WUNRN
http://lilith.org/blog/2015/01/more-women-making-decisions-in-israel/
http://il.boell.org/en/2015/01/12/more-women-making-decisions-israel
ISRAEL – MINISTRIES TEAM FORMED TO CREATE ISRAELI ACTION
PLAN ON UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325
January
6, 2015 by Elana Sztokman
Last month, the
Israeli government announced that it is establishing a team to formulate a
working plan to advance UN Resolution 1325 in Israel—the resolution that calls
for women’s equal inclusion in all aspects of decision-making, especially
around issues of peace and security.
The team will be
comprised of senior representatives from almost all government offices,
including the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry, the Ministry for Internal
Security, and the perhaps more obvious Welfare Ministry and Education Ministry.
It will be headed by Vered Swid, the Director of the Office for Gender Equality
of the Prime Minister’s Office (until recently titled The Office on the Status
of Women) and will also include academics, researchers, and representatives
from NGOs working on issues of gender, equality and social justice.
The purpose of the
committee, according to the announcement, is to ensure that Israel complies
with UN Resolution 1325. This means ensuring women’s representation in all
areas of decision-making, promoting women’s safety and security, and redefining
“security” to include a more holistic understanding of women’s lives.
Women’s groups
have been working tirelessly for seven years to reach this moment and have
faced sometimes daunting obstacles. “This is the first time that the government
has committed to an action plan on gender, a tangible working plan with
timetables, targets, and measurable objectives that can be evaluated and
followed up on,” said attorney Anat Thon Ashkenazy, Coordinator of 1325 Israel
on behalf of Itach-Maaki Women Lawyers for Social Justice, which has
spearheaded this initiative for the past seven years. “It is also the first
time that all the various discussions on gender have been connected – women’s
representation, women’s security, and gender mainstreaming. That’s the essence
of Resolution 1325, that all these issues are tied together.”
Also significant
is the list of participants in the process. This is the first time that gender
is seen not as an issue of concern to the ministries of welfare and education
alone, but rather as demanding the attention of all ministries. Until very
recently, these ministries did not believe that they are part of the gender
problem. Member of the Knesset Aliza Lavie, who heads the Knesset Committee on
the Status of Women, which has been advancing this initiative, received a
response from the Ministry of Defense earlier this year saying that they did
not understand what their office has to do with gender.
There is quite a
lot for them to learn. The negotiations over the recent Gaza war, for example,
took place with zero women around the table–not even Justice Minister Tzipi
Livni, whose official job title was to be head of negotiations. Prime Minister
Netanyahu found a way to replace her with his own male representative. (Could
this manipulation have anything to do with Livni’s powerful campaign to replace
him in the upcoming elections? I wonder.)
The gender problem
cuts across the board in Israel. A 2014 state comptroller’s report found that
women fill less than one third of all senior management positions in the public
sector, that only 64 out of 331 chairs of the board of government-affiliated
companies are women, and perhaps most alarmingly, that not one of the CEOs of
those 331 government companies are women. Many government commissions – such as
The Turkel Commission, which investigated a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound
flotilla–have zero women. And minority women—such as Ethiopians and Arabs—are
almost completely unrepresented in government leadership.
Israel was,
ironically, the first country in the world to give lip service to Resolution
1325 back in 2005 by officially confirming its commitment to the idea. But
since then, Israel has done nothing. Meanwhile, other countries—including
Northern Ireland, Guatemala, The Philippines, Liberia, and even the United
States—have had considerable success in implementing Resolution 1325. The
difference, according to Thon Ashkenazy, between countries with success and
those without, is in whether they adopted an actual working plan. According to
a Harvard University study tracking the impact of 1325, countries that adopted
a working plan had an average increase of 11% in women’s representation in
decision-making within two years. And in some countries, the impact can be felt
on issues of war and peace. Lleymah Gbowee made history in Liberia when she
mobilized women to force an end to the 14-year civil war, and then won the
Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Israel could certainly use a woman like her.
“From Northern
Ireland to Liberia to Nepal and many places in between, we have seen that when
women participate in peace processes, they focus discussion on issues like
human rights, justice, national reconciliation, and economic renewal that are
critical to making peace, but often are overlooked in formal negotiations,”
then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in December 2011 when the United
States launched their own action plan to implement 1325. “[Women] build
coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines, and they speak up for other
marginalized groups. They act as mediators and help to foster compromise. And
when women organize in large numbers, they galvanize opinion and help change
the course of history.”
The Israeli women
who have been working tirelessly on this issue studied the models around the
world to see what works. They began by lobbying for legislation, then appealed
to the High Court of Justice, and then realized that the key to success would
be collaboration among women. In 2011, Thon Ashkenazy and others pulled together
a coalition of 30 organizations of women’s rights and human rights in order to
create a groundswell of active support. The coalition, which was funded by
Heinrich Bell, the European Union and the National Council of Jewish Women,
have worked together over the past three years to formulate a working plan
based on successful models around the world. Their model, which was completed
in October 2013, will hopefully become the foundation for the governmental
committee that was announced this week.
“I see the process
that we all went through together, with so many organizations and partners in a
complex and ongoing dialogue, as the heart of this success,” said Dr. Galit
Deshe, CEO of the Israel Women’s Network, one of the 30 organizations
partnering in the coalition. “We all know how complex our field is, with
arguments and ideological gaps among different organizations. And yet, despite
all that, we managed to take a volatile issue and create an open and creative
space for communication. For that, we should all be congratulated.”
Vered Swid, who
will be leading the team, says that the goal is to put in place a multi-year
plan that goes to 2020, with short-term, intermediate, and long-term plans. “I
have a vision in which every year on March 8—International Women’s
Day—representatives from all government ministries report to the Prime Minister
on what their offices did that year to advance gender equality,” Swid told me.
“This isn’t about ‘the status of women’. This is about advancing gender
equality, and about empowering men to be agents of change on this issue as
well.” Swid says that PM Netanyahu has been very supportive of gender issues,
and in fact was the one who, back in 1998, established the very position that
she currently holds. Swid says that Sara Netanyahu is also very supportive of
gender issues.
Meanwhile, the
six-month target date when the new committee is meant to present its paper will
be after the elections, leaving many questions about what the government will
look like at the time. “The change in government should not have an effect on
the work of the professionals in the field,” Swid reassures. “In any case,
support for gender issues is growing throughout Israel. In the past, it was
very hard to get people’s attention on this issue. But now, doors are open to
us everywhere.”
Perhaps this
announcement is a sign that gender awareness is spreading in Israel –or an
understanding that addressing the concerns of women is sound policy. It will be
very interesting to see how this develops, and how gender impacts and is
impacted by the upcoming elections.