The Knesset approved legislation lowering the age of automatic custody of children for divorced mothers in a preliminary vote on last Wednesday, May 17. Currently, barring special circumstances, mothers automatically receive custody of children under the age of six in cases of divorce. Under the new bill, that age would be lowered to two. The initiative has been a point of dispute within the coalition for a year and a half. Far right MK Yoav Kisch picked up the bill where fellow Likud member MK Gila Gamliel left off when she became social equality minister. The two proposed that the automatic custody rule be eliminated, and that judges decide who gets custody based on the good of the child.
Third from left: Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint List), chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality (Photo: Al Ittihad)
However, when Kisch brought the bill to a vote in 2015, several women in the coalition decided they could not support it, saying that it turns children into a bargaining chip and weakens women’s standing in divorce proceedings. Then, the legislation did not pass a preliminary reading, and since then, has come up again intermittently, with disputes flaring up again. Meanwhile, divorced fathers organized a pressure group in support of abrogating the custody law, with hundreds of these men joining the Likud.
Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint List), chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality, came out against the measure saying: “We’re not against gender equality. The opposite is true. Our demand is to change the gender-based division of jobs and have men take part in household chores… There needs to be equality in all areas of life… The order of things in society needs to be changed in general in order to demand total equality… This is a political compromise within the coalition, and children are not what power struggles in the coalition should be about.” Touma-Sliman wondered, “Who decided two is the right age? Where is the good of the child in this?”
However, when Kisch brought the bill to a vote in 2015, several women in the coalition decided they could not support it, saying that it turns children into a bargaining chip and weakens women’s standing in divorce proceedings. Then, the legislation did not pass a preliminary reading, and since then, has come up again intermittently, with disputes flaring up again. Meanwhile, divorced fathers organized a pressure group in support of abrogating the custody law, with hundreds of these men joining the Likud.
Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint List), chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality, came out against the measure saying: “We’re not against gender equality. The opposite is true. Our demand is to change the gender-based division of jobs and have men take part in household chores… There needs to be equality in all areas of life… The order of things in society needs to be changed in general in order to demand total equality… This is a political compromise within the coalition, and children are not what power struggles in the coalition should be about.” Touma-Sliman wondered, “Who decided two is the right age? Where is the good of the child in this?”
