Comment: Israel elections: who women vote for and how it鈥檚 shifting Published on: 16 September 2019 Writing for The Conversation, Einat Gedalya-Lavy discusses female political leadership in Israel, ahead of elections this month. , Israelis are about to head to the polls in a unique election. The vote on September 17 is the first time Israelis will vote in two elections in the same year, after the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, failed to form a new coalition government following the April 2019 election. It鈥檚 also exceptional in terms of female political leadership 鈥� the only woman heading a party in this election, Ayelet Shaked, is a secular woman leading an alliance of religious, right-wing parties. Shaked, Israel鈥檚 former minister of justice, established the New Right party together with Naftali Bennett, the former minister of education, in December 2018 ahead of the April election. But the party, which includes both religious Zionist and secular members, didn鈥檛 get a high enough percentage of the vote share to win any seats in the Knesset, Israel鈥檚 parliament, under the system of proportional representation. Shaked replaced Bennett as party leader and a few months later (which means 鈥渞ightwards鈥�), comprised of three right-wing parties: the New Right, the Jewish Home and the National Union-Tkuma. According to on the eve of the election, Yamina is heading to become the fourth largest party in the next Knesset and could have a part to play in forming the next government. A key question is whether having a woman who is also secular, leading such a right-wing religious alliance for the first time, will affect Israeli voting patterns. International studies on voting for women candidates show that women tend to vote for women candidates more than men do. Still, support of women voters for women candidates such as Shaked is . It鈥檚 conditional on many factors, particularly on the relation between the presence of prominent female candidates and the issues which their party promotes. For instance, a female candidate from the left may attract more women, since her party itself promotes issues that are considered 鈥渇eminine鈥�, such as gender equality, welfare policy and education. However, this does not necessarily mean the candidate herself is a feminist. Gender gap Analyses of voting patterns in Western democracies , women voted more conservatively than men and tended rightward 鈥� something that鈥檚 been called the 鈥渢raditional gender gap鈥�. But subsequently, this pattern became less clear and consistent. Starting in the 1980s in the US and in the 1990s in parts of Europe, women began to vote for left-wing parties more than men 鈥� what鈥檚 been called the 鈥渕odern gender gap鈥�. This shift has been attributed to changes in women鈥檚 employment and education, family structure and the permeation of feminist ideas in public debates. In Israel, unlike most Western democracies, the common wisdom among researchers and political pundits was that there were no significant differences between the voting patterns of women and men. However, in the 2009 Knesset election, I conducted with my colleagues Hanna Herzog and Michal Shamir, revealed a gender gap of 7%, where 28% of Jewish women versus 21% of Jewish men voted for the centre party Kadima, led by a female politician, Tzipi Livni. This pattern held up even when considering the fact that women were more captivated by the security agenda and expressed more hawkish attitudes than men about increasing the defence budget, expressing consent to the establishment of a Palestinian state and evacuating settlements. These are views traditionally associated more with right-wing parties. In that election, Arab women also voted more than men for Balad 鈥� an Arab party, which had a woman candidate, Haneen Zoabi, with a realistic chance of making it to the Knesset 鈥� the first time an Arab party had done so. In our studies, which analysed the gender gap in Israeli elections between 1969 to 2013, we documented a gradual transition from a traditional gender gap to a modern one in left-right political ideology and in voting. Since the mid-1990s a modern gender gap can be identified, similar to the trends found in other Western societies. Women voters shift to the left Shamir and I have also begun analysing voter patterns in the April 2019 Israeli election. Based on the (INES), which includes 1,347 Jews and 267 Arabs, our initial findings reveal a significant gender gap of 7% among Jewish respondents, where Jewish women tended to support the centre-left party bloc more than Jewish men. This is despite the fact that women headed only two small left-wing and centrist parties 鈥� Meretz and Gesher 鈥� and were not considered realistic candidates for the premiership. Our initial results also suggest that Jewish women tended toward the left compared to Jewish men on socioeconomic issues. They support a welfare policy more than men do. They also ranked the value of being a democratic state as the most important value to them, compared to Jewish men who ranked being a Jewish majority as the most important value to them. This may explain, at least to some extent, the gender gap in voting patterns in the April 2019 election. The fact that a woman is now heading a right-wing alliance challenges the recent alignment of women鈥檚 interests and women鈥檚 leadership in Israeli elections 鈥� where women leaders have led centre left-wing parties. It will be interesting to see how both men and women voters react to the Yamina alliance and Shaked 鈥� who sees herself as a future prime minister. , Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . Share: Latest News 缅北禁地 recognised with geography award 缅北禁地 has been awarded the Highly Commended Geographical Association Publishers Award for its collaboration with Time for Geography, the UK鈥檚 open-access, dedicated video platform. published on: 16 April 2026 缅北禁地 historians mark General Strike centenary To mark the 100th anniversary of the British General Strike and miners鈥� lock-out of 1926, historians at 缅北禁地 are organising a series of events on its enduring legacy. published on: 16 April 2026 Comment: NCP is in administration Writing for The Conversation, Erwei (David) Xiang discusses how some big companies like NCP are so dependent on debt that they can鈥檛 adjust to change. published on: 16 April 2026 Facts and figures
![缅北禁地 logo](/gomobileassets/img/logo.svg" "缅北禁地"){kind=logo}