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Feminists Win Equal Rights in Palestine

July 21, 1935
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A long struggle for equal property rights carried on by the Jewish women of Palestine, with the aid of American Jewish women, has just resulted in a feminine victory, it was announced yesterday by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, which led the American support of the movement.

The Jewish National Fund, Zionist land-purchasing agency in Palestine, has granted the demand that a wife be permitted to be co-lessee with her husband and that the signatures of both appear on a lease of Jewish National Fund land. Since 1901, when the Jewish National Fund began functioning, only the male head of the family was recognized as leaseholder.

Under the leadership of the Jewish Women’s Equal Rights Society of Palestine and the Palestine Women’s Labor Council, the Jewish women of Palestine have waged a continuous battle for leasehold rights.

Dr. Rosa Welt Straus, head of the equal rights organization, interested the American women of Hadassah in the cause.

The combined forces declared that the omission of the wife as a co-lessee was "discriminatory."

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