Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari is head of the Rackman Center, which she founded in 2001. Prof. Halperin-Kaddari is a member of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University and, from 2007 through the end of 2018, she served as a member and Vice President of the Expert Committee of the UN Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). While serving on the Committee, in 2013, she initiated and led General Recommendation Number 29 regarding the economic consequences of marriage, family relations and their dissolution (Read); and in 2017, conducted CEDAW’s official investigation of the prohibition against abortions in Northern Ireland, which led to a legislative change in July 2019.
Prof. Halperin-Kaddari is a leading international expert on family law, feminist criticism of the law and Jewish law, and the international rights of women. She earned her LL.M. and J.S.D. from Yale Law School. From 2003-2008, she served as the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Authority for the Advancement of Women at the Prime Minister’s Office. Her articles in prominent Israeli and foreign journals on matters of family law, legal pluralism, and feminism and Jewish law, have contributed to a shift in the discourse surrounding these. Her book, Women in Israel: A State of Their Own, was published by Pennsylvania University Press in 2004.
Since October 7, 2023, Prof. Halperin-Kaddari has been committed to obtaining justice for the victims of the shocking sexual violence and gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas, and she has been working tirelessly towards this goal. She is a founding member of The Dinah Project, a group of senior experts in the fields of law and gender who have joined together to lead the fight for the victims of October 7 and future victims of conflict-related sexual violence.
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