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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Jerusalem mayor urges police: Stop exclusion of women on ads

An ultra-Orthodox man walking past a vandalized poster showing a woman

Barkat asks Jerusalem District Police Commander to take step to ensure billboards with pictures of women are not defaced, following trend of late initiated by local ultra-Orthodox sector.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat on Sunday urged District Police Commander Niso Shaham to put a stop to the exclusion of women's images from billboards across the city, and to the defacing of advertisements on which women do appear, both trends initiated of late by the local ultra-Orthodox sector.

"We must make sure that those who want to advertise [with] women's images in the city can do so without fear of vandalism and defacement of billboards or buses showing women," Barkat wrote Shaham.

One example of women disappearing from billboards in Jerusalem is in the winter campaign of clothing outlet Honigman: Whereas model Sandy Bar appears in wool knit outfit in ads elsewhere in the country, in the Jerusalem ads all that remains is her arm and purse.

Another instance is an ad for the organization that encourages organ donation that appears in buses, in which a mosaic-like representation of people are shown holding donor cards – all of them men.

Hundreds of demonstrators around the country on Friday gathered to sing in protest against the exclusion of women from public areas. The protest also followed an incident at an Israel Defense Forces event, where four religious male cadets left because women were singing.

Last week, six women met in Jerusalem to be photographed so their pictures can be hung from balconies throughout the city, to counteract what they say is an attempt to keep women out of advertising in the capital.

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