The 'false empowerment' of female Knesset members?
Young Israeli women do not consider female politicians as role models, since only few of them manage to break away from the men’s way of doing politics.
The current Knesset holds the record for the number of women: 27 female members out of 120, the greatest level of representation of all time, and more than three times the low point of the seventh Knesset (1969-1974) — eight women.
Some of the representatives are party leaders like Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua), Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) and until recently Shelly Yachimovich (Labor). Among them are some younger women like Labor member Stav Shafir (born in 1985) and HaBayit HaYehudi member Ayelet Shaked (born in 1976), who have succeeded in advancing political processes and receive rather widespread media attention.
One generation above them, for example, Likud member Miri Regev and Labor member Merav Michaeli, have each succeeded, in her own way, in formulating her own unique language that cannot leave the listener apathetic. You can love it, get annoyed, but you can’t ignore them.
And there are those who came to the Knesset with rich experience in the public sector, such as Minister of Health Yael German (Yesh Atid), the former mayor of Herzliyah, or Knesset member Orit Strock (HaBayit HaYehudi), formerly the director of the Legal Department of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. There’s Penina Tamanu-Shata (Yesh Atid), the first woman of Ethiopian descent in the Knesset.
