Semicha for Women? | Can a woman receive semicha and give halachic guidance?

I am a regular listener of Halacha Headlines, and appreciate the different perspectives that the program provides on timely topics. I felt that last week’s discussion about the Israeli supreme court’s ruling regarding the Semicha exams excluded a very important fact: Since legislation advanced by the Shas party in 2014, teachers and administrators in the Israeli education system with Semicha from the Rabbanut are paid significantly more than teachers and administrators without Rabbanut Semicha. This means that men (with semicha) and equally qualified women (without the ability to earn semicha by exam) are paid very differently for doing the exact same jobs – with those pay gaps measured to be up to 40%. Part of the supreme court’s decision was to recognize that an exam which is linked to to compensation levels and qualifications for certain jobs (many not related to work as a Posek or Rabbi) cannot discriminate based on gender. Most courts across the developed world would come to the same conclusion, based on commonly accepted legal principles. I felt that this issue of fairness and professional pay and opportunity equity would have been an important factor to have discussed with the different poskim and other experts.

I have been a longtime fan of the podcast. Recently I saw you had an episode about women getting smicha and paskening and then this week about about ai paskening/ seemingly getting smicha. You liken AI to a katan, by why is AI not a woman? Why do you think to treat AI like a male when it isn’t even human. On what basis can we liken it to a katan but not a woman? We should really look to see in YD how a monkey cannot shecht bc it’s not bar zvicha — how can anything pasken that isn’t even bar zvicha? Can a monkey pasken? If you want to say we aren’t chazal and don’t add gezeiros fine but if we let robots pasken and not our learned women it shows how we value bnos yisroel.

not that i advocate for women paskening just pointing out how you clearly assume ai is a man, and not a woman, or something else entirely.