Adina Bar Shalom, daughter of Rav Ovadia Yosef and accomplished person in her own right,  has announced that she is establishing a new political party that was compete in the upcoming elections, whenever they may be held. The new party is to be called "Bishvil Yisrael", and a number of other known names and personalities are rumored to be involved.
source: Walla News and Kikar

Bar Shalom tried something similar prior to the last elections, but her plans got thwarted when people from Shas pressured her to back down and join a new female directorship of Shas consisting of just her and Yaffa Deri. The board did nothing and after some time of being frustrated she resigned from it and from the Shas party in general. Now she is setting up her own party.

This is a big deal. With Shas struggling as it is, and Adina Bar Shalom pedigree and popularity, her party could hurt Shas to some degree. Her party might or not not pass the minimum threshold, but either way it could still do a lot of damage to Shas. And, Shas will not really be able to attack her the way they did with Eli Yishai last time, being the daughter of Rav Ovadia and all.

This is also a monumental step from the perspective of Haredi women. Yes, there was a Haredi women's party in the last election. They largely failed, but that is only true if the goal was getting into the Knesset at that moment. They were successful at starting a process - one that now has big names attached to it that will, whether this time or next, get some women into the Knesset and get even more women involved in the future.

Either way, the Right side of the political map continues to splinter with more and more parties, ensuring that thousands and thousands of votes will go to waste.

Adina Bar Shalom, the famous daughter of Rav Ovadia Yosef, yesterday went on air talking about Haredi women, the now defunct female council of Shas, and most interestingly, I think, of men going to performances with women singing.

Bar Shalom said that regarding the issue of "kol b'isha erva" people have gotten very extreme over the years. She explained that a woman cannot get on stage and sing and dance in front of men who are there to see her. But, if she is there singing as part of a choir, as part of an orchestra, then a man can sit and listen to her sing, as long as he is not focusing on her and not watching her in a longing way.

Her statement has caused quite a ruckus. While the opinions are numerous as to what is and is not a problem of "kol isha", she is right that the ultra-Orthodox community has gotten very extreme about it.

It has been pointed out that Bar Shalom's psak is in opposition to her father's psak that was written in his sefer prohibiting kol isha if one even just knows what the woman looks like from having seen a picture. His psak is despite the fact that he himself was famously a fan of the Egyptian female singer Umm Kulthum and would listen regularly to her songs. There is some debate as to whether or not he later retracted this psak, and there is also some debate whether the original psak was more limited than how it is being made to sound and he was prohibiting it specifically during tefilla (shma and shomeh esrei) or by limiting it specifically for those who would be aroused by the specific singer.

As well, it has been pointed out how a slew of other gedolim throughout the years have prohibited kol isha in even the most minute way.
sources: Srugim and Kikar

There are two points in all of this that I find particularly interesting:
1. Adina Bar Shalom issued a psak, in some way, and was not afraid to take a position against well known rabbis. If she issued the psak it was surely because she assumed people would take her seriously and listen or at least debate the issue.

and even more interesting is:
2. people took her seriously.
I don't mean she should not be taken seriously, but I am intrigued by the fact that some people did not just brush her off, call her modern or anything like that, say she is just a woman and doesn't know or cannot have a say, but they took her statement as significant enough to be worth responding to at a halachic level.

Is that itself progress?