When a Feminist Struggle Becomes a Symbol of the Agenda as a Whole: The Example of Women in the Military

This article critically examines the ongoing feminist legal struggle in Israel to integrate women into the military in order to comparatively analyze the reasons for the defeat of the U.S. Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. In Israel, women's equality is envisioned and defined in assimilationist terms that are based on assumptions of gender sameness. The author claims in this article that the American feminist battle over the ERA was motivated, to its cost, by an identical concept of gender equality,  which ultimately contributed to the failure of the proposed amendment. She further argues that the time has come to divert the feminist focus toward new legal directions and to discuss more critically whether the equalization of women's status in the military should be the primary symbol of the present feminist effort to promote gender equality in Israel.