Women in Red: gender-based vulnerabilities and the far-right coalition in Israel

This article examines how gender-based vulnerabilities motivate political action among Israeli women in the face of far-right populist politics. Analysing the case study of Building an Alternative’s Women in Red (WIR), it explores how Israeli women mobilize their vulnerability against the erosion of the gender order by the far right. Drawing on feminist theories of vulnerability, the study analyses interviews with WIR activists to reveal how the government’s proposed judicial overhaul has profoundly impacted the development of their critical awareness and activism. The vulnerable embodied experiences of protesting as handmaids also fostered a new sense of activist identity and collective political empowerment. The findings highlight how shared vulnerability can become a resource for relational, politically oriented, vulnerability-based alliances that offer mutual support in resisting an anti-gender agenda. These alliances enable women to mobilize vulnerability in order to disrupt everyday reproduction of gender hierarchy, ultimately positioning women’s rights at the centre of Israeli political discourse and fostering new forms of leadership. The article concludes by pointing out the movement’s strengths and limitations: despite their success in the height of the protests against the judicial overhaul, WIR predominantly attracted privileged middle-class Jewish women, with limited mobilization of vulnerability in marginalized communities.