After backlash, drugstore stops covering up images of women on products

A Bnei Brak branch of a major drugstore chain has returned products showing women’s faces to its shelves after it was the focus of backlash from women’s rights groups for concealing the faces to comply with rigid ultra-Orthodox modesty customs.

Shufersal Be says in a statement that discrimination against women is against its values. After dialogue with protesters and a local rabbi, “product adjustments and refreshing were carried out at the Bnei Brak branch,” the company says.

Bnei Brak is a largely Haredi city near Tel Aviv.

The gender equality pressure group Bonot Alternativa, which participated in the protest against the firm, praises the decision “to return women to the Shufersal Be branch in Bnei Brak.”

“We will continue to fight for the right of women to be present anywhere in the public sphere and we will fight the trend of exclusion of women.”