Jerusalem
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They called themselves the “Women in Red.” The year before the Gaza war, they wore crimson robes and white hats and marched with their heads downcast in silent protest against the Israeli government. Borrowing an image from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the group intended to sound the alarm that the government’s judicial reforms threatened to undo decades of progress on women’s rights.
Three years later, what the government dismissed as theatrical exaggeration is increasingly seen as a prescient omen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which relies on support from ultra-Orthodox parties, is moving Israel toward a more religious and conservative future.
Concrete threats to women’s rights are occurring alongside broader efforts to undermine the Supreme Court, long a cornerstone of women’s equality in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious partners are pushing for legislation that would extend religious authority over civic life, including gender discrimination in cultural events and education. Religious parties had the power to bring down Netanyahu’s government if they withdrew their support, allowing them to bend the secular prime minister to their will.
The decline in women’s rights is visible. Israel’s global standing on gender equality has plummeted in recent years. In Georgetown University’s 2025-26 Women, Peace, and Security Index, Israel ranks 84th out of 181 countries, behind Albania, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. It was ranked 27th before the current government took office three years ago.
This sharp decline is paralleled by a sharp decline in women’s representation in public life. Currently, only six of Israel’s 33 ministers are women, and very few hold senior positions. The current government has never permanently appointed a woman as director general across more than 30 ministries. Currently, there are no women at the head of any major political party, and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government includes two parties with zero women.
“Israel’s deterioration in gender equality rankings is unprecedented, placing us in the bottom half of countries around the world, in stark contrast to decades when Israel ranked among leaders and was known as a pioneer in promoting women’s rights,” said Dafna Hacker, professor of law and gender at Tel Aviv University.
Hacker ticked off a list of historic achievements regarding women’s equality in Israel. The Women’s Equality Act of 1951 was considered revolutionary at the time. Golda Meir became one of the world’s first female leaders in 1969. Forced military conscription of women.
But Hacker, who also chairs the Israel Women’s Network, said women are currently “virtually absent” from important decisions. “There is no doubt that the status of women has declined in recent years,” she says. “We have never experienced a backlash like this.”
A bill currently being considered in Israel’s parliament, which could be finalized in the coming weeks, would significantly expand the powers of state-run religious courts to handle civil disputes. These courts are staffed only by men who govern according to Jewish law and already oversee marriage and divorce proceedings involving secular couples. Under the proposed bill, they would have the power to adjudicate financial disputes, business matters and potentially child custody issues.
“This bill seeks to place the fate of women in the hands of a religious judiciary that inherently discriminates against women,” said Bonot Alternativa, a women’s protest group that formerly led Women in Red. “We will not allow the government to force us into marriage with an institution that despises us,” the association said in a statement earlier this month, as its members protested as gagged and chained brides outside Tel Aviv’s rabbinical court.
CNN has contacted Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality for comment.
Israel’s rabbinical courts are state-sanctioned religious courts with legal authority over Jewish family law.
Women in Israel have long been criticized for being disadvantaged, patriarchal and an arena of inequality, especially in matters such as alimony and child support. Bar Ilan University’s Ruth and Emmanuel Ruckman Center warned last month that the proposed expansion could lead to “serious violations of a woman’s right to divorce,” the most serious the Israeli justice system has seen in years. If the new law is passed, it will also apply to Islamic sharia courts.
Supporters of the bill point out that rabbinical courts handled financial matters until Israel’s Supreme Court stripped them of their powers in 2006. Now, a rabbinical court intends to invalidate that decision.
“We will restore what was stolen and bring the authorities back to the rabbinical court,” Simcha Rosman, the coalition chairman of the Knesset Judicial Committee, said in April. “Not only do we need to bring back judges, we need to put the law back in its place.”
The Yachin Research Center, an Israeli religious think tank, hailed the bill as “an important step towards restoring the status of Hebrew law.”
Moriah, a mother of two girls in her late 30s, has been embroiled in a custody and property dispute in rabbinical courts for more than four years. “For the past four years, not a single request of mine has been approved, but all the unreasonable demands of the other side have been granted,” she said, describing the ordeal of being estranged from her two young daughters. Moria, who chose not to use his last name to protect himself, said the economic judgment left him in huge debt with no opportunity to respond or appeal, while his visitation rights were revoked.
“This is an anti-women institution,” she told CNN, referring to the rabbinical court. “You have three male judges sitting in front of you, followed by your husband and his lawyer, usually men. You are usually the only woman in the room. This is a man’s game based on religious authority, and it’s designed to tear you down.”
The bill passed its first reading in November with a vote of 63 to 43. Two weeks later, another law was passed giving rabbinical courts the power to issue child support without parental consent.
Israel is not the only country to reverse women’s rights in recent years. The U.S. Supreme Court lifted Roe v. Wade protections, and Hungary shut down its gender studies program while explicitly pursuing pro-natalist policies.
In Israel, these measures are tied to what Hacker calls “the most extreme versions of Judaism (both ultra-Orthodox and nationalist)” and have a severe impact on women. Most alarming is the sharp rise in violence and femicide. Forty-four women have been murdered in Israel so far this year, the highest annual death toll in a decade and significantly higher than the 35 killed in 2024.
Women’s advocates have also linked the recent spike in femicide to a surge in gun ownership, which has increased by 40% since far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir relaxed permits after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The number of women applying to block their partner’s gun license jumped from five in 2023 to 90 in 2024, according to Ministry of Health data.
“This is the worst government for women in the history of this country,” said opposition lawmaker Merav Cohen, who chairs the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. “This government is, at best, indifferent to harm to women; at worst, it actively seeks to normalize it.”
“In a normal country, when a situation like this occurs, the government would declare a state of emergency, bring everyone together, create an action plan and increase the budget, because all the warning lights are flashing red.”
Cohen said the new proposal for a rabbinical court is part of a broader trend within Israeli society that she warns is a threat to women’s rights, driven by politically powerful religious minorities.
“Religious systems continue to expand as much as possible,” she says. “Israeli women are paying the price for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government and are being set back decades.”
