When adequate representation becomes a glass ceiling
Where was the anxiety about the lack of balance during all the years when almost everyone sitting around the table was a man?
When irony committed suicide, it did so in front of a board of directors that has a female majority. It was recently reported that the Ministry of Interior is effectively preventing the appointment of women to boards of directors in municipal corporations when their appointment could create a female majority on the board. In other words, a principle intended to prevent the exclusion of women from decision-making centers is now being used precisely to prevent their entry into them. This is not just absurd; it is a complete reversal of the purpose of adequate representation.
Last month, the head of the Gezer Regional Council Rotem Yadlin, the mayor of Rehovot Matan Dil, and the head of the South Sharon Regional Council Oshrat Gani Gonen sent a letter to the Attorney General and the Ministry of Interior. The letter described three cases where the appointments of women to boards of directors were not approved: in Gezer, after the council treasurer was replaced by a female treasurer; in Rehovot, after the CEO was replaced by a female CEO; and in South Sharon, when they requested to appoint a public representative to the board of directors of the economic company. Read it again: women reached senior positions on their own merits, but their success became the reason why they cannot be appointed to an additional position.
For decades, a struggle has been waged for adequate representation because women are not in the rooms where decisions are made: not on boards of directors, not in the upper echelons of the civil service, not around government tables, and not in management. This reality was not created because the qualifications of a man and a woman were checked each time, and the man happened to win. It was created out of structures, habits, and power networks that left women outside. That is why the principle of adequate representation was born: it was intended to open doors. It was never intended to become a ceiling for women.
If a male CEO is replaced by a female CEO, she is not occupying a "female chair," she is filling a management role. And if, by virtue of that role, her predecessor was entitled to sit on the board of directors, it is difficult to explain why she should give up the chair just because other women happen to be sitting around the table. And there is certainly room for the question: where was the anxiety about the lack of balance during all the years when almost everyone sitting around the table was a man? Boards of directors where seven men and two women sat were not perceived as an event that undermines public order. Management tables with an absolute male majority were the norm for years. Almost no one counted.
Equality is not a mathematical formula according to which at any given moment there must be five men and five women in the room. Adequate representation is a tool intended to correct a situation of under-representation and exclusion. When we turn it into a mechanism that prevents a woman from being appointed because there are "too many women," we are no longer correcting discrimination. We are creating it. It is important to say this precisely because the principle of adequate representation is a vital principle. This absurdity must not be used by those who seek to abolish it. On the contrary: it must be protected — and the purpose for which it was created.
The law should not be blind to history, to power structures, and to the reality in which women are still fighting for their place in centers of influence. It certainly should not punish them the moment that struggle begins to succeed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (of blessed memory) was once asked when there would be enough women on the United States Supreme Court. Her answer was: nine. The idea behind the answer was simple: for generations, nine men on the Supreme Court were not perceived as a "problematic male majority." They were simply the court. Women should not be stopped at the door just because other women have already managed to pass through it. Adequate representation is intended to shatter the glass ceiling. It must not be allowed to become a new ceiling.
