GENDER PARADOXES: The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in Pre-State Israel (1917–1926)

The struggle that Jewish suffragists led between 1917–1926 in Mandatory Palestine is a relatively unknown story. The following lines will describe this unique struggle and point out some of its inherent paradoxes. The Jewish suffragists established their political party in order to ensure equality for women, even before their Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) created their first political body, the Committee of Representatives, was established. The women's organization, which was called “The Union of Hebrew Women in Eretz Israel (Palestine),” was formed in Jerusalem, where most of its Jewish inhabitants negated suffrage for women, due to their religious belief. That negative attitude produced the most radical reaction. In contrast to the notion that socialist women were the ones who fought for women’s equality, most of the members of the women’s party were bourgeois. The socialists believed that only under their rule would equality flourish. Above all, the women’s aim, equality and union, did not include Arab women, who also did not wish, at that time, to form an organization with Jewish women. In spite of all these paradoxes and some more, in January 1926 the newly formed Committee of Representatives of the Yishuv declared equality for women.