531 CHAPTER 36 Israel: A Century of Political Involvement Reut Itzkovitch-Malka and Chen Friedberg In Israel, the Women’s Association for Equal Rights and other women’s organizations advocated for women’s right to vote and run for of fce in the Yishuv—the Jewish settlement in Palestine, as early as 1920, during the Brit- ish Mandate. It is among the earliest western societies to grant equal political rights to women (Herzog 1992). When the State of Israel was established in 1948, there was thus no question that women should have equal politi- cal rights. The representation of women in the Israeli Knesset (parliament), which was roughly 10% in the state’s frst decade, was considered very high at the time. However, in the years to come the proportion of women in the Knesset did not continue to rise as it did in other countries and Israel was ‘left behind’, comparatively speaking. Our chapter begins with a description of Jewish women’s efforts to win suffrage and eligibility to run for of fce in the pre-state era. It then maps the patterns in the descriptive representation of women in the Israeli parliament since the establishment of the state until today. It also addresses the mech- anisms and debates surrounding the use of gender quotas to increase the representation of women in parliament, that are unique to the Israeli polit- ical culture. Finally, it discusses the substantive representation of women in © The Author(s) 2019 S. Franceschet et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights, Gender and Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59074-9_36 R. Itzkovitch-Malka (*) Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication, Open University of Israel, Ra’anana, Israel C. Friedberg Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel C. Friedberg Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem, Israel