Lobatan..!! Israeli Schoolgirls Fight For The Right To Wear Shorts To School

Israelis have sweated through several heat waves over the past month, leading many schoolgirls to rebel against dress codes and wear shorts, arguing that it is unfair that boys can wear them but not girls. The result? Scores of suspensions, and a nationwide debate on whether male and female students should be held to the same dress standards.

Protests started flaring up at schools around the country during the first heat wave in early May. They gained momentum when students started posting photos of themselves wearing shorts on social media, many of them sharing their experiences on the Facebook page, “Teaching Schools a Lesson in Equality”.

In Israel, there is no one dress code governing all public schools; according to the education ministry, individual schools decide on what is appropriate with input from parents and students.
Contributors

"Teachers argued that dressing this way would distract the boys"

Niv is a sophomore at a public high school in Guedera, about 40 kilometres south of Tel Aviv.

A few weeks ago, on a day when it was 45 degrees celsius, we started to question our school’s policy – the boys wear shorts, so we thought, why not the girls? It’s simply awful to go to school in long pants in such weather.

On May 4, about half of our class – 60 students, both girls and boys – organised a protest in which we all showed up in shorts. The boys were let into the school but not the girls. When we started to complain, the teachers began screaming at us, saying that we were disrespecting ourselves by wearing shorts. I thought this was pretty strange, seeing as many of the teachers themselves wear shorts to class. It made me feel like they were the ones disrespecting us. They also argued that dressing this way would distract the boys…