Hamodia’s Management Forum is attended by leading Israeli companies and politicians including Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.
Women who came to last week’s Management Forum conference in Jerusalem, hosted by the Haredi newspaper Hamodia, were not allowed to participate – the event was for men only.
Hamodia’s Management Forum is an important annual economic conference. It is the Haredi equivalent of the Caesaria conference. It is held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, better known as Binyanei Ha’uma, which belongs to the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish Agency. Leading Israeli companies participate. This year, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat gave speeches.
Women were not allowed to take any part in the conference, whether from the podium, as members of the audience or in the journalists’ enclave.
The exclusion of women from this economic conference is another step on the path to destroying Israel’s liberal democracy. It is yet another indicator of the dangerous escalation of the ultra-Orthodox endorsement of a sexist and racist agenda, which has been yet again demonstrated in the refusal to let police investigate rabbis suspected of incitement to racial hatred. The exclusion of women from full participation in public spaces is anathema to the concept of democratic representation.
This is clear not only conceptually but also empirically. The countries that tolerate such sexist exercise of male power are totalitarian theocratic regimes such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
A sexist political agenda
The flourishing sexist religious political and social agenda is the result of the long complicity of the Knesset, which has authorized the subjugation of women to patriarchal religious power in personal status matters, has funded religious political parties that have no women on their Knesset lists due to ideology. This agenda has been endorsed by the government through the growing segregation of men and women in public spaces, schools, institutions of higher education and the army.
Steinitz and Barkat’s participation in the conference follows this pattern of political endorsement. What is new here is the exclusion of women from participation in the economic sphere.
Ultra-Orthodox women are often the family breadwinners, a phenomenon unique to Judaism. This is not equality, but simply a way to let men pursue the more important goal of studying and praying.
The new departure is an indication of shifting values in the Orthodox community, which is now beginning to understand the importance of economic activity. Leaving aside internal community politics, the result is devastating for a liberal economy.
There are clear indicators that women need to be full participants in the economy in order for it to flourish. The prime minister has indeed remarked that it takes two working parents to keep a family out of poverty. In Israel, the low participation rate of Arab women (and Haredi men ) in the workforce is a central factor impeding economic growth.
The men-only economic conference at Binyanei Ha’uma promises to put Jewish women outside the labor market, too. The growing segregation of women in Israel will affect not only Orthodox women. Men who insist on segregation in the army, in class and in political parties are not going to cooperate with women in the workplace.
The more the ultra-Orthodox enter the workforce, the more women are going to find themselves marginalized and excluded. The solution has to be clearly conditioning the use of public resources, public spaces and the political arena on equal access and participation for all Israelis, including women. The lack of political will evinced by the Knesset and the government will no doubt once again leave the Supreme Court as Israel’s only guardian of liberal democracy.
