Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In 1911, Hannah Meisel, an agronomist from Russia, established the fi rst women's training
farm for agricultural workers. Other training farms followed, where women learned about
livestock, dairy, and vegetable farming until the British authorities closed them after World
War I. Although many men ridiculed these communes, and they never attracted large numbers
of students, their graduates used their new skills.
The women of the Third Aliya, 1919 to 1923, from Eastern Europe, made up almost 20 per-
cent of the total. Included among them were some who had trained on model farms in Eu-
rope where they had successfully insisted that men help in the kitchen. These new immigrants
demanded road-building work and became 300 of the 3,000 workers in those jobs, although
some did cooking, cleaning, and nursing.
In 1920, women gained the right to vote in elections for the Yishuv's decision-making body.
The next year, forty-three women established the Working Women's Movement, which pro-
vided vocational courses for women. By 1937, some of them held jobs as construction workers,
painters, farmworkers, and day laborers.
Women were also involved in self-defense activities in the Haganah, the Yishuv's para-
military organization while Palestine was a British mandate. From 1936 to 1939, hundreds of
women guarded roads during the Arab rioting. In 1941, the Haganah created the Palmach, a
full-time elite military unit. Although women were not supposed to be in it, one commander
assembled a small group of women in Jerusalem and taught them how to use weapons. During
World War II, about 9,000 women joined the British army, serving as radio and radar opera-
tors, parachute inspectors, and truck or ambulance drivers. A few, most famously Hannah
Senesh, parachuted behind enemy lines in Europe.
Women worked in the illegal immigration movement and fought during the War of Inde-
pendence. They composed about 20 percent of the membership of military organizations —
mainly in supply, communications, and medical aid. Five women commanded combat units,
and thirty-three were killed in battle during the war.
Israel's Declaration of Independence assured all female citizens that they could vote and
run for offi ce. In fact, Israel was the fi rst country in the Middle East that gave Arab women the
right to vote. In the fi rst Knesset, elected in 1949, there were eleven women lawmakers, about
10 percent of the total.
Women also participated in the army after Israel became a state. Upon reaching age eigh-
teen, all Jewish women were drafted for twenty-four months. Religious and married women,
as well as all those with children, were exempt. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion stated, “The army
is the supreme symbol of duty, and as long as women are not equal to men in performing this
duty, they have not yet obtained true equality [and] . . . the character of the community will
be distorted.”
Still, women did not achieve any semblance of equality with men in the military. For many
years the army had a policy of avoiding endangerment to women's lives; their death or capture,
especially given the serious likelihood of rape, would be demoralizing, it was believed. As a
result, more than half of all military job specialties were long closed to women, a higher per-
centage even than in the U.S. Army. Most women served in administrative and clerical jobs.
Since a successful army career was often the basis for obtaining important jobs later in civilian
life, the disparity in military jobs denied women this advantage.
