Women’s Rights Projects

New Israel Fund founded most of Israel's women's rights organizations and networks, dating back to our establishment of Israel's first Rape Crisis Center network more than twenty years ago.  NIF has achieved landmark legislation, including the Equal Employment Opportunity law, and precedent-setting court rulings.  Our programs empowering economically disadvantaged women are in place in inner cities, development towns and unrecognized Bedouin villages. Take a look at some examples of NIFC’s ongoing work empowering women in Israel.

Yachdav Coalition

Domestic violence among Ethiopian immigrants has been growing at alarming rates. While Ethiopians comprise one percent of the population, 25 percent of women killed by their husbands or partners in the past 10 years have been Ethiopian immigrants.

Yachdav- The Coalition to Address Domestic Violence- was formed two years ago after the murder of a participant in Shatil’s Ethiopian women’s empowerment workshop.  This tragic event led Ethiopian women activists to break a community taboo and tackle the issue. NIFC has supported this initiative since its inception.

The coalition has been immensely successful at educating the Israeli public and advancing solutions to the growing problem of domestic violence in the Ethiopian community in Israel, bringing down the rate of wife murder in the community. It has presented at a joint meeting of the Knesset Committees on the Status of Women and on Absorption and at conferences at major Israeli universities.  In addition, the coalition has initiated, in partnership with the Israeli Association for Family Planning, a groundbreaking course to facilitate the absorption process of new arrivals from Ethiopia and to ensure the health of the family unit. The coalition has also created a long-term program to improve the police's handling of domestic violence in the Ethiopian-Israeli community, addressing problems such as the lack of Amharic-speaking translators.
 

The coalition has recently decided to focus on violence directed at Ethiopian youth and from Ethiopian youth. Violence amongst young Ethiopian Israelis has been rising, and the Yachdav coalition identified this issue as being a primary obstacle in their successful integration into Israeli society. A multi-faceted and holistic approach has been implemented in order to tackle the issue of youth violence from multiple angles, which should help bring about sustainable change.

Women Legal Leaders

Managed by Itach-Maaki (Women Lawyers for Social Justice), Shatil’s Women Legal Leaders program has provided leadership training to women from marginalized communities with law students to educate them about models of community leadership and their legal rights. Participants come from diverse communities, such as Druze women, Arab Muslim women,  Jewish Mizrahi women and immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU).

Examples of seed projects that have emerged from the program include: informing Arab women about the option to turn to civil courts (as an alternative to religious courts); informing Druze women on the divorce process before they apply to the Druze Matrimony Court; the rehabilitation of women working in prostitution with a focus on immigrant women; access to health care for women with disabilities; educating the public about violence against women and services available in the community, and more.

Shatil and Memizrach Shemesh

Shatil provides intensive consulting to an initiative aimed at improving the poor working conditions of some 250 female (mostly Mizrachi) mikve attendants in Jerusalem. These women are among the most marginalized in the Orthodox and Haredi communities. Shatil is consulting to Memizrach Shemesh in each step of this complex project, providing guidance in community organizing to mobilize the women and outreach to additional organizations. As well, an initiative to educate the rabbinical establishment to begin protecting the rights of these women has begun.

Click here to read 10 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Women in Israel.