Does Israel's police have a problem with women?
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Erella Shadmi, an academic researcher and retired policewoman, says she was unsurprised by revelations of sexual harassment within the police: ''This phenomenon has been well known for more than 20 years.''
Erella Shadmi has been studying the complex relationship among the police, society and women for more than 40 years. She spent the first 20 years of her career as an officer in the Israeli police, and the next 20 years as a sociologist, an activist and a leading feminist researcher. Shadmi dedicated her doctoral dissertation to public oversight of the police in a free society — the first dissertation about the police to be written in Israel.
A Tel Aviv native, Shadmi participated in leftist protests while still in high school. As a student of communications she joined the police, and was the first woman in the command and headquarters course. Among her many posts there, she also served as police head of the human resources planning division, and established the newsletter of Israeli policemen titled Sights of the Police.
She is among the founders of the Kol Haisha (A Woman's Voice) organization, active in the feminist peace movement Women in Black, a member of the feminist Mizrahi organization Achoti (My Sister) and made her living as the chairwoman of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Beit Berl College.
As a string of episodes of sexual harassment and improper, even criminal behavior by senior police officers has been exposed in recent days, let's hear Shadmi's opinion about this organization.
