Where Are Israeli Women?
Among the many powerful images that circulated the week after the attacks in Paris, one was notable for its absurdity. A photograph, which ran in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox daily newspaper Hamevaser, showed the world’s heads of state, marching arm in arm in solidarity. Or rather, the male heads of state: female leaders, most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had been digitally removed from the photo in the name of religious modesty.
.. In 2008, a thirty-year-old religious woman named Rachel Azaria headed a slate of candidates for city council. Her team had arranged to mount an ad campaign on the back of buses in the city that would feature her picture. In order to finalize the details of the campaign, Azaria called Cnaan Media, the company in charge of Jerusalem bus advertisements. “We’ve already had a schedule, we picked out the bus lines, everything,” Azaria told me on the phone this week. She was about to close the deal when the company’s salesperson casually told her: “I just want to make sure you know that we don’t show women on buses in the city.”
“I was stunned,” Azaria recounted. She hung up the phone, walked out to the street, and looked around her at passing buses. One featured an ad for a wedding venue. “It showed a groom, and a bouquet, and a set table—but no bride,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that this was happening. It was a gradual process in which women literally disappeared from Jerusalem.”
.. That year, posters for the Jerusalem Marathon portrayed only male runners—until public outcry caused the city to add images of women.