State comptroller finds wage gap, underrepresentation of women in local government
Report also finds persistence of ‘real gaps in all areas of life between Ethiopians and the rest of the Jewish population’ decades after primary waves of immigration
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman called on local authorities across Israel to “formulate a strategic plan to reduce gender gaps among employees” on Tuesday, in a new report highlighting persistent disparities in pay and female representation among elected officials on the municipal level.
“The findings of the audit on the promotion of gender equality in local government point to the depth of the gender gaps that still exist in the salaries of male and female employees in local government,” Englman wrote — noting that the average monthly salary of female employees was only 69 percent that of their male counterparts.
He further noted that only 20% of local elected officials and 26% of senior officials in the local authorities were women. In addition, as of last November, only 5% of local authorities (14 out of 257) were headed by women.
Such disparities are worst in authorities with low socioeconomic levels, those in so-called periphery areas and those serving non-Jewish or ultra-Orthodox populations.
“Against the backdrop of these issues, and against the backdrop of Israel’s decreasing ranking in the global gender gap index, the importance of taking proactive actions to promote gender equality and reduce gender gaps in local authorities is increasing,” Englman stated.
The comptroller called on the Interior Ministry to work with the Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women and the Union of Mayoral Advisers on the Status of Women in Israel to collaborate on the issue, and for “governmental regulatory bodies to work together to establish national goals for reducing gender gaps and consolidating an orderly and systematic action plan to control and enforce compliance with these goals.”
Last June, Israel placed 83rd out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, an annual ranking of gender equality, plummeting 23 spots from 2022.
Israel’s score was 0.701, which means that it has closed 70.1% of its gender gap across the four measured fields and still has a 29.9% gender gap on average. The country was down from a score of 0.727 last year and saw its worst score in a decade.
In economic participation and opportunity, Israel fell from 69th place to 75th place, with 68.8% of the gender gap now closed.
According to figures released by the Bank of Israel in December 2023, “the wage gaps between men and women in Israel are among the highest in the OECD,” women are “over-represented in industries that pay lower wages,” and as of 2019, the wage gap between men and women stood at 30%.
Racial disparities remain
The state comptroller report also found that Ethiopian Israelis still lag behind their peers in a number of metrics, noting that they are “one of the groups whose optimal integration into society has not yet been completed.”
“More than 40 years after the great waves of Ethiopian Jews immigrating to Israel, there are still real gaps in all areas of life between Ethiopians and the rest of the Jewish population in Israel,” wrote Englman — noting that according to a January 2023 study, Ethiopian Israelis born between 1979 and 1983 earned 33% less than the average salary for the rest of the Jewish population.
In addition, while the government’s New Way initiative to advance Ethiopian integration has borne some fruit, there is no coordination between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Interior Ministry on the matter.
As such and “in the absence of monitoring and control on the part of the government ministries and local authorities regarding the budget, a very partial proportion of the program’s budgets were used, sometimes to an extent that raises concerns about the nature and scope of the activity carried out,” Englman said.
As of late 2022, 168,900 Jews of Ethiopian descent lived in Israel. Community activists have long complained of institutional racism and violence at the hands of law enforcement.
Statistics show significant inequalities between Ethiopian Israelis and the rest of the population.
Ethiopian soldiers are sent to military prison at a disproportionately higher rate than other groups and are arrested in civilian life at a higher rate than the general population. In 2017, approximately four percent of Israel Defense Forces soldiers came from the Ethiopian community, yet they accounted for 15.07% of female and 10.78% of male prisoners, according to the Association of Ethiopian Jews.
According to a 2020 report by the government’s Anti-Racism Coordinating Unit, the number of complaints of racial discrimination it received doubled in 2019, with 37% of such charges coming from the Ethiopian community. The report also noted that while Ethiopian Jews comprise 1.7% of the population, their arrest rate stands at 3.27%. The unit was set up on the recommendation of a commission established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of a wave of protests in 2015.
In a June 2020 interview, Aweke “Kobi” Zena, then the coordinator of the Justice Ministry’s National Anti-Racism Unit, said that police aren’t yet doing enough to combat systemic racism, adding that he hoped that one day they “will be ready to understand there is a problem in policing practices.”
JTA and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
