By CALEV BEN-DAVID

(February 26) -- More parties than ever realize that they should have women in realistic slots. But good intentions aren't enough to dramatically change the face of the next Knesset.

In 1992, Masha Lubelsky was voted into the Knesset as No. 18 on the Labor Party list, the second-highest-ranked woman (after Ora Namir) in the party. Lubelsky, secretary-general of Na'amat, the Histadrut-affiliated women's organization, seemed poised on the verge of a surging political career.

But after serving for four years as a deputy minister Lubelsky failed to get a realistic spot on the party list in the next Labor primaries, and lost her Knesset seat in the 1996 elections.

You won't find Lubelsky in Labor anymore. The woman who built her reputation over decades as a Na'amat activist is now sitting "in the pink," so to speak, in the No. 3 spot on cosmetics queen Pnina Rosenblum's fledgling party's list.

And, she claims, she is happy to be there.

"It's very important to me to finally be in a party headed by a woman, a party which is seriously dedicated to having a real 50-50 division in its representation," says Lubelsky. "After having gotten to know Pnina well, I'm very impressed with her commitment to women's issues and genuine equality."

And what of her former party?

"I don't like to criticize Labor, but sometimes it seems they think talking about the rights of women makes up for actually doing something about it. They're too infatuated with ex-generals, and male ones at that.

"Why is it that Matan Vilna'i can take off his uniform and walk into a safe seat, but a brigadier-general like Yehudit Ben-Natan [the recently retired head of the IDF Women's Corps] was rejected by Labor voters in the primaries?"

Lubelsky's frustration is easy to understand. Thirty-eight years ago, the number of women MKs peaked at 12, 10 percent of the Knesset. In 1996, long after the feminist revolution reached these shores, only nine women won Knesset seats, just 7.5% of the total.

Although former prime minister Golda Meir - once described by David Ben-Gurion as "the only real man in my cabinet" - is often held up as some kind of example of Israeli egalitarianism, she was in fact one of only six women to ever serve as a minister, and the only one to ever break into the upper cabinet echelons.

WHY are women in the political sphere here lagging behind many of their peers in the US and Western Europe?

"The primary reason is that security is still the paramount issue here," says Prof. Alice Shalvi, founder of the Israel Women's Network. "And women are perceived, especially given their lack of opportunity in the army, as 'soft' on security issues."

Another, newer, factor working against women, says Shalvi, is the rise in power of the haredi parties.

"It's inconceivable that Shas, for example, would ever put a woman in a leadership position."

Yet the situation in the upcoming elections, adds Shalvi, is not all bleak.

"There's definitely been a change in the awareness of the major parties of the need to have women on the list. This was certainly reflected in some of the primaries and selection process, even this time in the National Religious Party.

"Unfortunately, given the especially unpredictable nature of these elections, and the complications involved in the 'reserved slot' system which helped many of these women get their electoral slots, it's hard to say what gains in Knesset representation - if any - will come out of it."

Certainly women gained in the Likud, where they actually placed better than the four slots on the list (at 10, 20, 30 and 35) reserved for them.

In addition to moving up its two current female MKs (Communications Minister Limor Livnat and Naomi Blumenthal) into the top 10 of the party list, sure to join them in the next Knesset is Tzippi Livni, who won the No. 17 slot. Two student activists, Gila Gamliel (25) and Liat Rabner (29), have a shot at joining them.

"I think we benefited by the fact that the Likud already had two women in the Knesset who proved themselves during the past few years every bit as capable as the men," says Livni, a lawyer who headed the government's privatization drive as director of the Government Companies Authority.

"And I think women in general benefit from the Likud's willingness to bring in new faces," Livni adds.

IN contrast is the situation in Labor, whose women candidates are blaming the party's complicated "reserved slot" system for doing them as much harm as good.

Dalia Itzik, for example, has said she believes she would have actually gotten more votes had many Labor voters not simply assumed she would easily win the first slot (No. 9) reserved for a woman.

And when Ehud Barak finishes compiling his One Israel list, there is concern that Labor will do no better than return its current female contingent of Itzik, Yael Dayan and Sofa Landver to the Knesset.

Seen as especially problematic was the condition that the reserved slot for a woman in each 10-member grouping was automatically canceled if any female candidate on her own succeeded in scoring higher than it.

Take, for example, the case of Prof. Yuli Tamir, who the morning after the Labor primaries was already being hailed as one of the party's new faces after a counting of partial election results showed her in 25th spot.

But after it became clear that Landver would be claiming the 19th "immigrant" slot instead of Adisu Messele, it created a domino effect among the female candidates that pushed Tamir out of contention, to the 35th slot.

"I think it would have been better for Labor to have simply reserved two slots for women in the top 10 - like the Center Party did - and cancel all the reserved slots on the list after that," says Tamir. "There was a certain complacency in Labor regarding really putting women in the top slots this time, and we've suffered for it."

Despite the complications sometimes involved when slots are reserved, there really is no alternative to them in helping women move ahead, asserts Nehama Ronen, the former director-general of the Environment Ministry - the only woman to serve as a ministry director-general in this government.

Along with Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, Ronen is one of those two women chosen for the Center Party's top 10.

"Perhaps in one or two more elections, after enough women have been placed in the kind of positions they need to prove themselves, we won't need [reserved slots] anymore," she says.

"Actually, I'd like to see the system expanded beyond election lists. In some European countries the government is obligated to have a certain percentage of women not only in the legislature, but in top public administration positions - like ministry directors-general."

ONE person certainly satisfied with her reserved slot is the National Religious Party's Gila Finkelstein, who came in 11th in the party's central committee vote for the Knesset list, but was bumped up to the eighth spot reserved for a female candidate.

Although pundits give Finkelstein, an English teacher, only an outside shot at making the Knesset, she sees her victory as having a wider significance.

"This is a reflection of changes within the national-religious camp," she says, "a feeling that women have more to contribute in leadership positions, and that issues like education and social welfare, that are particularly important to families, have to be addressed just as much as the Land of Israel.

"It was especially nice for me, to win this slot just as Purim is coming up, with its wonderful story of Queen Esther showing what a woman in a leadership position can do," says the effusive Finkelstein.

Less impressed with Finkelstein's victory was another religious woman, Bella Freund, who made headlines seven years ago after stopping an angry mob from attacking an Arab who had just stabbed two boys in Jerusalem's marketplace, and has since been active in promoting religious-secular dialogue.

"I admire the national-religious camp," says the haredi Freund. "But if they were really serious about advancing women they would have put one in a more realistic slot than No. 8."

THIS week Freund joined with sociology professor Esther Hertzog and Jerusalem city council member Ofra Meirson to found a new women's party, Yitzug Shaveh (Equal Representation).

"I had offers of slots in the past from major parties," says Freund, "but I didn't want to join a framework of 'masculine politics' where there isn't real equality for the women."

And what about Pnina Rosenblum's party?

"That's the party of Pnina, not of women," says Freund.

And what about Meretz, the party traditionally viewed as the banner carrier of women's rights?

"They are bragging about the fact that they have four women in their top 10," says Hertzog, No. 1 on the Yitzug Shaveh list.

"But look where they're placed. The first woman in Meretz [MK Anat Maor] is only at the No. 5 slot. This isn't the same party that once had strong feminists like Shulamit Aloni and Marsha Friedman at the top of the list."

The one woman newcomer in Meretz sure to enter the next Knesset on the party's sixth slot is Zehava Gal-On, director of the International Center for Peace.

Gal-On admits some dissatisfaction with the placing of women on the Meretz list, saying "I would prefer we had a system like that in Rosenblum's party, where the slots are alternated between genders from the top of the list."

Still, she contends, a women's party like Yitzug Shaveh isn't the answer.

"For me women's rights in Israel still can't be isolated from other issues, like fighting for peace issues, religious freedom and the equality of Arabs and other minority groups."

As for the success of other parties like Likud in putting women in the top of the list, Gal-On says, "I make a distinction between those parties that simply put women in top slots, and those who are ideologically committed to advancing women's issues.

"For that matter, I'm not impressed by women who succeed on their own, but don't make a point of helping others advance. I was disappointed, for example, to read an interview in which Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff made a point of saying she 'wasn't a feminist.' I think all the women in Israeli politics need to realize that feminism doesn't mean bra-burning anymore, but simply striving for the equality that women deserve in any sphere."

ONE matter on which all the women interviewed for this article agreed was the possibility that Israel is now finally ready for its first female prime minister since Golda, with several even mentioning Limor Livnat as a likely contender in upcoming elections.

"She'd make an excellent prime minister," says Ronen.

"Would there be segments of the population who wouldn't vote for her because she's a woman? Of course. But any male candidate nowadays also will also be automatically rejected by parts of the electorate because of their stands."

In the meantime, women will have to be satisfied with perhaps a few extra seats in the next Knesset, and a token victory - that there was, at least, serious lip service paid to their cause during this election campaign.

As for the future?

"You know," says the NRP's Finkelstein, "that the sages said that after the Messiah comes, everything in the world will be turned upside down. So maybe in the next millennium, it will the be the men on the bottom and the women who'll be on top."

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