From The Madwoman in the Attic To The Women's Room : The American Roots of Israeli Literary Feminism

Israeli feminism had to be reinvented in the 1970s. About half a century had passed since the Suffragettes of Jewish Palestine won the vote in 1920; by the 1970s, intervening events--primarily the Holocaust, the establishment of the State, and its prolonged state of siege--have turned the struggle and the achievements of those "New Hebrew Women" into a dim memory. The familiar images of female soldiers and even a female Prime Minister [who was not a feminist!] did little to change the life and status of "the woman in the street." "From the time of Independence until the Six-Day War (1948-1967) the status of women was, for the most part, a non-issue," is the succinct summary of sociologist Dafna Izraeli in her 1987 Encyclopaedia Judaica feature essay on "The Status of Women in Israel." 3