After Egged and Cnaan (the advertising/marketing company they work through) found themselves in a pickle, they had to come up with a creative solution. The Supreme Court and the Ministry of Transportation were obligating Egged to post advertisements on buses with images of women. To not do so, as they have refused to do in recent years in Jerusalem and some other cities, has been declared discriminatory against women. They now found themselves with no choice. Claims of bystander violence against their buses would no longer absolve them of their obligation toward gender equality.

Egged has now come up with a creative solution, though members of the Yerushalmim group that were so excited that Jerusalem buses would start bearing images of women are going to be sorely disappointed. Instead of accepting advertisements regardless of the gender in the image, Egged has decided that, for now at least, they will no longer be posting any images in advertisements on the buses. not just that, but from now on the ads will only be the smaller ads on the backs of the buses, and no longer will ads be on the sides. Egged says they did not want to go against the Supreme Court ruling, but they also had to take into account the fact that posting ads with women would bring us back to the days where people would vandalize the buses.

Looks like a win-win decision. The ads will no longer be discriminatory. egged is not violating the law any longer. The Haredim will have nothing to get upset about. The only losers in this case are going to be when Rabbis Ovadia Yosef, Kaduri, Abuchatzeira and politicians can no longer advertise their faces on political ads on the buses.

Being that I believe in equal exploitation, meaning when they say women shouldnt be exploited and used in such imagery on billboards, I say men shouldnt be either - either a picture being publicized is appropriate for both or for neither - I think this solution is reasonable.

I particularly enjoyed the additional statement released by Egged, as you can see at the end of the Haaretz article (which is quoted by all the other news sources), in which they said:

The job of the bus is to transport passengers, and it is NOT to be a platform for upsetting and disturbing advertising. We estimate that at the end of the contract [with the Cnaan advertising agency] we will re-evaluate anew the use of city buses as platforms for advertising.

I find this statement particularly amusing...


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