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Monday, August 18, 2008
Men in front, women in back
If you’re a woman, and you get on the 15A, don’t sit in the front.
“I didn’t even know it was a segregated bus and people started yelling at me to move to the back,” said Mamit Asras, 22, a secular Jew waiting for a bus in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. “I was in shock because it was a public bus.”
The Israeli national bus cooperative, Egged, opened a second gender-segregated bus line in Jerusalem earlier this year after ultra-Orthodox Jews shut down streets demonstrating for more segregated buses.
Last year, the company created the country’s first gender-segregated bus line, also in Jerusalem, which was opposed in petitions by secular Jews.
But several women waiting at a bus stop in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, told me they preferred to sit in the back of the bus.
“The more the better,” said Hani Zonenfeld, 17, of the busses. “At noon time, when it’s really crowded, it’s much more modest.”
By keeping the sexes apart, unmarried men and women won’t incidentally touch each other.
“The most important thing is the touching,” Zonenfeld said.
But, why put the women in the back?
“Women,” Asras said, “always get the bad part of the deal.”