Israeli society

Israeli Jewish women participate in the workforce in higher numbers than anywhere else in the Western world, Ha'aretz reports.

Unlike the inhabitants of Desperate Housewives' Wisteria Lane, you won't find most Israeli women shopping or sitting in nail salons during the weekday. For instance, seventy-one percent of Jewish Israeli women with three children are employed, compared to an OECD average of 44 percent. What's more, Israeli women have more children (three on average) than any other developed country. In short—Israeli women may be the most hardworking--or overworked--in the world.

According to Benny Pepperman, a researcher at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, the high rate of female workforce participation has been obscured until now by the fact that two other population groups—Haredi women and Arab women—work outside the home at much lower rates. Only 20 percent of Israeli Arab women work outside the home, as do 56 percent of ultra-Orthodox women. Many rely on welfare payments to make ends meet.

So why do Israeli women do it? Ha'aretz offers a few weak explanations, but overlooks the basic fact that is apparent to every Israeli tax-payer. Let's say an upper-middle class family, a doctor and his professor wife, earn 20,000 shekels a month (about $65,000 per year). If the husband earns the entire 20,000 and the wife stays home, their monthly take home pay is about 13,000 shekels. But if both the husband and wife work, each earning 10,000 shekels, their monthly disposable income is closer to 17,000 shekels. In other words, Israeli tax policy encourages mothers to work outside the home. How strange!

Not for Israeli women is the "mommy track"—the phenomenon of women with Ivy League degrees who opt to stay home with junior, as memorably described in the New York Times. Since the pioneering days, kibbutz women have worked alongside their male counterparts and left childcare to communal childrens' houses. Could the Israeli government policy be a continuation of this cultural attitude? Because the Israeli government is basically telling women to be "superwomen," juggling a job and an average of three kids.

While the characters on Desperate Housewives cheat on their spouses, divorce and remarry, all at great expense, Israelis are less likely to divorce than their OECD counterparts. Israeli husbands and wives need each other, tax-wise, more than spouses in other places. Could this be a hidden benefit of an onerous tax system?