Israeli academia is at a war. The members of one camp strive for gender quality while the members of the other want gender segregation within their own sector.
A feminist lobby recently petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding that it prohibit certain academic institutions from offering gender-segregated programs.
The feminists are using the magic bullet of die-hard egalitarians by claiming that there is no such thing as separate but equal. Just like racial segregation could not be justified using such a policy, discrimination against women should not be justified with such a policy, they say.
The petitioners were joined by various academics who come from the monolithic intellectual elite that wants to impose its ideology – in the name of pluralism – on a conservative minority. This would force ultra-Orthodox Jews to choose: Give up their way of life or forgo the pursuit of an academic degree.
There is a fine line between feminism and paternalism. None of those great minds who petitioned the court thought it was wrong to use the "separate but equal" comparison. And none of them second-guessed the notion that gender segregation means the exclusion of women.
As far as the petitioners are concerned, haredi women don't know what's good for them; they are living a lie that makes them believe it is best to be segregated from men. For the petitioners, even if both genders are granted the exact same opportunities, it is not enough because in this situation women are somehow always discriminated against.
But unlike racial segregation, gender segregation is not inherently debasing or coercive. While this may occasionally happen, such as in cases where women are forced to sit in the back of the bus, this does not happen most of the time.
When a small group of women want to lead their lives according to their traditions without imposing them on others, and with the same conditions as men, this is not discrimination. One prominent feminist, Hillary Clinton, could attest to that: She chose to attend Wellesley, a women's liberal arts college.
Those petitioners in academia fear for the fate for pluralism, liberal values and women's rights. They fear that once the minority becomes a majority, this will obviously make us live under a Jewish version of the Taliban.
But perhaps the actual data can allay their anxiety. Most ultra-Orthodox women who pursue higher education do so at a very young age, before marriage, having been raised in a conservative and secluded community. Mixed-gender settings are viewed by ultra-Orthodox women as a threat on their way of life, their religious norms and their worldview.
Women make up 70% of those who enroll in gender-segregated programs. According to a survey commissioned by the Council for Higher Education, some 83% of those women say, had it not been for such programs, they would not pursue academic studies. Haredi women, whose careers were once limited to being a secretary or a teacher, can now become lawyers, engineers and programmers thanks to these programs.
Those who graduate successfully integrate in the job market and contribute to our economy. But for some, this is meaningless because they were denied "equality."
When our discourse becomes so polarized, it is easy to forget that equality is not a goal in and of itself: equality is a means to guarantee rights, just treatment, fairness in opportunity and proper representation. Regimes that turned equality into an absolute value led to human catastrophes, as was the case in the Soviet Union.
Separation is obviously required in sports and in toilets, and this should also be self-explanatory in the case of academic programs aimed at empowering haredi women. The assumption that any form of segregation is discriminatory leads to absurd situations.
If every form of separation is a form of discrimination, how can women's groups justify the programs aimed at providing vocational training for Bedouin women or high-tech academic programs tailored for women?
The public discourse has been replete with statements warning us against religious extremism and humiliating segregationist policies in the haredi world. Perhaps it is time to take note of the radicalization on the other side: the banal view of equality as an absolute value, which hurts, first and foremost, women.
