About
The Forum for Gender, Law and Policy was established in 2014 with the goal of changing the landscape of feminist legal research and activism in Israel. The Center serves as the first academic platform of its kind for the advancement of research, instruction, legal training, community outreach and public policy initiatives surrounding topics of gender inequality in Israel.
Our mission is to break down barriers to the advancement of women and to promote gender equality in all spheres of public and private life. The Forum for Gender, Law and Policy aims to achieve progress through four primary channels of activity:
(1) Supporting multidisciplinary research with an emphasis on critical gendered analysis of law
(2) Providing instruction and training for students, policymakers, attorneys and judges
(3) Shaping public policy
(4) Initiating projects focused on the connection between feminist theory and practice.
The Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa is a natural home for the Forum for Gender, Law and Policy. It is the leading faculty in Israel in the area of gender related legal research in terms of the number of faculty members that are engaged in these issues. In addition, the Faculty of Law's pluralist nature and geographical location in Haifa produce a unique connection to feminist research and action. Haifa is one of the only cities in Israel in which Arabs and Jews live side by side. It is also the cradle of the feminist movement in Israel, and home to the movement's reformulation in the early 1970s.
To this day Haifa is a vibrant center for grassroots feminist organizations, in the framework of which Jewish and Arab women join together in collective action. As part of this pluralist environment the Forum for Gender, Law and Policy provides a unique and necessary platform, through which academic research and the world of action are interplayed with the goal of protecting and promoting equality and opportunity for women of all segments of society.
Prof. Shulamit Almog, Prof. Noya Rimalt
Founding Directors
Staff
Dr. Marva Ish-Am
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Dr. Gal Amir
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Dr. Elit Ben-Ari
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Liat Franco
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Research & Study
Prof. Shulamit Almog
Prof. Shulamit Almog-Is a Full Professor of Law at the University of Haifa. She researches in the areas of law and literature, law and culture and feminist legal studies. Prof. Almog has published numerous books and articles in U.S, Canadian, European and Israeli law reviews, Focusing on sexuality and law, prostitution and women in army. Bills dealing with mobbing at workplace and gender neutral language, inspired by her work, are being prepared. In addition to her research, she is publicly active in human rights issues. She appears before the Israeli Knesset, has drafted sections of Israel’s report to the UN on the International Convention on Children’s Rights, has participated in the committee to reform Israel’s adoption law and serves as a committee member for the National Award for Combating Trafficking in Persons.
Prof. Almog is deeply committed to the application of research to promote social justice, and believes that a rigorous intellectual framework, focused on the power of narrative, can inform policy in these areas in a manner that can bring about very real improvements to people’s lives. In recent years she dealt extensively with law and narrative, and with the pivotal role of narrative in the quest for social change and paradigm shifting.
Prof. Noya Rimalt
Noya Rimalt is a Professor of law at the University of Haifa. Her scholarship examines the intersections of gender, law and feminism in both legal theory and practice. She has written numerous articles on issues such as female offenders, sexual harassment, gender and multiculturalism, women in the military, female conscientious objectors, motherhood and law, political empowerment of women, abortion and gender equality in the workplace. Her book Legal Feminism from Theory to Practice: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Israel and the United States, published in 2010, serves as a basic textbook in law and feminism courses.
Prof. Rimalt joined the University of Haifa Law Faculty after serving as the founding director of the first civil rights legal clinic in Israel. In recent years she was a visiting professor at Georgetown University, American University and the University of Toronto She regularly advises the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women. A bill amending abortion law in Israel, drafted by Prof. Rimalt, is currently under preliminary consideration in the Knesset.
Activity
Legal Feminism Clinic
The Legal Treatment of Victims of Sexual Violence
The clinic aims to improve, using legal measures, the treatment of sexual violence victims. As a part of the project the clinic conducted a survey concerning the treatment given in the designated facilities in emergency rooms treating rape victims. Following the findings of the survey, the Knesset held a special meeting, in which the students presented the findings and recommendations. Among other things, the clinic pointed to problems in the gathering of forensic evidence that often lead to inability to prosecute sex offenders.
Another project pertaining to sexual violence concerns appeals challenging decisions not to prosecute sex offenders. The clinic filed a freedom of information act inquiry concerning the amount of appeals that ended in indictment, and found that in the case of sex offenses only one percent of the appeals were successful. The clinic represents individuals who are victims of sexual violence in appealing decisions not to prosecute sexual violence offences.
Discrimination against Mothers in the workplace
The clinic is involved in promoting equality in the workplace, and focuses on the complicated issue of discrimination of parents. In a workshop organized by the Center of Gender Law and Policy the focused on the problem of discrimination against mothers in the workplace, Dr. Arianne Renan Barzilay, the academic advisor of the clinic. as well as Adv. Vardit Avidan, the director of the clinic, discussed these issues and explored legal initiatives that the Clinic can pursue in this context.
Conferences and workshops:
