Goal 5: Gender Equality

ACHIEVE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER
ALL WOMEN AND GIRLS

Research

In the recent article published in Sex Roles, Prof. Guy Enosh from the Faculty of Social Welfare  and Health Sciences, analyzes the legal discourse surrounding motherhood, parenting capacity, and sexual conduct of marginalized women whose parenting rights were terminated. The study’s key findings include the need for professionals to avoid bias against socially-marginalized women and it recommends that women’s voices must be heard in cases where the state is considering intervening in the parental rights of the mother.

Assistant professor of law at the University of Haifa, Dr. Maayan Sudai is the director of the Law and Policy Project in the GenderSci lab.  Through research, teaching, and public outreach, the lab works to advance the intersectional study of gender in the biomedical and allied sciences, counter bias, and hype in sex difference research, while enhancing public discourse surrounding the sciences of sex and gender.

Public Engagement

The Faculty of Law’s Legal Feminism Clinic employs a variety of socio-legal strategies to empower women and promote their rights. Center activities include Socio-legal Services for Victims of Sex Crimes; combatting all forms of violence against women – physical, sexual, economic, and emotional; and raising awareness around health issues that particularly impact women.

The Unit for Social Involvement cooperates with the QueenB Non- Profit Organization to encourage young girls and women to study and pursue careers in the field of Computer Science. Computer Science students founded the program to encourage more women to pursue careers in this field.

Learning & Students

Over 50% of University of Haifa faculty and 60% of graduates are women.

The university’s policy of non- discrimination against women appears in its Code of Ethics: “the University treats everyone equally, fairly, and appropriately. It does not discriminate on grounds of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, nationality, political views, civil and family status, sexual orientation, or irrelevant disability.”

The Master’s program in  Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary, research oriented program. The program’s goal is to afford students in-depth knowledge of scholarship and debate concerning gender, provide them with the tools to conduct their research, and encourage them to develop a multifaceted view of the gendered reality of human lives and the ways gendered social and political frameworks shape these lives.

Operations

Students who are pregnant, post-partum, undergoing fertility treatments, adopting, taking custody, or fostering a child are all eligible for special concessions, such as permission to be absent from 30% of classes, receiving photocopying, additional time in exams, and preferential parking on campus.

Hebrew commonly refers to all genders using male pronouns and verb conjugations. In 2020, the Rector and Senior Advisor on Gender Equality Division at UofH sent a campus-wide letter requesting academic faculty to take a few practical steps towards using gender-equal language on exams, and in-class and out-of- class assignments. The Gender Equality Division was established to bring a gendered lens to all strategic decision making and policy formation at UofH.