The Tel Aviv Marathon is scheduled to be run this Friday. No, I am not running in it. Even before I found out that a bad storm is forecast for Friday I was not planning on running in it. I can blame it on the below, but honestly that is not the reason either...

The Committee for Advancing the Standing of Women inspected the route of the Tel Aviv Marathon and discovered that over the entire 42.2 kilometers of the marathon course through the city streets, the marathon runners will not run on even a single street named for a woman.

According to what is quoted in the Ynet article, there are more than 3000 streets. Only 64 of them bear the name of a woman, and some of those bear the names of both the husband and wife that were being honored or memorialized together. 

And this is in enlightened Tel Aviv, not Bnei Braq or Ramat Bet Shemesh!

Honestly I did not know this was a thing. I have run in marathons in a few cities around Israel and I never paid attention to the street names, though obviously I was familiar with some of the streets I was running on. Women should not be distanced from being fairly honored and recognized on the streets of Israel - women built the country and did great things throughout our history just as men did. Surely we can find a few more women to honor by dedicating streets to them more fairly and more inclusively.

No, this is not the reason I am not running. I am just not up to it. And there is a storm scheduled for that day. This though is definitely something worth fixing.