ACADEMIA Letters Women Parties and the Fight for Equality in Israel Nurit Gillath Marylin Safr Is there a connection between women’s sufrage and women political parties? Are women parties’ essential players in the political game? Should women form their own party or join existing parties when running for ofce? More research needs to be done as we do not have the answers to these questions. What we have is a case study portraying the political experience women acquired through their fght to achieve sufrage in Palestine by the formation of a women’s party to participate in those elections, as well as the experience of the women’s party for the 1977 elections and its failure to succeed. Granting women, the right to vote has been an extremely important milestone in advanc- ing the position of women in many countries. Sadly, even today the extensive literature on women’s social movements, fails to explore the development of women’s political parties and their representatives in political institutions. We know that participating in state institutions expands women’s inclusion and women’s interests in decision making. “The raison d’etre of women representing women’s interests in politics — should seemingly have broad appeal in every society where women comprise approximately half of the electorate, but only a small fraction of the legislature”. We may take as an example, and point of reference, the frst nation that gave women the right to vote. New Zealand enfranchised its female citizens in 1893, making it the frst nation to formally allow women to vote in national elections. The success of sufrage in New Zealand was the result of years of eforts by sufrage campaigners. These women compiled a series of massive petitions calling on Parliament to grant the vote. They were inspired by the women’s right movement that spread through England, Northern Europe and the USA in the 19th century, as well as the support of several of New Zealand’s leading male politicians. Academia Letters, August 2021 Corresponding Author: Nurit Gillath, ngillath@gmail.com Citation: Gillath, N., Safr, M. (2021). Women Parties and the Fight for Equality in Israel. Academia Letters, Article 3006. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3006. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0