Rabbis from a Hasidic Jewish sect in the United States have instructed its schools to help uphold a prohibition on its women members attending university, according to a report this week by The Independent. The international decree issued by Rabbis from the Satmar sect forbids its female members from pursuing university study that is not related to its religion, and commands its schools to exclude any female students preparing to join a university and to not employ women as teachers who have attended a college or obtained a degree.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews estimates there are around 30,000 members of the UK’s strictly Orthodox Jewish community and that the Satmar sect comprises its largest group. Last year British Rabbis from the Belz Hasidic Jewish sect decreed that women members were not allowed to drive and that pupils would be barred from the sect’s schools if they were driven to them by their mothers. The 2010 Equality outlaws less favourable treatment against people on the grounds of gender.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘This decree in the USA for Satmar schools to act in a discriminatory way is an extreme example, and were schools in the UK to act upon it they would undoubtedly be breaking the law. However, the freedoms that British faith schools have to religiously discriminate in pupil admissions and staff employment has no clear or evidenced educational justification, and they send a confusing message about how schools should operate.
‘Parliament should not send out contradictory messages, and among the ways a more inclusive educational culture can be achieved is by ending the special exemptions that state funded faith schools still have to discriminate by faith. Discrimination should not be a part of school life, and least of all in the name of religion.’
