Knesset MKs press IDF to open more roles for women
“The IDF should take another step and adopt the law to open all roles to all genders without compromising on set professional standards.”
By YONAH JEREMY BOBIsraeli female soldiers walk in front of a tank during an exercise at the end of their tank instructors course at Shizafon base(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS)
Top former IDF and Mossad officials now serving as MKs pushed the army hard to open more roles to women, during a Tuesday hearing of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.The IDF told the committee that progress has been made on the issue in recent years with 85% of IDF roles now open to women.However, some of this has come with multiple petitions filed against the military before the High Court of Justice.One petition has been dismissed for now after the IDF said it would attempt a pilot program for women to serve in tank units.Regarding another petition demanding women be allowed to apply to serve as naval combat fighters, the IDF said it had appointed a task force to study the issue and respond by April.But former deputy Mossad chief Ram Ben Barak and former IDF Maj.-Gen. (res.) Orna Barbivai (both Yesh Atid-Telem) as well as former IDF deputy chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yair Golan (Meretz) have said the IDF is moving too slowly on the issue.Ben Barak said: “We can’t say we want to be a liberal and equal society and to give equal opportunities, but at the same time that there are things that are only for men or only for women.“Obviously, there are physiological differences between men and women... obviously there are more males who are appropriate for certain roles than women... but there are still enough men who are not appropriate for certain roles in the army... and there are still a not insignificant number of women who are appropriate for these roles,” he said.The former deputy Mossad chief added, “if they want to serve, we cannot tell them they cannot... because you are a particular gender.“So we have arrived in the year 2020, when we have undergone a process for all of the roles to be open to everyone according to specific [professional] criteria set by the IDF. Whoever meets these criteria, whether a man or a woman, should be permitted to apply.”
Ben Barak said that everyone knows that when a soldier can’t fulfill certain roles, “then your advancement gets held up eventually because serving in certain special units allows you to advance more than if you are in other [regular] units.”“We end up doing a double injustice: we stop someone who is capable of achieving what she seeks and also we impose a glass ceiling on progression.“The IDF should take another step and adopt the law to open all roles to all genders without compromising on set professional standards.”Likewise, Barbivai said that it cannot be that in the 2020 the IDF does not understand that women will not allow themselves to be treated differently, simply because they were born female.“If the IDF continues to stand on ceremony of the importance for men to serve all the way up to the last haredi [ultra-Orthodox] draftee” while ignoring women, it will “undermine the social legitimacy” of the IDF.She added that Alice Miller’s journey to open roles to women in the IDF started 25 years ago and that society should no longer be patient with drawn-out deliberations and new task forces.“All roles must be immediately opened,” said Barbivai, recognizing that not all men or women would meet the professional criteria.
