Gender

With the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in 2017, Itach-Maaki initiated a process aiming to create a civil society action plan for the implementation of SDGs in Israel, focused on the mitigation of poverty and inequality, advancing peace and gender equality and a society that is better for its diverse members. The process will include two phases in the year 2017 and will continue through 2018.

Governments around the world are taking draconian steps to suppress civil-society organizations, with measures ranging from restrictive laws and bureaucratic burdens to smear campaigns and censorship.

Shrinking – closing – no space: Governments across all continents villainize civil society actors. Where does their sense of threat emanate from?

Last December, the Israeli Government decided to establish a governmental committee to create a National Action Plan in the spirit  of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The resolution calls on UN member states to protect women from violence, increase the participation of diverse women in decision-making bodies, and for the prevention of armed conflict. This video and the text that follows tells the story of the journey of civil society NGOs to create an Action Plan for Israel.

On May 12 the Adva Center partnered with the Heinrich Boell Foundation in the sponsorship of a conference "The Program for Gender Mainstreaming in Local Councils". The conference was organized jointly by the Adva Center and Injaz Center at the Na LaGaat Center in Jaffa. The purpose of the conference is to share insights, challenges and success stories resulting from women's civic actions in their localities. The conference was attended by women from 21 localities, both Jewish and Arab, from all over the country. (Video and Pictures)

Dr. Sarai Aharoni discusses the exceptional status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which is one of the longstanding issues on the UN agenda) as one of the intriguing puzzles of current global feminist politics. Could it be that the situation of Palestinian women and girls under Israeli occupation is the most extreme breach of the Beijing Platform of Action? (From the HBS Gunda-Werner-Institute)

Feminist Rereading is never enough to correct the harms done to women by the subordination suffered and engendered by religious texts. And only a state, dedicated to universal, human rights, can best mitigate the effects of those harms.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence of 1948 specifically refers to Israel as “The Jewish State”, while simultaneously guaranteeing “the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex”. This assumed legal standing through the delegation of personal status to religious authorities (for the majority of the country’s citizens, to the monopolistic control of the orthodox Chief Rabbinate). Since, from the outset, matters of marriage and divorce in the Jewish tradition discriminate against women, aspects of gender inequality have been embedded into the structure of the state.