in 1968, and she was only the third woman to hold that position globally.
4) In 2001, Roni Tzukerman became the first female pilot joined the IDF airforce. Ezer Weizman, the country president at the time and a former airforce pilot said in 1993:

“Meidele, have you ever seen a man sewing a pair of socks. Have you ever seen a women surgeon or orchestra conductor? Women are incapable of withstanding the pressures placed on a fighter pilot.”

5) Domestic violence was only outlawed in Israel in 1977, until then, it was a matter of familial discretion or a “romantic problem.”
6) Legislation against sexual harassment (outside of the workplace) was only passed in 1994.
7) In 2012, Israel passed the “Photoshop law,” which puts weight and BMI restrictions on working models. 8) Despite being a majority of the Israeli workforce (74%), only 38% of Israelis in leadership positions are women.
9) About 100,000 women in Israel are or have been refused a get.
10) Every women in Israel has been/will be sexually harassed in her lifetime. One in every three women has been sexually abused.

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