Ultra-Orthodox bar women from major Jerusalem economic conference [View All]

[Poll_Blind]

From Haaretz:

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.

--snip--

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.

--snip--

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.

Israel is the only country I know of, and certainly first-world country, in which sex segregation is getting more entrenched in their society, not less so.

PB