A Study Of Feminism In Israel

The first Israeli feminism began in the period of Palestine before the founding of Israel.Jewish women actively carried out campaigns in Palestine to fight for women’s right to vote.Affected by socialist ideology,Jewish women’s feminist activities first appeared in kibbutz,pioneer training camps,and internal political activities among workers.While fighting for rights,women value themselves as women and mothers,and strive to maintain a balance between the two.Different from the order in which women fight for the right to vote in other parts of the world,Jewish women are campaigning for the right to vote at the same time in all parts of Palestine and the Central(Constitutive Assembly);Unlike the way women fight for the right to vote in other parts of the world,Jewish feminists participate in the Constitutive Assembly as a political party.In the process of fighting for the right to vote,Jewish women also received help from international women’s organizations and strong support from Jewish women in other parts of the world.In the end,with the efforts of all parties,the right to vote for Jewish women was established in the form of legislation,which laid a solid foundation for Jewish women to carry out campaigns for broader rights in the future.The second Israeli feminist movement can be divided into two stages: radical feminism and liberal feminism.The radical feminist movement has no resources and a simple structure.The participants are mostly young people in their twenties and thirties,with little or no professional skills and little influence.The radical feminist movement borrowed the ideology and loosely organized model of the American radical feminist movement,and expressed itself in the form of publishing feminist works,translating cutting-edge international feminist articles,feminist magazines,establishing shelters for battered and raped women,and forming various support groups.The radical feminist movement also held noisy demonstrations in rabbinic courts,political rallies and beauty pageants to arouse widespread public concern and popularize feminist awareness.The radical feminist movement also extended to the political field--the establishment of women’s political parties put feminism directly on the political map and raised the awareness of women’s rights in Israel.Starting in the mid-1980 s,the upper and middle classes in Israeli society,such as scholars,journalists,lawyers,and politicians,joined the feminist movement.The participation of these influential women was a turning point for Israel’s second feminist movement.After that,liberal feminism began to flourish.Women’s studies began to take root in Israeli higher education institutions such as Haifa University,Tel Aviv University,Bar-Ilan University,Ben Gurion University,and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.The liberal feminism lasted from the mid-1980 s to the 1990 s.Liberal feminism has been very successful in attracting funders and social support,and radical feminist movements have been marginalized.Over time,women’s centers established by radical feminists were gradually replaced by professionals in the field.The liberal feminism has achieved a series of successes in legislation,education,and administration.The liberal feminism has prevented the Israeli feminism from going to extreme situations.Most liberal feminists in Israel have criticized the radical feminist movement of the 1970 s,arguing that early feminists were overly truthful in their criticism of the division of labor within the family and sexism,citing western feminist ideas without considering the specific context of Zionism.The disadvantage of the liberal feminism compared to the radical feminism is that the issues concerned by the radical feminism has wide appeal among women of different social classes,while the agenda concerned by the liberal feminism is the main concern of the upper-middle class Ashkenazi Jewish women in Israeli society.The third feminist movement in Israel began in the 1990 s,marked by the 10 th Annual National Feminist Conference in 1994.The essence of the third Israeli feminism is that women from marginalized groups in Israel(Mizrahi Jewish women,women believe in Judaism,and Arab women)in Israeli society began the process of independently developing the feminist movement.They cannot agree with the feminism introduced from the West.This feminism cannot explain their daily needs and their daily struggles in their own society and culture.The third feminist movement is mainly in Israel reflected in three aspects.1.The Mizrahi Jewish Feminist Movement.The first and second feminist movements in Israel have always been dominated by Ashkenazi Jewish women,while Mizrahi Jewish feminists have a small number of participants and are in a marginal position.They began to carry out feminist movements independently in the 1990 s.2.The Jewish feminist movement.Among Religious Jews,the status of women is directly related to their Jewish movement,In Israel,Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism advocate equality between men and women in the field of religion.The modern Orthodox Judaism adheres to traditional religious concepts,and women are in a secondary position in religious life.After the baptism of the feminist movement,the status of women has been significantly improved in the fields of prayer,rituals,academics,justice,and politics;The Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism feminist movement is currently a slow-emerging trend.Ultra-Orthodox feminists focus on the political field,and the restrictions in the field of religious rituals have not been resolved.3.The Arab feminist movement.The Israeli Arab feminism is closely related to the Palestinian nationalism.Israeli Arab feminists oppose Israeli military occupation and sympathize with Palestinian nationalism.Although there are some Arab feminist organizations in Israel,there is no systematic Arab feminism in Israel due to internal divisions.The Israeli feminist movement as a whole shows three characteristics: active participation in politics,complete legislative organization system and Strong application ability.Jewish women make full use of the proportional representation system of the Israeli Knesset,and raise the feminist awareness of Israeli women and fulfill their aspirations by forming female political parties to participate in Knesset elections.Since the beginning of the feminist movement in Israel,the number of Israeli women’s representatives in Knesset and government has continued to increase over time.In order to protect and enhance women’s rights,the Knesset has formulated various laws aimed at protecting and promoting women’s rights.There are corresponding legislation and regulations in criminal law,marriage law,anti-discrimination,prevention of domestic violence,and improvement of women’s education.In addition to legislation,Israel also has a number of non-governmental women’s organizations,shelters for battered women,and treatment and counseling centers to prevent domestic violence.With the development of time,the feminist movement has also expanded from the elite to various marginal minority groups in Israeli society,showing a trend of diversification.The target of the Israeli feminist movement is the United States.While fully learning from the experience of the United States feminism,it also draws lessons from the United States.According to the specific conditions of Israel,the strategy and actions are taken according to local conditions,showing a strong ability to apply and unique Jewish characteristics.Israel’s nation-state building has deeply influenced Israel’s feminist movement.Israel’s nation-state building can be roughly divided into three stages,namely,the nationalism that strives to establish a sovereign state,the melting pot policy to shape a unified nation-state identity,and the multiculturalism that embraces different ethnicities,groups,and cultures.The three Israeli feminist movements corresponded to the three nation-state building phases.The reason is that every adjustment of the nation-state building policy or model is closely related to the interests of the country’s female groups,and every adjustment to the nation-state building is accompanied by The adjustment of social relations and gender relations is not only a challenge for Israeli women but also an important opportunity to reshape the relationship between the men and women.In the stage of the nationalism,because of the active participation of women and the principle of the people’s sovereignty of the nation-state,the nationalist movement became an incubator of the feminist movement;The melting pot policy promotes ethnic integration,the barriers between various ethnic groups and communities are broken,their connections are further strengthened,advanced feminist ideas and experiences can be further disseminated,and the feminist movement can further smoothly advance and develop;Multiculturalism advocates adapting rather than eliminating or suppressing diversity and minorities.On the one hand,this policy has increased the national identity of minority groups,and on the other hand,the adoption of the multicultural policy by the Israeli government has also laid the foundation for individual minority groups in Israel to carry out feminist movements on their own.The diversified development of the Israeli feminist movement itself is recognition of the success of Israel’s multicultural policy.