Israeli women working in high-tech companies posed around a cardboard cutout of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday to protest against a meeting she held with an all-male group of entrepreneurs in Israel last week.
Merkel noted at that session that Israel's startup industry appeared to be "very male-dominated," adding: "It would be better if next time, there was a woman among all those hopeful pioneers of the future."
Israel's Foreign Ministry subsequently apologized for the all-male attendance at the meeting, where Merkel was the only woman in a group photograph and said Israel has many female high-tech entrepreneurs.
"This opened our eyes and indeed Mrs. Merkel was absolutely right, and I think that this was an oversight and a case in which we did not pay enough attention to the fact that there should have been a better gender representation for women," ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said.
"Indeed, in Israel we have many high-tech entrepreneurs which are women and it is not normal that on such an occasion we should have only men in the audience. We take it very seriously and we are committed to making sure that whenever we will have such events in the future, there will be a representation of women as well as men."
That was also the message the protesters said they wanted to get across at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where more than 50 women posed for photographers and TV cameras with a few placards, one of which read: "Tel Aviv is with Merkel."
"It's not the first time that this has happened: you can see summits, events, meetings only with men around the table," said Merav Oren, one of the protesters and the founder of WMN, a coworking space for women entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv.
"If we don't raise the awareness like we are doing now it can happen again because, you know, the men were sitting there and nobody noticed there were no women around them, that there is no diversity in the room," she said.
Efrat Fenigson, vice president of marketing at drone solution company Airobotics, said, "What we'd like to convey to Chancellor Merkel is that Israel consists of so many great female founders, entrepreneurs, tech executives, tech investors and they are all for women and with women.
"Now, the photo that was taken was not balanced. We are not for showing that we are better, we are showing that we are equal. So in our new photo, you will see men and women the way it should be."
