The results of the election for the 22nd Knesset didn't announce one clear winner, but it can be said that there are losers – and they are the women. There are only 27 women in the 22nd Knesset, which works out to less than 23% female representation, while women are more than 50% of the population in Israel.
The situation is grim in the big parties. Only two women were slotted in the top 10 on the Blue and White List, and in the Likud, only one woman received a top 10 slot.
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Not only did the 22nd Knesset not bring us good news – it marks a regression. The 20th Knesset included 37 women, a number that dropped to 29 in the 21st Knesset. Now there are even fewer.
But aside from the issue of how many women are in the Knesset, it appears that the entire Israeli political sphere reflects the societal patriarchy: the main players in this round of electoral drama were three former IDF chiefs of staff who fought for power with the prime minister.
Israel is over 70 years old, but we can count on one hand the number of female political leaders who have gotten close to the Prime Minister's Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem – only one of whom actually made it. In the past few years, we have been exposed to widespread discussion of equality, liberalism, and tolerance, but we've seen little of it. Not only are we going backward in terms of numerical representation by women, but we are also seeing a failure to build female leadership.
How have we gotten to the point where Israeli society has stopped producing female leaders? Election results show us that most women vote for men. Do women play a part in the failure to create female leadership, or is it the school system and societal norms that lead us – including women – to believe less in the potential of female leadership?
Gender inequality is not fading away, and it must be confronted. Paradoxically, the drop in the number of women in the Knesset comes as gender awareness is at an all-time high following the Me Too protests. Like these protests, a change to the number of women in politics and new female leadership must start from the ground up.
We women are the only ones who can change the number of women representatives. Aside from the fact that we need to invest in the development of female leadership, and also take care to ensure that women are represented in all foci of power, we need to make it clear to party leaders and political institutions that we will no longer accept symbolic representation by one or two women MKs. We should make political support contingent upon a promise to better represent women, and we need to shape a reality in which society will no longer accept parties, Knessets, and governments that are less than 50% female. If we could upturn the world after the Me Too movement, we can make this change, too.
