High Court backs genderseparated higher education classes

Ruling says women must be allowed to teach any course

The High Court of Justice ruled on Monday that courses in institutions of higher education can be gender separate, giving a boost to efforts to increase the numbers of ultra-Orthodox men and women obtaining university and college degrees.

The court added, however, that female lecturers must be allowed to teach male-only classes if they wish, and that preventing them from doing so would be discriminatory and illegal.

In 2016 and 2017, several organizations and university lecturers filed a petition against the Council for Higher Education for permitting gender-separate courses in higher education institutions.

These courses were set up to allow ultra-Orthodox men to study in a framework without female students alongside them, and without female lecturers, due to religious sensitivities of the haredi community over gender mixing.

It was argued that allowing gender-separate courses in mainstream universities and colleges would open up a greater number of options for ultra-Orthodox students to pursue, as part of the national goal of integrating the community, particularly men, into the workforce, where they are underrepresented.

But opponents of such gender-separate courses argued that they marginalize women and also negatively impact female lecturers.

In a 3-2 majority verdict of an expanded five-justice panel, the High Court decided that the gender separate courses were legal, but all five justices said female lecturers must be able to teach whatever course they wish, male or female.

Deputy President of the court Justice Hanan Melcer said that not all gender separation harms the basic right to equality, and noted that a 2007 law provides for such courses.

Meltzer said that most students in gender-separate courses freely chose to study in such tracks due to their religious world view, and added that such courses do not affect mixed gender courses which are open to all.

He added that even if there was some damage to the value of equality, it was for a “worthy cause” of integrating the haredi community into academic studies, and it stood the test of proportionality.

The justices also insisted that all public spaces at universities and colleges be kept free of gender separation.

In his dissenting ruling, Justice Uzi Vogelman wrote that gender separate courses harm equality values and that allowing them would institutionalize permission for gender segregation in academic institutions and would perpetuate an offensive view of women and of their role in society.