Male MK to head Knesset Committee on Advancing Women
Feminist group Kolan calls Oded Forer’s appointment ‘a slap on the face to all women in Israel’
By GIL HOFFMANIsrael Beytenu party member Oded Forer(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
The new chairman of the Knesset Committee on Advancing the Status of Women will be Yisrael Beytenu faction chairman Oded Forer, the Knesset House Committee decided on Monday.Forer will replace Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, who chaired the committee for the past four years.He will be the only man on the committee along with eight women.Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar was the only man to chair the committee until now. He chaired it when his party was in the opposition from 2006 to 2008.Touma-Sliman called Forer’s appointment “a practical joke,” but not because he is male.“The committee whose job it is to guarantee equality and social justice will be led by Yisrael Beytenu and the Right, which champion racism and trampling the rights and representation of the weakest sectors of the population,” she said.The social justice umbrella organization Anu called it “a parody” and “absurd” that a man will head the Knesset Committee on Advancing the Status of Women “as if no female MK can do it.”The feminist group Kolan started a petition drive calling upon Forer not to take the job. The organization called Forer’s appointment “a slap on the face to all women in Israel” and said that all the women on the committee are more qualified to head it than Forer.Forer responded that the debate over the gender of the committee chairman should not take attention away from important issues like violence against women and discrimination against women in the work place."I am happy that this committee finally attracted headlines, even if it is just from the surprise that a man could lead on this issue," Forer said.
