Between the Flag and the Banner: Women in Israeli Politics

PREFACE

PREFACE During a flight to the United States on my way to sabbatical leave, I noticed something strange in my Israeli passport: on page 3, my picture was pasted beside an empty space, under which I found written: "The wife's picture." When I looked closely at the official document, I found, to my amazement, on page 2 "Name" and"Accompanied by his wife"; not spouse but wife. As I have no wife, the space left for her picture and for writing her name remained empty. The passport was not issued in the pre-suffragist era, when men did most of the travelling, but in 1994, when women's equality in Western democracies had become a truism. Obviously, I was not detained at the airport due to the empty provisions designated for my "wife," but I had this strange sense of being unequal to the "husband" with whom I was supposed to accompany, and whose picture was to have been pasted next to mine. Why is the "wife" an appendage to the husband? Why is the nuptial bond so important as to be included in a passport? Why is it inserted in an official document of a state which subscribed to women's equality earlier, and in legislation more extensively, than many other Western societies? While spending my sabbatical year at the Institute for the Research of Women and Gender at Stanford University, I had time to ponder these questions. Having been engaged for a lengthy period in a study of Israel's particular, and paradoxical, xi xu Between the Flag and the Banl1er democracy, I tried to add the case of women in Israel to some of the broader questions confronting the Jewish state: how to reconcile particular group (or, for that matter, gender) interests with larger national objectives; how to integrate into the collective society without blurring one's special needs; how to avoid tradition without being torn from a perpetual heritage. Women in Israel have faced these problems, which have affected their political organization, behavior, and identity. These will be discussed in this book. The status of women in Israel has been studied from sociological and psychological perspectives. The subject, however, eluded the attention of political scientists, preoccupied with "more important issues," such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the state's electoral reform. This book is aimed at filling this lacuna by providing an analysis of the place of women in Israeli politics. Although it centers on women and their political mobilization , public policy regarding gender equality cannot be overlooked. The ways and means by which the state has promoted women's equality in the public and private domains are also examined. One of the major questions probed in this study is the interaction between women and the state. The feminist attitude toward the state has been highly equivocal. Some scholars regard the state as a patriarchal institution taking an active part in oppressing women, and contend that women have replaced their dependence on individual men by dependence on the state-a shift that has not nourished their power. A different view does not charge the state with the subordination of women, whose position, it is stated, has largely been a "nonissue" left to social forces. The state has thus been a silent observer of socioeconomic developments, or even blind to the actual transformations taking place. The main argument of this book is that in Israel both approaches appear to hold true. Women are dependent on state agencies not only because they are consumers of welfare rights but because the state is the major, for many citizens perhaps the sole, source of identification. At the same time, however, women's affairs remained a "nonissue" as long as they were not elaborated in terms congruent with traditional roles. Safeguarding the privileges involved in custody over the flag of Preface Xlll the national cause, the state stood by women's side as long as they were willing to forego the banner of gender equality. In writing this book I received invaluable financial and moral support from several sources. I acknowledge with gratitude the essential financial support provided by a grant from the Israel Foundation trustees, which enabled me to gather and analyze the data, and the Jewish-Arab Center at the University of Haifa, which funded the study of Arab women. I heartily thank my editor, Murray Rosovsky, who with efficiency and competence turned my manuscript into readable English. I am very grateful to my friends and colleagues...