On hearing the words ‘segregation’ and ‘women’ in the same sentence, I immediately thought of Rosa Parks who in 1953 in Alabama, famously refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. Little would Ms Parks have thought that almost 60 years later, women would be compelled to use segregated bus services. In Israel there are over 100 routes where women have to sit at the rear of the vehicle. They often have to work in different parts of offices and use different clinics or waiting rooms for health care.

Continuing thoughts of keeping women apart and on the fringes of society, one perhaps tends to think of Islamic countries, especially when religious beliefs are involved.

So it was equal sadness and outrage that I recently realised that in Jerusalem, women are also not allowed to worship in the same place or after the same fashion of men. It is also to my shame that I didn’t know of the Women of the Wall. Having grown up in a fervently religious household where women were relegated to only being seen and not heard, it angers me greatly now to hear of the silencing of women on a national scale.

The Women of the Wall are a group of Anglo and native Israeli women who wish to worship aloud in prayer and song at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. They do not accept a Supreme Court ruling which forbids their voices to be heard. Literally and metaphorically.

This group assert the right to pray in a group in public and although small in number they are gaining international recognition. They have suffered ridicule and violence – spitting and having excrement thrown at them. At a recent monthly service at the Wailing Wall, the women were verbally attacked by a bearded, dark cloaked man shaking his fist at them and yelling “Burn in hell, you dogs”.

Anat Hoffman, a female Israeli activist who was arrested and imprisoned in August for leading a group of women in prayer at the Wailing Wall, is expecting to be heavily sentenced.

It is a curious feature, not to mention deeply rooted fear amongst the Jewish patriarchal dominating society that the female voice singing aloud is regarded as disturbingly seductive. To silence the women is an act of control. It creates a battle between the sexes; patriarchy against feminism, fundamentalism against enlightenment. It is about freedom of speech and freedom to worship.

It is fundamentally about human rights.