Prof. Noya Rimalt

Noya Rimalt is a Professor of Law at the University of Haifa. Her scholarly work lies at the intersection of law, gender, and society, with a primary focus on the ways in which legal systems construct, reflect, and perpetuate gender-based hierarchies and social power relations. Her research both draws on and contributes to interdisciplinary fields such as feminist legal theory, law and society, law and history, and critical legal studies.
Professor Rimalt is the founding co-director of the Forum for Gender, Law, and Policy and the chair of the MA program in Legal Studies for non-lawyers. She has been a pioneer in promoting clinical legal education in Israel. In 1993, she established the first clinical program in civil rights at Tel Aviv University and served as its founding director until 1999, when she joined the University of Haifa. In 2021–2022, she advised an internal committee at the Ministry of Health on reforming administrative guidelines (Hozrei Mancal) governing abortion access. Her recommendations led to the adoption of new guidelines that substantially expanded access to abortion services.
Professor Rimalt received her LL.B. from Tel Aviv University, her LL.M. (summa cum laude) as a New Israel Fund Civil Liberties Fellow from the Washington College of Law at American University, and her Ph.D. in Law (J.S.D.) from Tel Aviv University. She was awarded the Raul Wallenberg Prize for Outstanding Research in Human Rights for her doctoral dissertation.
Over the years, Professor Rimalt has served as a visiting professor at Georgetown Law Center and at the Washington College of Law at American University. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.
She has written extensively on numerous issues related to gender and the law, including reproductive rights and the regulation of abortion; religiously motivated gender segregation in public spaces such as academic programs and public transportation; the integration of women into the military, including legal responses to conscientious objection by women; patterns of gender-based employment discrimination; sexual harassment; women’s political participation; the gendered dimensions of criminal law; and the legal construction of motherhood, caregiving, and parenting. She has published widely in leading law journals. Her book, Legal Feminism from Theory to Practice: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Israel and the United States, was published in 2010. She is the recipient of the 2018–2019 Excellence in Teaching Award.

Books

• Legal Feminism From Theory to Practice: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Israel and the United States Pardes Publishing House, Haifa University Press (2010)

Articles

• Being a Woman and a Leader in Israel – Golda as a Case Study (forthcoming in Haifa Journal of Law and Government, 2026)
• Noya Rimalt & Michal Gross, The Seniority Distinction in Women’s Labor Law and the Dismissal of Pregnant Workers: The Protection that has Turned into a Mechanism of Discrimination,48 Tel Aviv University Law Review, 505 – 565 (2025)
• Between Cultural Protection and the Reinforcement of Cultural Boundaries: The Court Decision that Should have been Written in the Case of Gender-Segregated Academic Programs for the ultra-Orthodox in The Guardians of the Walls: The High Court of Justice and the ultra-Orthodox (Gidon Sapir and Haim Zicherman eds, Bar Ilan University Press, 2023).
• Ultra-Orthodox Women: Exclusion, Silencing and Erasure in Beyond the  Partition: Ultra-Orthodox Women, Power and Politics (Varda Muhlbauer and Mina Zemach eds,Yedioth Books, 2023)
• Gender-Based Violence on October 7, UN WOMEN, and International Law: Preservation Disguised as Change, The Minerva Center for Human Rights Blog (2023)
•  Israel’s Abortion Law and the Paradox of a Rightless Access to Pregnancy Terminations, in Research Handbook on International Abortion Law, 202- 220 (Mary Ziegler editor, Elgar, 2023)
•  The Legal Contestation of Abortion Rights: Why Abortion Should be Theorized as a Gender-based Comparative Right in Global Contestations of Gender Rights (Alexandra Scheele, Julia Roth, Heidemarie Winkel eds., Bielefeld University Press, 2022) 217 – 230.
• Noya Rimalt & Arianne Renan Barzilay, Women, Men and Covid-19: Gender Inequality in Times of Crisis, 24 Haifa Journal of Law and Government 331 (2022).
• Against Roe Exceptionalism: Degendering Abortion in Research Handbook on Feminist Jurisprudence 264 – 282 (Robin West & Cyntia Bowman eds, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019).
• Gender Segregated Academic Programs for the Ultra-Orthodox: Between Access to Education and the Public Promotion of Segregation, Law, Society and Culture 1, 363 (2018)
• The Maternal Dilemma 103 Cornell. L. Rev 977-1048 (2018)
• Noya Rimalt & Karin Carmit Yefet, Rethinking the Choice of Private Choice: A Response to Erwin Chemerinsky and Michele Goodwin’s Abortion: A Woman’s Private Choice Texas Law Review See also, (2017)
• When Right’s Don’t Talk: Abortion Law and the Politics of Compromise, 28 Yale J.L & Feminism 327-379 (2017).
• From Unjust and Partial Access to Just Legislation: Towards a New Paradigm of Abortion Law in Israel, 39 Tel Aviv University Law Review 415-479 (2016).
• From the Case of Aran to the Case of Hemo: The Story Gender Inequality in Israel 15 Haifa Journal of Law & Government 11 – 26  (2013) (Hebrew)
• From Law to Politics: The Path to Gender Equality, Israel Studies 18(3) 5-19 (2013).
• Law as a Multicultural Agent: Utopia and Reality in the Case of Gender Segregated Buses, 42 The Hebrew University Law Review 773 – 834 (2012) (Hebrew)
• On Gender, Prostitution and Criminal Law: Reflections on the Proposal to Criminalize the Purchase of Sexual Services, MISHPAT UMIMSHAL – Law and Government in Israel Vol 13 no 1-2 (2010).
• Good Mother, Bad Mother, Irrelevant Mother: Parenthood in Law between the Ideal of Equality and the Reality of Motherhood, 39 The Hebrew University Law review 573 – 632 (2010).
• Between Segregation and Integration: Towards a New Feminist Agenda of Gender Equality in the Workplace (Hebrew), 24 Bar Ilan Law Law Review 299 – 342 (2008).
• Stereotyping Women, Individualizing Harassment: The Dignitary Paradigm of Sexual Harassment Law Between the Limits of Law and the Limits of Feminism, 19(2) Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 391 – 441 (2008).
• Women in the Sphere of Masculinity: The Double-Edged Sword of Women Integration in the Military, 14 Duke Journal of Gender, Law & Policy 1097 – 1119 (2007).
• On Law, Feminism and Social Change: The Example of the Law for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment, Studies in Law, Gender and Feminism (Dafna Barak-Erez et al eds.) 985 – 1010 (2007).
• Equality with a Vengeance – Women Conscientious Objectors in Pusuit of a “Voice” and Substantive Gender Equality, 16 Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 99- 147 (2007).
• On Conscience, Gender and Equality: Female Concientious Objection between the Defense Service Law and the Case of Laura Milo, 29 Tel Aviv University Law Review 449 – 494 (2006).
• On Sex Sexuality and Dignity: The Law for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment in Light of Feminist Theory and Legal Reality, 35 Mishpatim: The Hebrew University Law Review 601 – 654 (2005).
• Israeli Feminism Whence and Whither: Rethinking Difference, Dignity and Gender Based Equality Following Feminism, Rights and the Law by Orit Kamir 27 Tel Aviv University Law Review 857 – 884 (2004).
• When a Feminist Struggle Becomes a Symbol of the Agenda as a Whole: The Example of Women in the Military, 6 Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Studies & Gender Issues 148-164 (2003).
• Gender Segregation as Sex Based Discrimination, 3 The Law Review of the Academic College of Law 99 – 140 (2003).
• When Women Turn Violent, 10 Plilim, The Multi-Disciplinary Journal of Public Law Society and Culture 277 – 323 (2001).
• Legal Education: Between Theory and Practice, 24 Tel Aviv University Law Review (2000).

Book Review

• Was the complainant raped? Reflections on Law and social change following Irit Negbi’s book: “Rape stories in court: a narrative analysis of court ruling” 31 Society and Welfare 310 – 313 (2011)
• Book Review: Deborah Cowen, Military Workfare: The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada 25(2) Canadian Journal of Law & Society 242 – 243 (2010)
• The Place of Dignity: Reflections on Orit Kamir’s Book Israeli Honor and Dignity: Social Norms, Gender Politics and the Law 8 Israeli Sociology 168 – 173 (2006)

Other

• Revolving doors: men forward and women backward – segregation under the sponsorship of the law In open Doors, vol. 43, 48-49 (2012)
• The Supreme Court between Law and Justice 6 Haifa University Law and Government Review 311 – 312 (2003)

Professor Rimalt received her LL.B from Tel-Aviv University, her LL.M (Summa Cum Laude) (as a New Israel Fund Civil Liberties Fellow) from Washington College of Law at American University and a Ph.D in Law (J.S.D) from Tel-Aviv University. She has won the Raul Wallenberg Prize for outstanding research in human rights for her Ph.D dissertation.

Noya Rimalt: Gender based segregation in Haredi higher education

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/noya-rimalt-gender-based-segregation-in-haredi-higher/id1439158139?i=1000444286481

How parental-leave policy has failed to bridge gender gaps

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/How-parental-leave-policy-has-failed-to-bridge-gender-gaps-566744

To every little girl: No, you can’t be president – Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com › Opinion

Equal treatment for unequals – Haaretz – Israel News | Haaretz …

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