Category: Gender policy 
2009-04-08
Two female ministers within a 30-strong cabinet may not sound like such a big deal to most.
However, it was two women too many for Israeli ultra-orthodox newspapers, so they simply airbrushed the offending female figures out of photographs of Binyamin Netanyahu's new cabinet, on the grounds that printing pictures of women is "immodest".
Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver, the two apparently inappropriate ministers, simply "disappeared" from a photograph of the new cabinet in the weekly newspaper Shaa Tova, with black holes visible in the spaces where they had been standing. Meanwhile, in the newspaper Yated Neeman, male cabinet members were blown up and superimposed on to the images of the two female ministers in the frame.
Shaa Tova told the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv: "Anyone who is acquainted with the ultra-orthodox press knows that from time immemorial, ultra-orthodox newspapers avoid publishing pictures of women."
"This sector simply does not believe that women should have a public life, or even vote," says Galia Golan-Gild, professor of government at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre.
She points out that ultra-orthodox newspapers have in the past refused to print pictures of the Kadima party leader Tzipi Livnik, or even to use her first name. "It is absolutely typical of the ultra-orthodox movement." Campaign posters featuring Livni were vandalised in ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods in Jerusalem in the run-up to the February elections.
But Golan-Gild said she was concerned about "creeping religiosity" in Israeli society, and reported that restrictive attitudes towards women were spreading into the religious Zionist sector. "In the army they are already asking for separate units and all male-entertainment," she said.
The Knesset - the legislative branch of the Israeli government - comprises the highest number of female politicians to date, with women occupying 21 out of 120 seats.
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