During World War II, only when the Yishuv’s Council of Women’s Organizations called for the recruitment of women was an agreement reached with the British authorities to enlist women living in Palestine into the forces. The first to join were in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Serivce) followed by the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force).

Jewish education in the United States was always the preserve of women on the “front lines” and in the classroom. In the early days of these programs, men “ran the show,” but beginning in the mid-twenteith century, women began to take on increasing roles as faculty members and administrators. In the early twenty-first century, women ascended to leadership positions in these institutions.

Holocaust survivor Simone Veil was a pioneer in the French government and the European Union. As Minister of Health, she presented and successfully argued the law decriminalizing abortion in France. She was the first woman to preside over the European Parliament and the fifth woman to be interred in the Panthéon.

Until recently all that was known about Devorà Ascarelli was available in a 1601 collection of mainly Italian translations of Hebrew liturgy for the Day of Atonement, Me’on Ha-Sho’alim. Now it is known that she was born Devorà Corcos to a prominent Roman Jewish family, most of whom, including many of her children, would convert, by force or voluntarily, to Catholicism. New information reveals that in Me’on Ha-Sho’alim, she transliterated the Italian translations of another author into Roman letters that could be read by more Jews.

The inclusion of feminism in Israeli art was seen as irrelevant in the 1970s, when Israel was seen as a state of gender equality. But in the following decades, amid vast changes in Israeli society, women worked hard to make themselves seen and have their stories told in the wider world of Israeli art.