The Israeli Diversity Index Project
The Diversity Index is a collaborative project between the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the Israeli Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
The Index uses administrative data to map the employment and pay gaps of workers from disadvantaged groups in the Israel private and public sectors. Groups covered are men and women who are: Israeli-Arabs, Israelis of Ethiopian descent, Orthodox Religious Israeli Jews, workers over the age of 45, and women as a general group. The Index covers the 20 most central industries in the private sector, which employ about half of the Israeli workforce. Starting in 2019, the Index also covers local government and the central government, which employ together 400,000 workers.
The first Index was published in 2016. Each edition adds a new analytical dimension. In 2016, the Index examined employment and pay gaps by demographic group, gender, age and organizational size; in 2017 the analysis first included mapping by post-secondary education status as well as an analysis of the demographic employment and pay gaps within higher education institutions in Israel; in 2019 the Index mapped the demographic employment and pay gaps of graduates of specific academic degrees (computer science, engineering, business administration, economics and law); in 2020 the Index examined differences in employment and pay gaps across geographic regions, and the 2021 Index examined demographic gaps in Covid-19-related furloughs.
Conclusions from the Index are presented to the Israeli President annually and are circulated widely to employers and NGO’s, who make use of the index for promoting diversity.
The 2022 Index is planned to go online and allow people to generate their own tables based on the Index data. The data will include the employment representation and pay gaps of the participating groups by gender, academic degree, age group and organizational size. In the second stage a geographical region will be added.
The index was developed and produced in collaboration with Ms. Yafit Alfandari and Ms. Ayala Ginat from the Central Bureau of Statistics and Prof. Alexandra Kalev from Tel Aviv University.
Kalev Alexandra, Yafit Alfandari, Ayala Ginat and Tsipi Berman. (2021). Diversity Index: Ranking and Mapping the Representation and Pay Gaps of Disadvantaged Groups in the Israeli Private and Public Sector, including an analysis of Covid-19 Furloughs (in Hebrew)
Kalev Alexandra, Yafit Alfandari, Ayala Ginat and Tsipi Berman. (2020). Diversity Index: Ranking and Mapping the Representation and Pay Gaps of Disadvantaged Groups in the Israeli Private and Public Sector, by Geographical Area (in Hebrew)
Kalev Alexandra, Yafit Alfandari, Ayala Ginat and Hanna Kuper. (2019). Diversity Index: Ranking and Mapping the Representation and Pay Gaps of Disadvantaged Groups in the Israeli Private Sector, by Selected Area of Study (in Hebrew)
Kalev Alexandra, Gal Deutsch, Yafit Alfandari and Ayala Ginat. (2017). Diversity Index: Ranking and Mapping the Representation and Pay Gaps of Disadvantaged Groups in the Israeli Private Sector and in Higher Education Institutions (in Hebrew, PowerPoint Presentation in English)
Kalev Alexandra, Hanna Kuper, Yafit Alfandari and Ayala Ginat. (2016). Diversity Index: Ranking and Mapping the Representation and Pay Gaps of Disadvantaged Groups in the Israeli Private Sector (in Hebrew)