Gender confusion
Gender confusioniStock

A new bill requires 40% representation in street names for women, Sephardic Jews, Arab, gender-disoriented, and auto-hermaphrodites.

This is a bill to amend the Municipalities Ordinance (proper representation of names of public places), submitted by Knesset members Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union), Michal Rozin (Meretz), Zahava Galon (Meretz) and another 24 MKs.

Most of the signatories are from the opposition, but the list also includes Knesset members Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Jewish Home), Rachel Azaria (Kulanu), Merav Ben-Ari (Kulanu), Tali Ploskov (Kulanu), Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu), Sharren Haskel (Likud), and Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beytenu) of the coalition.

In the explanatory notes to the law, it is written that "a significant portion of public places in Israeli cities are named for persons they wish to commemorate because of their public activity, but the personalities who are commemorated are almost always men, with a significant surplus representation of Ashkenazic Jews. For example, in the city of Tel Aviv, only 2.5% (62 of 2,439) of all names commemorated in streets belong to women."

"The purpose of the bill is to bring greater heterogeneity in commemorating public work in public places of various cities, especially with regard to women, Sephardic Jews, Arabs, and people known as lesbian, gay, transsexual, and bisexual," it says.

"It is therefore proposed that in names of the persons who are commemorated there will be representation of at least 40% of each of the types. Until such representation is achieved, 90% of the names commemorated by a municipality will be the names of women, Sephardic Jews, Arabs or people known as lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual."