Mar 06/2015

International Women’s day and Israel

This weekend, on March 8^th, we celebrate International Women’s Day. While there are many promising developments to share regarding women’s empowerment in Israel, I wish to devote this column to steps Israel has taken in promoting Women’s rights and gender equality around the world.

Israel has long viewed women's empowerment as a critical driver of economic development. A clear manifestation of this commitment can be seen in the work conducted by the Mount Carmel International Training Center, a central program of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation.

Israel‘s fourth Prime Minister, Golda Meir, was the world's fourth woman to hold the highest office in her nation. In 1961, Prime Minister Meir established the Mount Carmel International Training Center in Haifa, the first training center of its kind, to assist in the training of women engaged in community work in the newly emerging states in Africa and Asia.

To this day, with a robust focus on capacity building, through training programs ranging from health to agriculture, from business entrepreneurship to community leadership, the center has empowered women from over 150 developing countries. Many of the center’s programs were created thanks to the cooperation of international and national organizations, such as UN Women.

Alongside training programs, the center holds the biannual International Conference for Women Leaders. Since 1955, women leaders from around the world, including members of parliaments and cabinets, UN officials, social activists and private sector figures convene in Israel to discuss gender related issues. This year’s conference focuses on the creation and implementation of a development agenda to achieve gender equality through economic empowerment.

As we look back with a degree of satisfaction at all that has been achieved, we must not lose sight of all that that still needs to be done to improve the status of women across the globe. Horrible violence against women is taking place in regions of crisis, especially in places where extremist groups such as ISIS and Boko-Haram are terrorizing people. In other societies, women are deprived of economic rights and therefore are significantly less financially secure than men.

The responsibility for alleviating these hardships lies on our shoulders. Israel firmly believes that capacity building is crucial for sustainable women empowerment in developing countries; that equipping women with the entrepreneurial tools to start their own businesses will spell freedom for them, and strengthen their country’s economy.

Empowering women to assume leadership roles in their respective communities and countries can assist in defeating extremism and promoting dialogue and peace. By assisting women, who have been discriminated against for generations, to recognize their power to lead the charge for change, should be a main objective of the international community.

Years before establishing The Mount Carmel Center, Golda Meir said: "Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.” We cannot allow ourselves even one moment of pessimism. Together, all nations need to take responsibility and work for the advance women throughout the world.

Israel recognizes this heavy responsibility. 

Shabbat Shalom,

  

Yaron Sideman
Consul General Of Israel,
Mid-Atlantic Region