Last September, Minister of Welfare Haim Katz appeared at the government’s weekly meeting in a short-sleeved striped polo shirt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent him away to change his shirt, saying that his dress didn't show respect for the occasion. Katz went to his car and returned with a button-down shirt. We should recall this anecdote in view of the attempts to veer the discussion over the publication of the Knesset’s new dress code on March 9 to the gender arena.

“This code, which of course is relevant only to women, anchors the male gaze that determines how a woman should dress and how she should look,” member of Knesset Tamar Zandberg of Meretz told Israeli media in response to the new rules. She is convinced that “a mechanism of warnings will only bring more looks inspecting and measuring the length of the skirt, that is, it will be part of the job of the Knesset stewards to check the clothes of every woman who enters the Knesset. This dress code is unnecessary and insulting.”

Zandberg, a young Knesset member who was once criticized for running a Knesset meeting while wearing a shirt with exposed shoulders, unjustifiably takes the dress code to theoretical arenas of feminism and the objectification of women. Just like the case of Katz, women who come to work at the Knesset or government ministries wearing a tank top or flip-flops don’t respect the place. This has nothing to do with gender equality, but with the fact that the official dress culture in Israel isn’t developed, and in fact doesn’t exist.

Indeed, Knesset member Stav Shaffir of the Zionist Camp gave a speech at the podium at the Knesset plenum this week in a dress with exposed shoulders. She raised an uproar after Knesset member Oren Hazan of the Likud Party yelled at her that he, as a man, wouldn’t be allowed to give a speech in a tank top. Like Zandberg, Shaffir made political hay out of the episode on feminist grounds, although if we ignore his provocative tone, Hazan had a point.