The Justice Ministry put out a press release on Thursday evening in which it summed up a discussion Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit recently held about local authorities holding gender-segregated events for religious audiences.
The issue has made headlines in recent weeks after several public events catering to the ultra-Orthodox and religious sectors called for the separation of men and women in the audience. The move was seen as a step to exclude women, sparking a backlash from various rights groups that argued that religious customs aside, gender-segregation had no place in the public sphere.
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A segregated event that took place in the northern city of Afula last week was even the subject of a High Court of Justice appeal after a lower court denied a petition to bar it from taking place, a ruling the High court overturned while the event was ongoing – with full separation between men and women.
"After legal steps taken following a cultural event at a city park in Afula, in which men and women were separated, and in light of other such events planned in various places, the attorney general, held an urgent meeting to address the issue of gender segregation at [public] cultural events to reach an interim position on the matter until it can be debated thoroughly," the press release read.
"The general rule is to hold public events without gender segregation, without any authority taking steps to enforce gender segregation. However, there might exist certain contexts in which gender segregation is permissible, [when] aimed at a specific sector of the public, and if the segregation is enforced according to law," the statement read.
"If a local authority wants to hold a gender-segregated event for a sector that wants it that way, it must, first of all, examine the defining characteristics of the local population and whether, depending on the kind of event, gender segregation can be voluntary. Insofar as possible, this option is preferable to pre-planned gender segregation," the attorney general decided.
