Hundreds of women demonstrated Thursday in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv against what they see as increasing gender segregation, particularly on public transport.
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The protest in Bnei Berak came after media reports that several public transport bus drivers had forced women to sit in the back or denied them access to the bus in recent weeks.
According to one report, a public transport bus driver asked a group of teenage girls in tank tops and jeans to sit in the back seat and cover themselves.
“There is no democracy without equality,” chanted the protesters, many of whom waved Israeli flags and placards reading “We are equal.”
“We can sit where we want, we can wear what we want. We are free,” said Kalanite Kain, 63, a writer who attended the rally.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up more than 10% of Israel’s population.
Since the late 1980s, racial segregation has been practiced on the bus routes used by religious, and the most conservative fringe groups continue to enforce strict gender segregation.
But activists say discrimination against women has only increased.
“We don’t have to accept that because certain religious groups, ultra-Orthodox groups, think that women are the source of all evil (…),” Hila Mor-Zenhavi, a lawyer, told AFP before the rally.
“I want my 10-year-old daughter to grow up in a world where she has every opportunity and where she’s not excluded because she’s a woman,” she added.