In recent years, gender segregation and discrimination against women have been expanding into various aspects of public life. This is seen on army bases where women are marginalized; on academic campuses where female “modesty supervisors” check the length of skirts; in the civil service, which has cadet courses for men only; in funeral ceremonies, where women cannot mourn or stand with their families; in signposts forbidding women to walk on certain sidewalks, while men police their clothing, applying ever harsher modesty rules, occasionally with curses and spitting. Bus drivers refuse to let on a female passenger in shorts, or don’t allow women to board, claiming there’s “room for men only.”
This is merely a partial list. The struggle for woman’s place in public – and for Israeli society – is in full force.