A: The Gender Issue: Women in Israeli Sport

We have talked of sportsmen and women in general terms and it should have been clear throughout this article that both men and women have been involved in the development of sport, both in the pre-state Yishuv and the period of the State of Israel. However, let us now dig a little deeper and ask the gender question. What is the status of women in Israeli sport?

The answer seems to be as follows. Women have been involved in the developing sporting world, more or less from the beginning, but the world of sport as it has developed in Israel is still primarily a male world in terms of a number of factors. More attention has been paid, since the very outset to the world of sport for men. Women’s sport has been both an outgrowth and an afterthought in terms of the attention that it has received and the resources and facilities that have been put at its disposal. Four and a half times as many men as women have participated in the Olympics representing Israel. Even in the Maccabiah, supposed to be a much more populist event, the ratio is three to one.

It must not be supposed that this merely reflects the respective levels of the men and the women. For example, in 1991 the Israeli women’s fencing team got ninth place in the world championships. On the strength of that showing, they were invited to participate in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona as a team, but the funds and support were not forthcoming and they did not go. Only four years later, in the Atlanta Olympics of 1996, did they finally participate. There is no question whatsoever that had this been a men’s team, they would have been there in ‘92.

Another example of blatant inequality of a different kind caused a major scandal in Israel in 1985. In that year, the women’s basketball team got through to the finals of the twelfth Maccabiah where they were due to play the American team, and according to the original plan, that final was due to be played just before the men’s final in the country’s premier basketball stadium at Yad Eliyahu (the home of Maccabi Tel Aviv). However, days before the final, the women’s venue was changed to the far less prestigious venue of the Maccabiah village. The women were so insulted that they decided not to show and they managed to persuade the American team to do the same as a show of protest and solidarity. The Israeli Basketball Association decided to punish the whole team by disbanding it, a decision that was finally rescinded when the women took the case to court. Once again, it can be suggested firstly that the decision to change the venue to the Maccabiah village would never have been taken if the men had been involved, and secondly, if such a decision had been taken, the Basketball Association would never have disbanded the whole team.

In general terms it might be said that women have never had the encouragement to take up competitive sport in the same way as men have. Research has shown that in Israel, only about 25% of the participants in competitive sport are women, a number much lower than the average in the western world, and even lower than the average in the world as a whole, which is lower than the average in the western world.

Between 1993 and 1998, four government committees were set up by different governments to assess the situation of the sporting world in Israel. In every one of the four committees, one of the major recommendations was to give more resources and encouragement to the situation of women in sport. The fact that the fourth committee said pretty much the same as the first committee means that precious little was done in the interim. This remains essentially the situation today. In many western countries, the battle for equality in sport was fought – and, to a large extent, won – a generation ago. Israel has not yet won that war. In the last decade or so, it can be said that the battle has only begun. Some powerful lobbying groups have started to try and push to remedy the situation, but much is still left to be done.

B: Sport for the Handicapped

There is one field of sport where Israel has become a world leader and that is sport for the physically handicapped and the paraplegics. The field was developed primarily by a German Jewish neurologist, Professor (later Sir) Ludwig Guttmann, who relocated in Britain prior to W.W. II and began to develop a programme of sport as an aid to physical and mental rehabilitation of the physically handicapped. As part of this programme, he initiated the paraplegic games at his hospital in Stoke Mandeville.

Within a few years it had become an international attraction, and handicapped sportsmen and women from many different countries began to participate in the games. By the late 1950’s, it had been decided to create an Olympic structure for the handicapped in tandem with the regular Olympic games. The first of these games was held in 1960 in Rome, immediately after the regular Olympics, with 400 participants from 23 countries. Since then the annual Stoke Mandeville games and the quadrennial handicapped or paraplegic games have become major events, recognized in the sporting world.

Israel became involved in these initiatives relatively early. The large numbers of people crippled in the Holocaust, the casualties of the 1948 war and the thousands of victims (primarily children) of the tragic outbreak of polio in Israel in 1950, forced the young state to start paying attention to the problem of rehabilitation and despite relatively slim resources in the early years, clubs and programmes including sporting events became a feature of Israeli society in the 1950’s and 60’s. The first three Israeli participants in the Stoke Mandeville games arrived in 1953 and within a year, the Israeli delegation had won a third place in a swimming competition.

The games proved an enormous boost for the developing of sport for the handicapped in Israel and by the time the first handicapped Olympics (the Paralympics, as they came to be called) came round, the small Israeli delegation won several medals. This was the beginning of phenomenal success of the Israelis in the Paralympics and in 1968, when Mexico City, the proposed venue had to be changed because it was realized that altitude would prove an insurmountable obstacle to many handicapped participants, Israel stepped into the breach and hosted the games, in which 800 participants from 29 states took part. The games opened before a crowd of 24,000, and Israel gained 61 medals including 18 gold ones.

Israel became a world power in paraplegic sport in the sixties, the seventies and the eighties, but by that time more and more countries had begun to realize the value and the importance of sport and had invested large sums in training facilities and preparation. Israel could not maintain its early advantage and the numbers of medals slowed down, but each Paralympics nevertheless brings home some medals and records.

In the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, the Israeli delegation of 34 participants brought back six medals, including three gold ones, all gained by the swimmer Keren Leibovitz who broke three world records at the same time. In the last few years, increasing budgets have been given to sports facilities and training programmes for the physically handicapped and perhaps the next years may see something of a return to the glories of thirty or so years ago.

C: Popular Sport

We have talked of professional competitive sport and that has indeed become the dominant idea of sport in the world. Nevertheless, before we close, we should briefly mention the “other” kind of sport, popular sport in which people indulge for fun or for fitness rather than for glory or money or other such prizes. It is interesting to note that HaPoel and, to an extent, Elitzur developed initial agendas that were aimed at developing sport for the “people”, rather than just competitive teams or individuals. It will be recalled that HaPoel was hostile to F.I.F.A., because it was seen to be too “professional” – and therefore capitalist and exploitative. With the years however, HaPoel and all the other centre became increasingly involved in the promotion of competitive and professional sport.

People’s sport has, however, become increasingly popular all over the world and in this regard Israel is no exception. There are dozens of major sporting events, runs, swims, marches, bike-rides, that go on throughout the year in Israel and many of them have proved extremely popular. Some of them have been running on a regular level since the 1950’s, while others are new on the scene, having developed only in the last few years and still struggling to make themselves a regular annual presence in the national, or at least the regional calendar.

In line with the rest of the world, individual sport and exercise is also becoming a central and noticeable feature of Israeli life. The roads fill regularly, morning and evening, with joggers and walkers and local gyms and health and fitness clubs have proved extremely popular. There is little of the national consciousness that vitalized the early sporting initiatives of the Zionist society and the Israeli state. Here we are witnesses to a much more individualistic phenomenon of the same kind that can be found in any western country. Fitness rather than service is the concern here. Narcissism and the individual play a part that the nation played for many in the past.