IRAQ, WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT, 

AND PUBLIC POLICY

Sherifa D. Zuhur

December 2006

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The views expressed in this report are those of the author 

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. This report is cleared for public release; distribution 

is unlimited.

*****

This article originally was presented as “Women and 

Empowerment in Iraq” to the Democratization and Women’s 

Equity Project Research Symposium, held in London, England, at 

the Apax headquarters, November 29, 2005. I want to thank Dr. 

Gabriel Marcella, Dr. Steven Metz, and Dr. Andrew Terrill, of the 

Army War College; Apax Partners, Ltd.; the Center for Strategic 

and Policy Studies, School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of 

Jerusalem; Anat Lapidot-Firilla; Fatema Qassem, and the project 

participants. 

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ISBN 1-58487-270-5
iii

FOREWORD

The role and experience of women is not always 

considered in wartime or during stabilization and 

reconstruction operations. In Iraq, where an entirely 

new political order can only flourish with the spirit of 

democratization, it is essential to consider women’s 

needs and the obstacles they now face.

In this monograph, Dr. Sherifa Zuhur examines 

some of the difficulties that attend policy formulation on 

women in the Iraqi context. Iraqi women have identified 

the security situation and basic services as their top 

priorities. Beyond these, the issues and contours of 

family law are explained, as the future of family law in 

emerging Iraq is as yet undetermined. Along with an 

increased political presence, legal reforms together with 

educational and employment opportunities have been 

the planks of women’s changing status throughout the 

Middle East. How these are resolved will speak to the 

success of policy concerning women in Iraq.

The Strategic Studies Institute is proud to offer this 

monograph as a contribution to the coverage of issues 

of conflict, reconstruction, and democratization.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

SHERIFA D. ZUHUR is Distinguished Visiting 

Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the 

Strategic Studies Institute. She is the past-President of 

the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies, the 

largest academic group concerned with Middle Eastern 

women, and a member of numerous groups and 

networks that support women’s rights or legal status 

in the Middle East. She has been a faculty member 

at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the 

University of California, Berkeley; California State 

University, Sacramento; and The American University 

in Cairo. Her research includes Islamic movements 

and insurgencies and their attitudes toward women 

and gender, women’s legal rights and status in 

particular communities, as well as studies on war and 

conflict, and cultural issues in the Middle East. She 

has published 12 books and more than 52 articles, and 

chapters in edited books. Her most recent books are 

The Middle East: Politics, History, and Neonationalism in 

the Middle East and Gender, Sexuality and the Criminal 

Laws in the Middle East and North Africa, and recent 

military studies are Iran, Iraq and the United States: the 

New Triangle’s Impact on Sectarianism and the Nuclear 

Threat and A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the 

Future of Counterinsurgency. Dr. Zuhur holds a B.A. 

in Political Science and Arabic, a Masters in Islamic 

Studies, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History, all 

from the University of California, Los Angeles.
v

SUMMARY

Many hopeful or promissory statements about 

women’s role in the new Iraq have been made. If we 

look clearly at the many issues that Iraqi women must 

deal with, a more sober reality comes into view. The 

most immediate obstacles to progress are the security 

and economic situations. The first may be resolved 

in time, but it has an additional quotient of violent 

groups that deliberately target women and girls, and 

a secondary imposition of “Islamic” restrictions over 

them. This latter issue must be faced throughout the 

country and depends heavily upon the interpretations 

of the personal status, penal, and other legal codes as 

they address women. 

Another difficulty in understanding the way that 

violence and warfare have affected women in Iraq and 

how they are meeting current challenges is the filtering 

provided by official, media, or local sources. These also 

differ in their interpretations of policy formulation 

on women’s issues, and the degree to which one 

country, Western and powerful, can or should impact 

development and society in another Arab and Kurdish 

nation with its Muslim majority. The validity and 

efficacy of an empowerment campaign is examined here 

with reference to the views of American policymakers 

and politicians, Iraqi women and men, and Arab 

women or nongovernment organizations engaged in 

transformative projects. While even more thorough 

critiques can be found, this monograph suggests some, 

and then concentrates on the legal issues that are and 

will remain of great concern to women. 

1

IRAQ, WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT, 

AND PUBLIC POLICY

INTRODUCTION

According to the U.S. State Department, America 

officially “supports women’s empowerment in Iraq.”1

Not surprisingly, it is somewhat difficult to discern and 

describe clearly U.S. policy on this issue, and precisely 

what “empowerment,” or progress toward it, entails. 

Other than brief information on the official web site of 

the Department of State, various official and unofficial 

position papers, and statements commenting on Iraqi 

women, their status, and the relationship of that 

status to democratization in Iraq, Iraqi women surface 

occasionally in President George W. Bush’s speeches, 

particularly as they concern America’s historical role in 

“liberation.” At the 2005 State of the Union address, an 

Iraqi woman, Safia Taleb al-Suhayl, whose father was 

murdered under Saddam Hussein’s regime, embraced 

the mother of late Marine Corps Sergeant Byron 

Norwood, killed at Fallujah. President Bush later spoke 

of this incident, Safia’s pride in the new Iraq, and his 

own, also mentioning Iraqi women’s presence in the 

Iraqi Transitional Assembly.2 Women’s freedom, then, 

is thus incorporated into the transformational efforts 

of the administration in Iraq, and, in turn, in creating a 

new regional order, one more conducive to long-range 

American interests.

The effects of the “empowerment campaign” may 

be interpreted from various vantage points, including 

those of 1) American policymakers and politicians, 2) 

Iraqi women, and 3) Arab women engaged in regional 

transformative efforts, activism, or nongovernmental 
2

organizations (NGOs). This monograph does not 

focus solely on the views of Americans, and also 

refers to Iraqi and Arab women because the latter, 

like other intended subjects of public policy, are not 

its driving force, but are rather, objects of policy. For 

this reason, we see paternalistic approaches to women 

in which the contradictions between the policymakers’ 

various foreign policy goals stand out in sharp relief. 

Concurrently, disconnects between these goals and 

the needs of the population become apparent. In this 

case, enhancement of Iraqi women’s political roles was 

one of the measures taken to empower them. For this 

reason and many others, official and unofficial Iraqi 

critics, activists, and spokespersons comment on the 

question of Iraqi women’s political participation. The 

third group, Arab women, is important to consider 

because they have the lengthiest experience with social 

transformation efforts in the region. In some cases, they 

are the most outspokenly critical of efforts to improve 

Iraqi women’s condition.

Does the United States have a policy on Iraqi 

women? Can one country create and administer policy 

on socially transformative issues in another country? If 

so, then how does U.S. policy on Iraqi women fit in with 

its other policies on women in the Middle East, such as 

those in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt? What, 

if any, is the relationship between these policies and 

U.S. policies on women generally, including American 

women?

Many obstacles to Iraqi women’s empowerment 

existed prior to March 2003. Iraqi women already had 

suffered in various ways from the Iran-Iraq war (1980-

88), the 1991 Gulf War, and the years of economic boycott 

that followed.3 The two wars affected demographics; 

the large number of widows negatively impacted 
3

society, families, and women’s own aspirations, 

resources were reduced, unemployment increased, 

families sold off goods and counted themselves lucky 

when they could provide a full meal at least once a day.4

Youngsters increasingly were anxious about finishing 

their education, and many left school to work or beg 

on the street.5 Young women were being married off 

to older men who could afford the requirements of 

marriage, sometimes to settle family debts. At the same 

time, it was more difficult for young couples to marry. 

Nadje Al-Ali emphasizes that “without [a] doubt, 

Iraqi women lost some of the achievements gained 

in previous decades,”6 since their access to education 

and its benefits was so reduced, and coincided with 

the disintegration of that educational system and the 

economy overall.

As of 2006, Iraqi women face many new obstacles. 

Al-Ali hypothesizes that women “might be the biggest 

losers”7 of regime change, and more practical observers 

have asked the U.S. administration whether Iraq now 

presents a “perilous” situation for women.8 Under the 

administration of Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer, 

work on women’s status appeared to be squarely 

under the aegis of the U.S.-managed Iraqi government. 

The Office of Women’s Affairs was established in this 

period, and its staff met weekly with those of various 

government agencies, as well as Iraqi women’s groups. 

The U.S. State Department allocated $10 million in 

reconstruction funds for women to the Iraqi Women’s 

Democracy Initiative.9 Yet violence against women, for 

instance, was not addressed, and, instead, the absence 

of an Iraqi authority and the insurgency’s/resistance’s 

attacks on infrastructure were given as reasons for an 

inability to respond in full. The Ministry of Women’s 

Affairs estimated that more than 90 women became 
4

widows every day in 2006; an estimated 300,000 

women in Baghdad and eight million elsewhere in 

Iraq lack government support and income.10 In 2006, 

the transition to an Iraqi government modulated the 

response to questions about women. In official daily 

discourse both in Baghdad and Washington, one 

heard that women are essentially Iraq’s business, and 

not America’s. Simultaneously, the importance of 

women’s “rights” is being re-asserted. Language in a 

recent White House press briefing is indicative of these 

trends:

Q: In Iraq right now, there are reports of fatwas being 

issued banning women from driving, or being seen 

out alone; you’ve got women being stoned for wearing 

makeup, and professional women being murdered. And 

in his speech this morning [a reference to Prime Minister 

al-Maliki’s July visit to the United States], al-Maliki 

praised the high status of women in Iraq. Would you 

acknowledge that, in fact, the status of women in Iraq is 

perilous right now?

Mr. Snow: I don’t know that it would be perilous, 

because that would assume that the things that you talk 

about are, in fact, universal. But I will go back to what the 

Prime Minister did say, because he acknowledges that he 

says that it’s important to acknowledge [that] the rights 

chartered in the constitution will also help consolidate 

the role of women in public life and help them play a 

greater role in public life. It is clear that he thinks that 

there still is the importance of having a greater role. . . . 

It is clear that Prime Minister Maliki is devoted to the 

cause of the rights of women. And I would redirect to 

Iraqi officials specific questions about fatwas. A., I don’t 

know anything about them, and B., I think it’s their job 

to respond.

Q: The stance of many human rights groups is that what’s 

happening with women now is, in fact, worse than what 

was happening under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
5

Mr. Snow: Again, I redirect to them. I have a feeling 

. . . the Prime Minister also made the point that Iraq has 

moved to a point of elections, and not mass graves. We 

can argue this both ways, I suppose, but I think a situation 

where people are being dumped into mass graves by a 

regime that used murder as simply a way of clearing up 

what it saw as political difficulties is far different than 

one that tries to deal with its political difficulties by 

appealing to the needs and desires of the people.11

Iraqi and Arab women’s immediate concerns about 

women’s status in Iraq stem from the grave security 

situation. Both they and U.S. observers have worried 

about the increasing power of Islamist political parties 

and militias, and about the effects of other armed 

individuals assassinating, or enforcing fatwas on 

women in vigilante fashion. It is possible, however, 

for policymakers to use both concerns as an excuse 

for lack of progress on women’s issues. However, the 

U.S. administration—for better and for worse—has the 

power to influence the situation to a greater degree 

than is now being acknowledged.

Women all over the world protested when the 

Iraqi Governing Council’s Resolution 137 was being 

advanced. The resolution would have revoked the 

civil law administering personal status (matters of 

family law) in Iraq, and instead referred them to 

Islamic law, or shari`a. The background to the drama 

over Resolution 137 lay in the broad modernization of 

personal status law in Iraq that took place in the 1950s 

and 1960s, and was first manifested in 1959 in Personal 

Status Law No. 188.12 This period of reform preceded a 

regional Islamic awakening that influenced advocates 

and judges throughout the region. Clerics and religious 

parties in Iraq therefore have wanted to annul Iraq’s 

personal status law for decades, and it was at the top 
6

of their agenda after the fall of Saddam Hussein. There 

are several reasons for this:

1. Clerics [`ulama] have struggled against the 

state’s assumption of their traditional jurisdiction over 

personal status law, awqaf [endowments], and khums, 

a tithing on property all over the Muslim world, both 

because their status and incomes were at stake, and 

because they feared that Islamic morals would lapse 

without a binding legal code.

2. In Iraq, the Civil Personal Status Law finessed 

the differences between Sunni and Shi`i personal status 

codes and applied to all Iraqis, thereby infuriating 

some clerics, particularly Sunnis.

3. Islamist movements have, in many countries, 

claimed that a return to “family values” is necessary, 

and that women’s rising status as in Western societies 

is antithetical to these values. As the Islamic opposition 

movement grew in Iraq, it came to include such ideas 

about women and their domestic and reproductive 

duties. Such ideas similarly intervened—thanks to 

Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini and his followers—in 

the Islamic system formulated in Iran.

Under the Iraqi Governing Council’s chair at the 

time, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council 

for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Council voted 

on December 29, 2003 to pass Resolution 137, which 

would have replaced Iraq’s 1959 Family Law. Various 

sources report that 80 or 100 Iraqi women demonstrated 

against the resolution at al-Firdaws Square in Baghdad, 

and that thousands of women held demonstrations in 

Sulamaniyya.13 International faxes and mails poured 

into Washington and Baghdad. Under political 

pressure. L. Paul Bremer, then the highest governing 

U.S. official, vetoed the resolution. The same debate 

about women’s allegiance to the laws of their own 
7

religious sects or a uniform national law has emerged 

again in the struggle over Iraq’s Constitution, and will 

no doubt continue in the delineation of all legal codes.

The new Constitution ambiguously resurrects the 

same principles contained in Resolution 137, and since 

the degree of federalism in Iraq is as yet uncertain, 

certain regions may be able to enact their own legal 

strictures affecting women and gender relations. 

The first debate concerned whether Islam (and thus 

shari`a) was to be the source of law, or a source of law. 

Whereas many Shi`a leaders, including Ayatullah `Ali 

al-Sistani, insisted on language privileging Islam and 

shari`a, Kurdish leader and current President of Iraq, 

Jalal Talabani proclaimed, “We will never accept any 

religious government in Iraq. Never.” However, the 

majority of Iraqis supported the insertion of shari’a

principles into the Constitution, and the idea of Iraq as 

an Islamic state.14 Article 2(1) states: “Islam is the official 

religion of the state and a basic source of legislation.” 

Article 2(1)[a] adds: “No law may be passed that 

contradicts the immutable rulings of Islam. The 

Supreme Federal Court will be the determining body 

of such a conflict.” The significance of this decision for 

women is that Iraq’s civil laws could be overturned, 

and stricter versions of personal status, criminal, and 

other laws would operate in their place, most probably 

upheld in religious courts.

Arab and Muslim women outside Iraq actively 

commented on this particular outcome, as women and 

their male allies around the Muslim world had been 

working for decades to reform certain aspects of family 

and criminal law. Typically, the liberalized versions 

of family law have met strong opposition on the part 

of organized Islamist groups. Too, a contingent of 

observers (American, Arab, Muslim, and Iraqi, as well 
8

as Israeli) saw this constitutional language as proof that 

Iraq might become an Islamic theocracy, and could be 

swayed even further in this direction by pro-Iranian 

elements.15

On the other hand, the ambiguities in the Iraqi 

constitutional draft suggest other possible outcomes. 

Articles 113–122 discuss regional government, 

indicating that laws determined by specific regions can 

override federal law. However, Article 39 states: “Iraqis 

are free in their adherence to their personal status 

according to their own religion, sect, belief, and choice, 

and that will be organized by law.” On the one hand, 

this could be interpreted to mean that Iraqis are free to 

choose the applicable family law code according to their 

religion, or choice, thus giving them the opportunity 

not to be identified with their sect of birth. On the other 

hand, it simply might bind them to a religious family 

code as determined by the state. Article 14 provides 

equality before the law without discrimination based 

on gender, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, 

sect, belief, opinion, or social or economic status. Article 

16 guarantees equal opportunity to all Iraqis, placing 

the onus on the state to implement it.

Constitutions in other majority Muslim states often 

assert the equality of their citizens, for instance, those of 

Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco. Some 

also specify that citizens must not be discriminated 

against, for example, in the constitutions of Turkey, 

Mauritania, Pakistan, Algeria, Sudan, and Iraq’s prior 

interim constitution. Quite a few, then articulate the 

government’s responsibility to coordinate between 

women’s “familial duties” and their role in society.16

The Ba`th Party Constitution similarly states in Article 

38(1), “The family is the basic cell of the nation, and 

the state is responsible for protecting it, developing 
9

it, and ensuring for it the condition of happiness” 

and (3) “Marriage is a national duty and the state 

must encourage, facilitate, and supervise it.” Even in 

asserting equality, or promising protection against 

discrimination, constitutions can be without teeth if 

there is no mechanism for appeal to the constitutional 

level.

In Iraq, one also may be concerned about existing 

or emerging contradictions between constitutional 

principles and the possible discriminatory aspects of 

the penal,17 family, and commercial codes, as well as 

social welfare laws. For instance, if the penal codes 

were to follow in post-revolutionary Iran’s footsteps, 

dhiyya, [“blood payment”] could be accepted in cases 

of homicide, the alternative being a death sentence. 

The families of murdered women are entitled to half 

the dhiyya allotted to a man.18 In Syria, Egypt, Jordan, 

and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the civil penal codes 

displaced this shari`a qisas punishment (the secondary 

category of punishment under shari`a).

The United States invested in the creation of a new 

constitution for Iraq. The U.S. Government maintained 

that it was both symbolically and politically important 

to achieve agreement on a draft document despite 

some serious differences among Iraqis, because the 

constitution, like elections and the trial of Saddam 

Hussein, were events that could enhance national 

unity. Many legal experts, such as Noah Feldman, 

were involved in the constitution’s creation. However, 

it is not clear whether it will be weak, as in other 

neighboring states, outweighed by local custom, other 

laws, and state authoritarianism or a document that can 

strongly defend the principles of freedom and equality 

expressed therein; only time will tell.

For now, though, the first area of concern regarding 

women’s empowerment stems from the fact that 
10

communitarian allegiances now trump gender. 

The newly-reconstructed Iraqi political system is 

a communitarian, or confessional, representative 

model.19 Many experts criticize the insertion of 

confessionialism and sectarianism into the Iraq system. 

Imad Harb concludes, “Confessionalism, as it has 

been applied in Lebanon and as it is being advocated 

for in Iraq, is the wrong formula for sustainable and 

peaceful democratic development.”20 Confessionalism 

gone awry is essentially sectarianism, which is being 

expressed in Shi`i-Sunni violence and fears about the 

imminence of Iranian influence in Iraq.21

In the sectarian system, women are merely a subcategory of other constituencies; they are female Kurds, 

Sunnis, Shi`a, or Assyrians. Sectarian interests rather 

than gender issues take precedence. If a woman’s 

personal or gender-defined interests collide with 

those of her community, unfortunately, her needs or 

goals must defer to those of the most dominant bloc 

representing any particular community, or to a stance 

adopted by her own religious or ethnic community. 

This is, of course, not a novel phenomenon in the 

Middle East. In Israel, “women’s rights” under the 

laws of the state mean “Jewish women’s rights.” Arab 

Christian and Arab Muslim or Druze women also have 

rights, but since family law, or personal status law, is 

formulated on the basis of religion, these rights are 

constrained in various ways. Civil law presumably then 

would ameliorate the differences in rights between the 

various ethnic and religious groups in Iraq. It should be 

noted that socio-economic status is another important 

variable in Iraq, and the elites of each group have far 

more in common with each other than they do with 

either the urban or rural poor of their sect.

What is also not unique to Iraq is a situation in 

which men and women of the same confessional or 
11

ethnic group possess differing legal rights, or are 

treated differently by the state. Muslim men in nearly 

all Muslim countries except Turkey and Tunisia 

have the right to marry up to four women. Muslim 

women may marry only one man, and their grounds 

for divorce and ability to obtain child custody or 

alimony are limited severely. Men—not women—pass 

on nationality to their children (with the exception of 

Palestinian women, who recently achieved a reform 

in this area).22 On the other hand (with the exception 

of Israel), only men are required to serve in the 

militaries of the region. Algerian women participated 

in their War of Independence, but then saw their rights 

unfulfilled under the post-independence National 

Liberation Front (FLN)-dominated government. They 

were not granted veteran status, and were constrained 

by aspects of the Algerian family code.23 Similarly, 

Palestinian women were represented poorly in the 

leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization 

(PLO), and struggled with the Palestinian Authority 

to advance women’s issues. And despite Palestinian 

women’s lengthy and vigorous commitment to 

empowerment of their community, ever since the 

women’s movement’s emergence between 1904 and 

1919,24 feminists experienced new obstacles and direct 

attacks on their efforts to secularize and reform the 

law in the post-Oslo period due to concessions made 

to Islamists, or lack of PNA commitment to feminists’ 

own efforts.25

In other Middle Eastern nations, significant steps 

have been taken to empower women politically or 

legally through official or state feminism, that is, 

by rulers and government leaders—which reforms 

seemingly could not be achieved through the gradual 

process of democratization. An example is Moroccan 

King Muhammad VI’s decision to create a quota for 
12

women in the country’s Parliament. This particular 

effort proceeded, although the government experienced 

Islamist resistance to the King’s plan for wider-scale 

reforms to eliminate the negative treatment of women 

throughout society;26 in fact, Islamist parties called the 

reforms a “Zionist and Western plot against a Muslim 

nation.”27

Twentieth century modernizing rulers, like Kemal 

Ataturk of Turkey, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, or Shah 

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, promoted state-led 

reforms of women’s rights. Even where changes were 

not as dramatic or controversial as those implemented 

by these particular leaders, the state has played a very 

strong role in enlarging women’s opportunities, if not 

the popular definition of gender roles. Given this recent 

history alongside American desires for Iraqi women to 

obtain greater freedoms, why does the empowerment 

of Iraqi women appear to be more of a chimera than 

a reality? And why would Iraqis oppose measures or 

policies that would grant more equity to women? What 

is the significance of the differences in opinion among 

the three groups—Americans with interests in Iraq, 

Iraqi women, and other Arab and Muslim women—

all of whom have substantial experience working on 

women’s issues?

The “woman’s issue” is familiar terrain to Iraqis. 

The United States is not introducing a new debate, but 

is, in a way, reviving past debates and dissensions. In 

1916, the poet Jamal al-Zahawi issued a controversial 

call to expand women’s rights.28 The first women’s 

movement in Iraq, led by al-Zahawi’s sister, Asma’ 

and called the Nahda al-Nisa’, or Women’s Awakening, 

began as a club in 1923. Its members included elite 

Baghdadi women including Na`ima al-Said, wife of 

political powerhouse, Nuri al-Said Pasha, who served 
13

as Prime Minister multiple times, and Fakhriyya al-

`Askari, wife of another Prime Minister.29 Nahda alNisa’ was nationalist, elitist, and mainly focused on 

charitable activities. King Faysal favored women’s 

suffrage when in Syria, and some of his supporters 

who came to Iraq—such as Mary Wazir 30 and Paulina 

Hasun,31 editor of the first Iraqi women’s periodical—

were active on women’s behalf. This small, elite 

women’s movement is referred to frequently in the 

Ba`th Party’s rhetoric on women’s rights, along with 

citations of numbers of educated women in the pre1990 era, as evidence of Iraq’s “progressive treatment” 

of women, or as “proof” that women had much to lose 

in post-Saddam Iraq. Actually, with one exception, in 

the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), women mainly were 

excluded from political leadership until 1958. The ICP’s 

League for the Defense of Women’s Rights worked 

hard to establish literacy centers, economic projects 

for women, and created a large membership base of 

a reported 43,000. Yet thereafter, other organizations, 

at odds with the Communist Party, established rival 

women’s groups, first Kurdish, then Ba`thist. 32

The basic position of the Ba`th Party on women’s 

status was that negative aspects of it emanated 

from Arab “traditionalism” that would be reformed 

through the Party’s philosophy (the essential position 

of the Ba`th in Syria as well) and by mobilizing women 

through its youth, workers, and women’s activities. 

Indeed, under Ba`th rule, many Iraqi women did 

enter professions and worked in the public sector. 

The government, for its part, had both ideological 

and economic reasons to alter public attitudes against 

women’s rights and women’s work because of its need 

for labor. When war began with Iran in 1980, that need 

increased. Nadia Hijab noted that Arab governments 

that verbally had committed to women’s development 
14

actually were affected by manpower shortages. Yemen 

and Iraq, for instance, planned and implemented 

the integration of women into new employment. In 

contrast, Tunisia, which legislated in a progressive 

direction for women and ideologically supported their 

progress, nevertheless faced difficulties because of a 

shortage of labor opportunities.33

Hijab described governmental efforts to hire women 

in a pharmaceutical plant north of Baghdad. Because 

families in the plant’s immediate vicinity would 

not allow women to work in the plant, women from 

Baghdad were bused in, and sometimes the buses were 

attacked. The resentment and attacks ceased gradually, 

and local women eventually worked in the plant.34 In 

the 1980s, however, without membership in the Ba`th 

Party, women’s progress was limited and their fates 

uncertain if they actually opposed the government or 

were related to any group deemed opposition.

Scholars have written about a retrenchment on 

women and gender in the 1980s. While it was not as 

definitive as that, the militarism and financial strain of 

the Iran-Iraq war did produce tensions in and against 

women.35 The region-wide Islamist movements began 

to influence Iraq. In contrast, in the 1990s, when Iraqi 

Kurds attained a degree of political autonomy, they 

began to address honor killings through legal reforms 

and shelters.36 According to some experts, Iraqi law 

had not moved into this reforming direction for fear of 

alienating Saddam Hussein’s tribal allies.37

Reasons for opposition to the empowerment of 

women range from lack of awareness of the issues 

at stake and deliberate misinformation provided by 

Islamist or other parties to the aforementioned fact that 

political advantage—previously obtained through the 

Ba`th Party and personal connections [wasta]—has been 
15

replaced with a sectarian model of politics. This model 

still relies on personal connections, but they are new 

ones, dependent on the emerging power constellations. 

And despite official assertions that a democracy cannot 

exist where 51 percent of the population’s rights 

are ignored, Iraqi women’s problems definitely are 

deemed secondary; they are subsidiary to the needs of 

stabilization and state-building, rather than being an 

integral expression of them.

Illustrating just how “important” or unimportant 

women’s issues are to the new Iraqi government, the 

budget of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is now 

$2,000 a month, representing an increase of its 2005 

budget of half that sum.38 Other ministries operate 

with far more robust means, typically in the millions. 

The shortfall means that the Women’s Affairs Ministry 

applies for grant funding, which it has received from 

the United Nations Development Fund for Women 

(UNIFEM). Saweba Nasraddin, the Ministry’s DirectorGeneral, explained that women’s affairs are not a 

priority for the government.39 Other complaints have to 

do with governmental red tape that impedes broader 

approaches to attacks on women’s physical security, 

including kidnapping for sex trafficking and physical 

attacks on or intimidation of women not wearing hijab. 

When all this becomes the “business of Iraqi officials,”40

we see a situation where Americans essentially are 

using cultural relativism or excuses of Iraqi inefficiency 

to explain the lack of progress on women’s behalf.

It is as if the U.S. Government planners are cognizant of women and “women’s issues” as a component of 

social and political development and democratization, 

yet they do not fully recognize women’s or gender 

issues as constituting a vital element of “security” or 

the “security environment.” Women are extras on the 
16

set, not lead actors; the focus of occasional specialized 

articles, not daily news. This is so despite a good deal 

of discussion about how “fish (insurgents) swim in 

friendly waters” and growing concerns about women 

suicide bombers or insurgents. Take, for instance, the 

cases of the two women who killed 36 students and 

officers and wounded 72 at Baghdad’s police academy 

on December 6, 2005,41 or Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, 

an Iraqi would-be suicide bomber, whose accomplices 

and husband bombed two hotels and set off a car bomb 

in Amman on November 9, 2005.42 It is telling that in 

coverage of al-Rishawi, the media tended to portray 

her as being a tool of her husband. A subsequent 

report explained her motivation as revenge for her 

brothers.43 She is not, however, an anomaly. Women 

were subsequently arrested in a terror plot in Saudi 

Arabia. Just prior to the attack in Jordan, two Egyptian 

women were involved in a shootout with Egyptian 

security services in Cairo, and the attack on the 

police academy has been followed by other incidents 

involving women.

While family connections are probably a significant 

factor in explaining women’s allegiances, there is also 

a lengthy history of Muslim women’s participation in 

jihad.44 Thus today’s bombers and opponents of the 

West and the new government in Iraq might not be 

amenable to the buy-off strategy thus far envisioned 

in efforts to reach out to Iraqi women and ensure the 

success of stabilization efforts.

Another young woman, now 18, told a reporter that 

she was kidnapped from an orphanage, sent to brothels 

in Samarra and Mosul, and then sent back to Baghdad 

with a suicide belt and instructions to bomb the office 

of a Khadamiya cleric. She turned herself into the police 

and is in prison.45 She is thus simultaneously a victim 
17

of the security breach and a pawn in the continuing 

violence.

Various problems arise when governments 

(American, or Iraqi) define issues that affect women 

without seeking women’s input or crafting policies 

responsive to that input. Feminist policy studies have 

identified these problems as gender-blind strategies 

(policies that would benefit men are assumed to 

benefit women equally), or universalist or regionally 

based approaches (measures that have benefited 

women elsewhere—either outside or inside the 

region—are applied without special attention to the 

Iraqi situation). It has been difficult to survey and 

interpret women’s input over the violence from 2004 

to the time of writing. Earlier studies, conducted 

before the apex of the insurgency, showed that women 

were prioritizing basic needs like water, electricity, 

and security ahead of educational or political rights. 

In addition, income is especially important to women 

without their traditional male breadwinners. All of the 

items that women prioritized are essential to physical 

survival. Actually, one study suggests46 that once these 

needs are met, women would support strongly the 

lesser-prioritized issues. That may be true, or it may 

illustrate the way that a discourse about empowerment 

is shaped by government-funded research, employing 

all three key groups: Iraqi women, Arab women, and 

U.S. representatives.

A prevailing ambiguity in U.S. approaches to Iraqi 

or other Middle Eastern women should come as no 

great surprise. Americans—both at home and abroad—

frequently assert or assume that “their” women 

are more liberated than other women. European 

politicians and missionaries in the Middle East made 

such assertions in the 19th century, even though 
18

European women, in fact, had not attained rights they 

possess today. It is worth remembering that women’s 

rights were an afterthought to American democracy; 

women achieved suffrage only after a difficult 72-

year struggle (from the Seneca Falls Convention in 

1848 to 1920). Women gained additional educational 

and employment rights and more opportunities in the 

private sector since the 1960s as a result of the American 

women’s movement, which focused efforts on women’s 

education and health; developing theories of gender 

and power relations, community action strategies, and 

political representation. Few of women’s subsequent 

achievements would have been realized had it not been 

for concomitant legal reforms that inspired affirmative 

action policies, making it possible for women to sue for 

discrimination under Title IX. In short, public policy 

alongside activism was highly effective in empowering 

American women.

Beyond the fact that Americans might prefer to 

see themselves or “their” women as more liberated—

thereby underscoring the democratic nature of their 

society—the fact remains that international political 

research, including security and military studies, gives 

very little attention to women and gender. Women’s 

historic exclusion and limitations within Western 

militaries are now at an intermediary stage. There is no 

space in this monograph to elaborate on this issue, but 

one irony is that, due to concerns about media reports 

of American insensitivity to Iraqi gender arrangements, 

the U.S. military has loosened its own combat rules 

for women. In one example, Marine Corps rules 

that prohibited women from participating in “direct 

ground combat operations” did not prevent a woman 

leading a support mission from traveling alongside 

combat units.47 The U.S. military also sends women 

members of search teams into Iraqi homes, where their 
19

presence is intended to reassure Iraqi women that the 

U.S. military will not damage their “honor.”48 This 

was a policy response to the strident critiques of U.S. 

treatment of Iraqi women emerging from the violations 

of detainee’s rights Abu Ghraib prison and which 

continued in stories of detainees in secret prisons or 

facilities. What has come of these encounters between 

American and Iraqi women also are very revealing. 

The American women participating in these efforts are 

somewhat unique to begin with as a minority within the 

military. Without the language skills to communicate 

with Iraqi women, their impressions of Iraqi society 

may be confused and blurred by the immediacy and 

danger of home entries. As with American women 

who deployed with the military in Saudi Arabia during 

Operation DESERT STORM, by and large, many see 

Iraqi society as oppressive of women.

A U.S. POLICY AND ORIENTATION 

TO WOMEN IN IRAQ

The State Department quotes President Bush in 

his remarks on U.S. global promotion of women’s 

rights: “Human rights are defined by a constitution; 

they’re defended by an impartial rule of law, they’re 

secured in a pluralistic society” in which the “advance 

of women’s rights and the advance of liberty are 

ultimately inseparable.”49 This same Fact Sheet lists 

political achievements for women in Iraq (numbers of 

Ministerial posts and Transitional National Assembly 

[TNA] seats) along with other U.S.-led efforts for 

Middle Eastern women, including funding for specific 

“training” programs. Typical examples of these are 

the United States Institute for Peace’s Professional 

Training Program on July 14, 2004; a 1-day training on 

conflict resolution sponsored by the Women’s Alliance 
20

for a Free and Democratic Iraq and the Iraqi Women’s 

Caucus; or the American Bar Association’s early 2004 

judicial “training” in Amman, which included Iraqi 

attendees, sessions on micro-lending, and other public 

efforts. Iraqi-focused NGO literature relates success 

stories of Iraqi women along with “challenges” they 

continue to face, outlining the positive outcomes 

first.50

Both in President Bush’s brief remarks and in the 

summary provided by the NGO Women for Women 

International, as well as earlier and subsequent State 

Department postings concerning the Middle East 

Partnership Initiative under the direction of Principal 

Deputy Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Cheney (created 

in 2002) and the Greater Middle East Initiative 

(formally established at the G-8 summit at Sea Island, 

Georgia, in 2004), a vision of change for Middle Eastern 

women along a certain trajectory is being promoted. 

At one end of the imagined spectrum is the West; Iraq 

and Afghanistan lie somewhere in the middle; and 

countries like the reluctant Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 

are at the negative end of the spectrum. The linkage of 

women’s rights to democracy’s emergence is sometimes 

provided by offering a contrast as Elizabeth Cheney 

did in June 2005:

Our enemies are offering a vision of the world in which 

women are no better than slaves or chattel; in which 

fathers and brothers can murder their female relatives 

for violating the family honor; in which little girls can’t 

go to school, and can be forced to marry at 9 or 10 or 11. 

The women of the Broader Middle East will not stand for 

this and are fighting to turn their nations’ faces toward 

the future. America is proud and honored to stand with 

them.51
21

In addition to the wartime lack of security and 

employment for women, Iraqi women face many 

of the same obstacles as other Muslim women on 

that imagined spectrum of “status.” The U.S. State 

Department initiatives have focused primarily on 

economic aid to women or projects led by NGOs. This 

focus is not wrong, but as a whole, the development 

model, like the work of thousands of NGOs in the 

region, carries with it many of the same external vs. 

internal, Western-oriented vs. local tensions. Neither 

of the two large U.S. initiatives mentioned are Iraqspecific, or solely aimed at women’s issues, and the 

Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) has received 

more attention concerning its support of Arab 

“liberals” or “democrats.” In Iraq, there appears to 

be little coordination between economic projects for 

women and the aims for enhanced political and legal 

rights. Iraqi and Arab feminists, Western feminists, 

democracy advocates, and some U.S. policymakers, in 

addition to economic development, have placed much 

emphasis on legal reform because, through the law, 

the state asserts control over family and society. For 

that very reason, Iraqi women previously felt that the 

earlier personal status reforms of previous decades did 

not go far enough.52 Now they are concerned they will 

face further setbacks in this area that may neutralize 

any economic gains or those in the public sphere. It 

is worth reviewing some of the background of the 

various legal issues involved.

Personal Status. 

Debates concerning the laws of personal status 

emerged in the 19th century, when the practice of 

female seclusion, veiling of the face and covering of the 
22

body under the abaya, and lack of education for women 

were questioned. The Ottoman Empire issued two 

imperial edicts allowing women to sue for divorce on 

limited grounds in 1915, and codified family law in the 

Ottoman Law of Family Rights 2 years later. Women 

could then obtain a divorce under certain conditions: 

if they were deserted, mistreated, denied financial 

maintenance, or their husbands were imprisoned 

or had a serious contagious disease.53 Decades later, 

family law judges in Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s tried 

to use the law to promote modernization of society. 

Those contributing to the legal code, and adjudicating 

at that time, were considered fairly progressive.

Polygamy. Under the previous Iraqi law, men had to 

obtain judicial permission for an additional marriage, 

which judges were supposed to grant only if they 

believed that the petitioning man could treat his wives 

“equally” as specified in the Qur’an.54 There was no 

enforcement of this law in the sense that bigamy is 

punished in the United States. If family law courts are 

established according to Hanafi or Ja`fari codes, then 

under the new legal system, men could marry multiple 

wives at will, perhaps without even informing their 

first wife. It is argued that polygamous households 

represent only 2 to 11.5 percent of all households in the 

Middle East, yet there is evidence that polygamy has 

increased in Lebanon, Jordan, among the Palestinians, 

and is typically higher in the Gulf than in other regions. 

Women and children of polygamous marriages may 

suffer psychologically, or from neglect or lack of family 

resources.55

Divorce. Iraqi law reformed Hanafi law, in that it 

introduced the right of women to initiate a divorce on the 

basis of discord, injury, nonpayment of maintenance, 

or other reasons.56 The reforms addressed other 

schools of shari`a as well, in restricting a man’s ability 
23

to easily divorce his wife, when angry or intoxicated 

for instance. While the wife had to designate a man to 

act on her behalf in presenting her case to the court, it 

was nevertheless an improvement. Adultery could be 

grounds for divorce, no matter where it was committed 

(many codes say that the man’s adultery must be 

committed in the family home for it to constitute 

grounds).57 In Iraq, the law was notable for requiring 

maintenance to be paid to the divorcee, even if she was 

considered nashiza [wayward], and with Resolution 

No. 77 of 1983, she could remain in the family home 

for 3 years if she had not initiated the divorce, was not 

nashiza, and had no home of her own. The earlier law 

was imperfect, since men could divorce at will, without 

cause, or could resume the marriage (if the talaq, or 

repudiation, had not reached its final, irrevocable 

stage) without the wife’s consent, and because many 

women did not know that they could add stipulations 

into their marriage contracts.

Custody. Under Hanafi law, a father obtained custody 

of his son at age seven, and a daughter at age nine. 

The Ja`afari madhhab (the Shi`i legal school) allowed 

fathers custody of sons at age 2 and daughters at age 

7. If a divorced mother remarried, the children went 

to the father, as they did if she was determined unfit 

or did not care for them. The previous Personal Status 

Code was amended in 1978 so that the mother retained 

custody of both boys and girls until the age of 10 years, 

extendable to 15 years. At 15 years of age, the child 

could choose which parent he wished to live with.58 In 

1987, another change addressed the custody claims of 

mothers who remarried, not necessarily granting the 

children to fathers, but the courts were to consider the 

children’s best welfare.59 The main difficulty with laws 

that might move in the other direction (toward historic 
24

interpretations of shari`a) has to do with the mother’s 

loss of custody and the father’s propensity to remarry 

or to resort to his own family for childcare. Eleana 

Gordon, Senior Vice-President of the Foundation for 

the Defense of Democracies, suggests that Iraqi women 

who have in the abstract supported shari`a, are unaware 

of what it would mean vis-à-vis issues like custody.60

Temporary Marriage. Mut`a, or temporary marriage, 

is available to Shi`i men in Iraq. The historic practice 

has operated in centers of Islamic education both in 

Iran and Iraq, where clerical students reside for years, 

and to service pilgrims and other religious travelers.61

Its growth parallels the increasing popularity of 

temporary, or less formal, marriages for Sunni Muslims 

elsewhere with `urfi and mizyar forms of marriage. A 

woman has fewer rights within a mut`a marriage; for 

instance, she may not inherit from her husband or claim 

maintenance. It is often a form of economic survival for 

divorceés and widows, and has become very popular 

with men since the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule, 

when it was punishable with fines or prison terms. 

Salama Al-Khafaji, an Islamist Shi`i political leader, 

supports shari`a, but called the re-emergence of mut’a

an “unhealthy phenomenon” because it allows men to 

exploit women.62

Crimes of Honor and Kidnapping. At issue in general 

is the continuing valuation placed on virginity and 

male control of female sexuality. This means that 

women still are encouraged strongly to marry instead 

of pursuing careers and advanced education. Others 

resort to hymen replacement or subterfuge to maintain 

their “honor.” Crimes of honor occur when women 

attempt to escape from arranged marriages, or are 

caught in or suspected of extramarital affairs. Further, 

marital kidnapping is practiced in Iraq as in the Levant; 
25

this can be a way of eloping, or alternatively, it can 

involve coercion.

The Iraqi Personal Status Code was similar to those 

of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan in that it allowed a man 

who committed murder due to “provocation” [of the 

victim], if she was one of his “female ascendants,” 

to have his sentence reduced. Reform campaigns in 

Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt have tackled similar 

sentence reduction loopholes there. Islamists in Jordan 

stridently opposed the reform. Honor crimes remain a 

problem in Iraq,63 particularly as no special resources 

have been assigned to them. The cultural resort of young 

girls is to avoid boys altogether, just as women have to 

be careful about where they are seen and with whom 

they interact. In other social groups, women might not 

face death, but reduced marriage opportunities.64

Criminal kidnappings became a huge problem in 

Iraq after 2003, all the more so because the honor of 

the victim is compromised. A legal issue arises because 

many family codes include the idea that a kidnapper 

who marries his victim (or a rapist) is absolved of his 

crime. It is not clear if Iraqi legists might revisit this 

idea. In 2003, Human Rights Watch addressed the issue 

of kidnapping, rapes, and women who were staying 

home to avoid such violence.65 The situation has not 

improved, but violence against men and women has 

increased.

Age of Marriage. Increases in the legal age of marriage 

were thought to help address the problem of forced 

marriages and maternal (mortality), as well as afford 

girls an opportunity to matriculate from secondary 

schooling. Iraqi law had set the age of marriage at 18; 

but according to a Supreme Court ruling in 1978, with 

a judge’s consent, persons as young as 15 could be 

married.66 Those who argue that women’s status was 

higher under Saddam Hussein than now and refer to 
26

the age of marriage at 18, are not always aware of the 

1978 change. The idea was to defer to existing tribal 

practice (the argument being that families will marry 

girls off at 15 in any case, so the state might as well 

legalize prevailing practice). This change reflected 

Saddam Hussein’s attitude, when he said in response 

to an earlier (1976) draft to reform family law, “When 

we deal with legal issues pertaining to women, we 

should be sensitive to . . . the experience of not only this 

country, but to the Arab nation as a whole . . . We must 

ensure that our nation . . . comprehends our steps.”67

Whether higher marriage ages decreased instances 

of enforced marriage or not is quite difficult to 

determine. Arranged marriages are a norm in Arab 

societies, and endogamous marriages are preferred. 

It is not clear how prevalent cousin marriage is in 

Iraq; elsewhere in the region, urban centers like Beirut 

showed the lowest instances, while rural areas had the 

highest numbers. In Iraq, as in other Arab countries, an 

increasing number of couples at least partially arranged 

their own marriages. The challenge for modernizing 

governments like Iraq or Syria was to come up with 

legal procedures of registration which would make 

it possible for couples to marry even without their 

families approval, and protect women’s rights in the 

event of divorce.

During the Iran-Iraq war, it is thought that the age 

of marriage fell as it did in the 1990s when families 

married off daughters to obtain bride prices. On the 

other hand, marriage became more difficult for those 

without means. In Iraq, as in much of the Arab world, 

marriage is probably the single highest expense in a 

person’s life. Unlike American couples, who may start 

out in a simple apartment and acquire household goods 

and property only after their careers are underway, 

Iraqis provision for marriage at the outset, and the 
27

dowry, furniture, apartment, and household goods 

are expected to last the duration of the couples’ lives if 

they are of modest means. Marriages are not contracted 

until all of these expenses are negotiated, as well as the 

engagement and marriage celebration itself, the mahr

(dower, or bride price), and jewelry for the bride.

Inheritance or Succession. Iraq’s previous law was 

greatly contested because it addressed the possible 

exclusion of daughters to less closely related male heirs 

(not brothers, but cousins or uncles) from their parents’ 

estates as had taken place under (Sunni) Hanafi law. 

The 1959 law was amended in 1963, basically drawing 

on the Shi’i system of classifying heirs and the Sunni 

system for distributing shares of an estate.68 The 1978 

amendment of the law strengthened Iraqi daughters’ 

ability to inherit (if there were no sons).69 What is at 

stake now are women’s rights in this area, if regions 

choose to go with sect-based family law and courts, 

and if Iraq does not enact a civil law of inheritance/

succession under a “civil” personal status code. In 

particular, Sunni female heirs could see their shares 

legally claimed by male relatives if shari`a courts 

supervise such matters in areas like Anbar province.

Guardianship. A Ba`thist-reformed law made it 

possible for only the father to serve as a woman’s 

guardian, and only of a minor. However, the 

guardian could not stand in the way of a marriage. A 

reinstatement of the guardian’s function could hold 

back women’s independence, for instance, if it were 

required for divorces or marriages.

Other Physical Security Issues.

Violent Attacks and Assassinations. Women, including 

politicians, have been killed for political motives and 
28

because they are women who dare to take on leadership 

or visibility in owning a business. Numerous physicians 

and professors70 have been attacked, kidnapped, and, 

in fact, the universities and colleges had difficulty 

opening in the fall of 2006 as so many faculty were 

afraid to return to their jobs or have gone into exile, 

both men and women.71 It was hoped that Ramadan 

of 2006 would provide a cooling-off period so the 

academic year could resume because inter-sectarian 

violence claimed many lives in August and September. 

Unfortunately, the upsurge in violence continued 

through the month of Ramadan. About half the staff 

were missing; women teachers were ordered to wear 

Islamic dress, militias intimidated female students, 

and attendance plummetted.72 In addition, Islamist 

insurgents and vigilantes have attacked working 

women, those cooperating with Americans or the new 

Iraqi government, and women not wearing hijab73 or 

driving. In some areas, followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, 

and even members of police forces in certain southern 

cities, have imposed the full veil (not only hijab, also 

abaya), segregation of the genders, and prohibitions 

on music and dancing,74 which led to attacks on female 

(as well as male) musicians.

Female Circumcision. Female circumcision, referred 

to by many women’s groups as female genital mutilation (FGM), is practiced in certain areas of northern 

Kurdish Iraq and southern Iraq (where we have little 

information about it). In Iraqi-Kurdistan, the German 

NGO WADI found that a much larger proportion of 

women were circumcised in 40 villages of the German 

area where they were working than anyone had 

alluded to previously (907 of 1,544 women and girls, 

or 60 percent).75 As with the preservation of virginity 

until marriage, FGM is believed a good tradition, as it 
29

controls both female sexuality and the designation of 

paternity; women as well as men support the practice 

which is, in fact, injurious to women’s health and 

psychological well-being. The German group uses 

mobile-team doctors and is supported by a U.S. Agency 

for International Development (USAID) campaign 

against FGM. Villagers in Pizhdar told activists that 

if they do not circumcise their daughters, “even the 

water she carries back from the well will be impure 

(haram).” In 2001, some liberal clerics in Sulaymaniyah 

agreed to issue a fatwa against FGM, and the medical 

team members began carrying copies of the fatwa with 

them.76

Beatings/Domestic Violence. We have little information about domestic violence in Iraq, but anecdotal 

information suggests that women are at risk because 

of men’s insistence on their authority in the home. This 

traditionally has been bolstered by Quranic reference 

to husbands’ or guardians’ authority over women 

[qawawun] and right to beat them as stated in Surah 4: 

34. Essentially, beatings are just one mode of domestic 

violence, whereas honor killings represent a different 

mode. Domestic violence is not legislated against 

specifically in other Arab states, however assault is, 

and traditionally a woman could ask her own family 

for support or mediation with a husband who beat 

her. Beatings have been cited as reasons for seeking 

shari`a divorce in Iraq. Civil legal recourse for beatings 

usually is not sought. There are also many reports of 

self-immolations by Kurdish girls, which they carry 

out to resist enforced marriages and to express other 

grievances.77

Rights to Employment. It is not clear if a reinstatement 

of shari`a might threaten a woman’s ability to be 

employed by requiring her to have her husband’s 
30

permission or discouraging or forbidding certain types 

of employment. In post-revolutionary Iran, women 

were forbidden to serve as judges. The Sudanese 

government discourages women from being surgeons, 

while the Saudi government allows women in some 

fields (typically health and education), yet not in 

petrochemical engineering, nor, to date, in the foreign 

service, though it was announced that women might 

provide administrative assistance in the latter area. 

Technically, the problem is working in mixed-gender 

environments.

Freedom of Dress. Research on the issues of public 

space, harassment, and dress has focused primarily on 

the hijab, or veil, because a wave of new veiling coincided with a growth in religiosity, Islamist movements, 

and activism all over the Arab Middle East.78 This 

research has demonstrated that dress has powerful 

social, political, and religious meanings sometimes 

considered so crucial that the state will step in to 

discourage the new veiling, or as in Tunisia and Turkey, 

make it illegal for public sector employees, or in the other 

direction, to require an additional covering as in Saudi 

Arabia, where the black abaya is worn. Women wear 

the abaya in many areas of Iraq, sometimes in addition 

to the hijab. Not only has the hijab not prevented men 

from harassing women in public space, it has served to 

increase the teasing, taunting of, or equating unveiled 

women with immoral or Western attitudes.

For at least a decade prior to 2003, men began to 

require their wives to wear abaya in addition to hijab, 

and to restrict their daughters and wives from wearing 

trousers.79 In some cases, women chose this dress 

themselves. Recent attacks on the basis of dress continue. In June 2006, two young Iraqi women who were 

not wearing hijab were attacked in Baghdad, dragged 
31

off, and their heads were shaved. The newspaper, alSharq al-Awsat, reported that a non-Muslim woman not 

wearing hijab had her clothes torn off at the University 

of Basra.80 Other reports of women’s belief that they 

must wear hijab in Basra,81 and also in al-Kut, can be 

confirmed by the author. 

Freedom of Movement in Public Space/Driving. Out of 

fear of attacks on the unveiled, and assassinations and 

kidnappings, Iraqi women’s freedom of movement has 

been constrained. In addition to kidnapping for ransom, 

there is the phenomenon of women being forced into 

prostitution or exported to other countries where men 

buy them from their kidnappers. These gender-based 

threats come along with the gender-blind dangers 

from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), military 

operations, and suicide attacks that have killed Iraqis 

on buses, in cars, and in mosques.

In addition, there are reports of vigilantes 

threatening women who drive automobiles. Women 

may drive in most Muslim countries, yet not in Saudi 

Arabia. However, as a result of the Saudi ban, many 

more devout or Islamist militants in Iraq have begun 

insisting that women should not drive. In Amariyya, 

Yarmouk, and some other Sunni areas, women were 

ordered not to go out after mid-day, not to drive, and 

not to walk with men.82 A few days after fliers appeared 

ordering women not to drive in Amariyya, the body of 

a woman wearing hijab was found; locals believe she 

had been driving.

The legal basis for any such restrictions comes not 

from Iraqi civil law, but rather from the shari`a principle 

that women should travel—and these are supposed to 

be long distances (journeys of more than 1 day and 

night)—only with a mahram, or a male relative of a 

certain degree of consanguinity. While women drivers 
32

are banned in Saudi Arabia, there was no official fatwa 

on the matter until after Saudi women held a driving 

demonstration during the 1991 Gulf War. Elsewhere, 

their driving is legal. Many salafis disapprove of 

women’s driving, and increasing numbers of women 

in the Gulf and elsewhere do not drive today.

Political Rights and Representation.

Women attained the right to vote and run for office 

in Iraq by 1980. According to some sources, women 

held 20 percent of political positions under the Ba`th, a 

high proportion compared to other Arab countries. The 

most controversial issue regarding women’s political 

participation since 2003 has had to do with the creation 

and maintenance of a quota of 25 percent in Iraq’s 

Parliament to be held by women. Women activists 

would have preferred a higher percentage, and more 

key positions filled by women.

Democracy “experts,” as well as proponents of 

the clash of civilization theory at the U.S. National 

Security Council and other agencies, argue that cultural 

impediments to democratization exist in Muslim and 

Arab societies. The phenomenon of men subjugating 

other men, who, in turn, subjugate women, is reiterated 

in position papers published by think tanks and 

NGOs.83 In the studies that target either the Muslim 

or Arab worlds, sometimes confusing the two, the 

critique is that authoritarianism (as in the former Iraq 

and Syria), totalitarianism (as in Iran), or acceptance 

of an elite royal class (as in Saudi Arabia) characterize 

political behavior. Therefore, while improving women’s 

condition—granting democracy to Iraqi people and 

not only to Iraqi men—is important; Iraq’s resistance 

to democracy also can serve to explain the failure of 

any efforts that are implemented.
33

Political rights include suffrage and women’s rights 

to run for office or to hold appointed positions of power 

in government. Political empowerment for women 

is an essential component of general empowerment, 

because without politicians and officials who consider 

the effects of various policies, laws, and measures on 

women’s status, no coherent headway toward social 

change or reform can be made. It has been assumed 

that more women with increased political power will 

work toward women’s empowerment.

Women in Iraq have pressed for 40 percent of seats 

and representation in the highest offices of the land. Even 

though the U.S. administration disagrees in principle 

with quotas, they ensure Iraqis women’s political 

representation; however, there are disagreements 

between women leaders who define themselves as 

“secularists” and those who call themselves “Islamists.” 

A major issue is their respective attitudes toward the 

future role of shari`a in Iraq.84

Backlash against women’s rights has emerged in 

Iraq, bringing with it the chilling number of murdered 

women, as well as the many kidnappings and rapekidnappings that took place in the post-invasion 

period.85 It is now hoped that the backlash can be 

contained by political bargains. However, such bargains 

without a system of law that supports women’s rights 

will not bring about improvement in women’s lives. 

Equally true is that bargains and legal reform will not 

accomplish much in the current state of lack of security. 

With all three elements—containment of backlash, legal 

protections, and greater security—moving in different 

directions, as well as the provision of basic services, 

Iraqi women might see a brighter future.

It does not seem that reform is doomed in Iraq, 

nor does it represent quite the same dilemma as in 
34

Saudi Arabia, where nearly everyone defines reform 

as a dangerous path, or in Gwen Okruhlik’s words, 

a slippery slope at the bottom of which neo-salafist 

insurgents and religious conservatives take over the 

state.86 It appears that the United States essentially 

accepts the Saudi claim that gradual change is 

preferable; whether it will diminish its commitment 

to the empowerment of Iraqi women is still an open 

question.

This question transcends Iraq, extending to all 

areas—even the West—where conservative Muslim 

and Islamist populations argue for a nonuniversalist 

discourse of gender. In the West, immigrants are 

expected to assimilate to the gender and cultural norms 

of countries like France, the United Kingdom, and the 

United States. Similarly, Israel prefers that “its” Arabs, 

or Palestinians inside the Green Line, reflect Israeli 

norms, at least to some degree. The consequence—

tensions between Western gender norms and those 

of the immigrant or subject communities—have not 

always produced changes beneficial to women. Susan 

Okin and Katha Pollitt assert that multiculturalism is 

bad for women in the West. Then is democracy good 

for women outside the West?87 If democracy in Iraq 

empowers its multiculturalist orientation and inherent 

relativism, bringing about differing attitudes toward 

gender—including stricter, less reformed ones—will it 

neccesarily benefit women?

The United States wanted Iraq to serve as a keystone 

and exemplar of democracy, an inspiration to reformers 

and Arab or Muslim democrats in neighboring nations. 

This desire was expressed by neoconservative and 

liberal opponents of President Bush alike. For example, 

Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Senator from 

California whose constituency is both pro-Israel and 

progressive and consciously feminist, made Iraq and 
35

Afghanistan the centerpieces of her 2005 International 

Women’s Day address: “We all know that Iraq can 

only complete a peaceful transition to a country based 

on the rule of law, human rights, and democracy with 

the full participation of women . . .”

Feinstein calls for vigilance and encourages Iraqis 

to put women’s participation in the new Iraq “at the 

top of their agenda.” She cites the Women for Women 

International’s 2004 survey, finding that Iraqi women 

are hopeful and perceive a strong role for themselves in 

their “new nation,” e.g., “They want legal and political 

rights, and want no restrictions on education”; “It is 

the duty of the United States to assist Iraqi women in 

realizing these goals, and I encourage my colleagues to 

continue to support . . .”; as well as calls for continued 

funding for women’s initiatives in Iraq.88

Since then, the ambiguous language in the Iraqi 

Constitution was set, violence has continued, and 

women’s lives are still quite far from secure. A great 

many meetings have been held on the subject of women, 

and there is both good news and bad news in the field. 

A major conference was held in Baghdad attended by 

about 350 women, where the attendees tried to keep 

the issue of women’s status alive.

Some 30 members of the Iraqi Parliament (275 

in total) signed a declaration asking for the rights of 

women. The declaration, submitted in June 2006, 

states that Iraqi women are subjected to humiliating 

practices. It calls for the Ministry of Justice to look into 

charges of inequality or discrimination, for schools to 

stop forcing girls to wear hijab or abaya, and for police 

officers to respect women’s rights.89 The language of 

the proposal, that of Shatha al Abousi, states: “This 

state [Iraq] should be built on respect for each other’s 

rights,” and even the headline of the article reporting 

this action, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s 
36

pledge in the United States to improve women’s rights; 

“Minister’s Vow Lifts Veil on Iraqi Women’s Rights” is 

very much in accord with Arab women’s modernizing 

vision of a state that opens doors for women and of 

reform through state-sponsored political action.

Women need to be reintegrated into the public 

sector, but as yet, this has not happened on the scale 

that it should have. Quite a bit of emphasis has been 

put on bringing women into the private sector because 

women-owned businesses can receive contracts 

through special programs. For instance, the U.S. 

Army’s Project and Contracting Office (PCO) tried 

to solicit bids from such businesses. To that end, it 

created a database to identify potential beneficiaries of 

sub-contracts via companies that train and then hire 

Iraqi women. It reports that 250 contracts with a value 

totaling more than $250 million have been granted to 

Iraqi women-owned businesses. Spirit of America is 

bringing computer training and daycare to women’s 

centers and is setting up sewing opportunities. USAID 

is offering micro-financing and training in accounting, 

management, financing, and entrepreneurship, and 

the PCO has been offering training for women in the 

Ministries of Public Works and Water Resources and 

the municipalities.90 Here the progress is tracked—as 

in so many other programs like the State Department’s 

Democracy Initiative—through training hours. We 

do not know if this translates into more income or 

employment for women on the basis of hard data, 

but it should. For Arab or Muslim women activists—

many of whom have been involved in NGO activity 

in Iraq or write about it as journalists—Iraqi women’s 

empowerment is emblematic of a broader regional 

struggle between violence and civility, neocolonialism 

and globalization, and indigenous political organiza-
37

tion. These women take various positions on the validity 

of Islamist gender models and their role in Iraq. Like 

American or official Iraqi activists on behalf of women, 

they have been influenced by a positivist, rationalist 

approach to modernization. Those who are feminists 

(not all are) write about the need for empowerment 

through grassroots organization, and not merely as a 

consequence of state-granted reforms. This sentiment 

is an analytical response to the lack of enthusiasm on 

the part of the “masses”—or today’s “Arab street”—

for gender-based reforms.

Some of these women are strong opponents of the 

American presence in Iraq. Haifa Zangana argued 

that Iraqi women cared very little about Resolution 

137, and that was why only 100 women, mostly elites, 

demonstrated against it. She saw women barely 

coping with the lack of electricity and security as well, 

most unemployed, though many had worked for the 

public sector under Saddam Hussein. One constraint 

that few mention is the requirement of submitting a 

recommendation form issued by one of the political 

parties in the Iraqi Governing Council. Zangana’s niece, 

a biologist, refused to get one, so she was excluded 

from employment now as she was under the Ba`th, 

when one needed that party’s permission. Zangana 

therefore concludes that women’s lack of enthusiasm 

about feminist reforms, and pessimism about their own 

government is a form of passive resistance against the 

American project of empowerment.91

More recently, Zangana wrote passionately about 

female “security detainees” in Iraqi prisons or detention 

centers whose existence is not acknowledged in U.S. 

official sources.92 Groups such as the Association 

of Muslim Scholars and jihadists have decried the 

capture and torture of Iraqi women, and journalist Jill 

Carroll’s captors demanded their release. The detainee 
38

issue emanates from evidence of serious abuses at 

Abu Ghraib prison and subsequent charges by former 

prisoners and officials. The U.S. position contends that 

abuses occurred, but they are being addressed now. 

Further changes concern rapes of Iraqi women.93

To conclude, women’s empowerment is a complex 

concept that implies social transformation in a linear 

progression. It is frequently and facilely expressed in 

public policy statements, yet far less easily achieved. 

For American policymakers, empowerment implies 

movement from Iraqi practices, ideas, and conditions 

to those of American women. According to the limited 

data we have, many Iraqi women believe empowerment 

means something both transitory and transformational: 

movement from today’s insufficient resources and lack 

of security to adequacy; from no income to increased 

opportunities, to be followed by legal reform and 

political participation. While some Iraqi women oppose 

discrimination and want the freedom to move about in 

their society—to drive, work, study, and dress as they 

please—there is no eagerness to transform the family 

or marriage system, or necessarily emulate all that is 

Western.

“Empowerment” is a decidedly feminist and 

community activist term. Washington’s discourse on 

the Middle East and Iraqi women is not really feminist, 

though it is liberatory. Women’s private and individual 

rights are being codified in a strange netherworld of 

Muslim or Arab democracy where empowerment á la 

Americaine is pushing in one direction, and the evolution of sectarian family law and a national approach to 

women might travel in another direction entirely.
39

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. Department of State Fact Sheet, “U.S. Efforts to Support 

Women’s Rights [in Iraq],” August 2005.

2. President’s Radio Address, The White House. March 19, 

2005.

3. Louise Cainkar, “The Gulf War, Sanctions, and the Lives of 

Iraqi Women,” Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring 1993, 

p. 43.

4. Nadje Al-Ali and Yasmin Hussein, “Between Dreams 

and Sanctions: Teenage Lives in Iraq,” posted by Act Together: 

Women’s Action for Iraq, 2001.

5. UNICEF, “Iraq Donor Update,” June 11, 2001.

6. Al-Ali and Hussein.

7. Nadje Al-Ali, “Gender and War: The Plight of Iraqi 

Women,” speech and paper delivered to the World Tribunal on 

Iraq, Istanbul, Turkey, June 2005.

8. Correspondent’s questions in White House briefing with 

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, July 26, 2006, segment 

televised on CNN, and Snow’s responses.

9. Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, “Women in Iraq: Beyond the 

Rhetoric” published in part in MERIP, Summer 2006. This article, 

inaccessible to me until the summer of 2006, mirrors some of my 

arguments here.

10. “Iraq: Widow Numbers Rise in Wake of Violence,” Irin.

News.org, U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian 

Affairs, November 7, 2006.

11. White House briefing, July 26, 2006.

12. For details of Law No. 188’s enactment and the role that 

women played in subsequently shaping it, see Noga Efrati, 

“Negotiating Rights in Iraq: Women and the Personal Status 

Law,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 59, No. 4, Autumn 2005, pp. 579-

593.

13. Efrati, “Negotiating,” p. 578.

14. Isobel Coleman, “Women, Islam, and the New Iraq,” 

Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005, at www.libertypost.org, last 

visited January 30, 2006.
40

15. Sherifa Zuhur, Iran, Iraq, and the United States: The New 

Triangle’s Impact on Sectarianism and the Nuclear Threat, Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, November 2006; also 

available at www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/people.

cfm?authorID=555.

16. Sherifa Zuhur, Gender, Sexuality, and the Criminal Laws in the 

Middle East and North Africa: A Comparative Study, Istanbul, Turkey: 

Women for Women’s Human Rights, 2005, pp. 64-67, at www.wwhr.

org/id_918 or 72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:yQWwm3yH68MJ:www.

synergyaids.com/documents/Turkey_GenderSex%26CriminalLaws.

pdf+zuhur,+gender,+sexuality+and+the+criminal+laws&hl=en&gl=u

s&ct=clnk&cd=1.

17. Zuhur, Gender, Sexuality, and the Criminal Laws.

18. Ibid., p. 17; also see M. Cherif Bassiouni, “Quesas Crimes,” 

M. C. Bassiouni, ed., The Islamic Criminal System, London, New 

York: Oceana Publications, 1982; and Safia M. Safwaat, “Crimes 

Under Various Shariah Schools,” Tahir Mahmood, et al., Criminal 

Law in Islam and the Muslim World: A Comparative Perspective, Delhi: 

Institute of Objective Studies, 1996.

19. Confessionalism is perhaps defined most clearly in earlier 

works on Lebanon such as Michael C. Hudson, The Precarious 

Republic, New York: Random House, 1968.

20. Imad Harb, “Lebanon’s Confessionalism: Problems and 

Prospects,” in United States Institute for Peace (USIP) briefing, 

March 2006.

21. Zuhur, Iran, Iraq, and the United States.

22. Ayesha Al-Rifai, “In Quest of Statehood: Women’s Agency 

for Democratic Reform in Palestine,” Paper presented at the 39th 

Annual Middle East Studies Association meeting, Washington 

DC, November 21, 2005. 

23. Marie-Aimée Helie-Lucas, “Women, Nationalism, and 

Religion in the Algerian Liberation Struggle,” Opening the Gates: 

A Century of Arab Feminist Writing, Margot Badran and Miriam 

Cooke, eds., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, p. 106. 

Monique Gadant, “La situation des femmes et des féministes dans la 

guerre civile algérienne” Nouvelles Questions Féministes, Vol. 16, No. 

4, 1995, pp. 23-50.

24. Sherifa Zuhur, The Middle East: Politics, History, and 

Neonationalism, Carlisle, PA: Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic, 
41

and Diasporic Studies, 2005, p. 354; Amal Kawar, Daughters of 

Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement, 

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 3; Matiel E. T. 

Mogannam, The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem, Westport, 

CT: Hyperion Press, 1937, pp. 61-62.

25. Hamas runs women candidates on its electoral list and is 

strongly supported by its female members, even more than by 

Palestinian non-Islamist feminists. They have approached legal 

reform and other matters such as the necessary unification of 

family law (the West Bank and Gaza had fallen under different 

legal systems, Jordanian and Egyptian respectively). The latter, 

as well as women’s NGOs, have reported clashes with Hamas 

on these issues. See Islah Jad, “Citizenship Under a Prolonged 

Occupation,” in Sherifa Zuhur, ed., Women and Gender in the 

Middle East and Muslim World Today, forthcoming.

26. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “Women, Islam, and the Moroccan 

State: The Struggle over the Personal Status Law, Middle East 

Journal, Vol. 59, Issue 3, Summer 2005.

27. Abdelsalam Maghraoui, “Political Authority in Crisis: 

Mohammed VI’s Morocco,” Middle East Report, No. 218, available 

at www.merip.org/mer/mer218/218_maghraoui.htmil.

28. Dina Rizk Khoury, “Looking for the Modern: A Biography 

of an Iraqi Modernist” in Mary Ann Fay, ed., Auto/Biography and 

the Construction of Identity and Community in the Middle East, New 

York: Palgrave, 2001.

29. Na`ima al-Sa‘id was sister of Prime Minister Ja‘far al-

`Askari, whose wife, Fakhriyya, was the sister of Nuri al-Sa‘id 

Pasha.

30. Mary Wazir and her husband, ‘Abd al-Masih Wazir, from 

the Kurdish town of Mardin, joined Freya Stark’s Brotherhood of 

Freedom, a group that promoted Western-style liberal thought in 

the 1940s. See Stark, East is West, London: John Murray, 1945; also 

see Martina Kamp, “Organizing Ideologies of Gender, Class, and 

Ethnicity: The Pre-Revolutionary Women’s Movements in Iraq,” 

in Women and Gender in the Middle East and the Islamic World Today, 

Sherifa Zuhur, ed., Berkeley, CA: University of California Press/

UCIAS, 2003, and in process for print publication.

31. Paulina Hasun was employed in the Ministry of Education 

and then launched a magazine, Layla. Doreen Ingrams, The 

Awakened: Women in Iraq, London: Third World Centre, 1983, p. 

91.
42

32. Jacqueline S. Ismael and Shereen T. Ismael, “Gender and 

State in Iraq,” in Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in the 

Middle East, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000, pp. 

193-195.

33. Nadia Hijab, Womanpower: The Arab Debate on Women at 

Work, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 80-

81.

34. Ibid, p. 80.

35. Achim Rohde, “When the Land is Female, War is Love, 

and the Family is a Nation,” in Lahoucine Ouzgane, ed., Islamic 

Masculinities, London: Sage, 2005.

36. Zuhur, Gender, Sexuality, and the Criminal Laws, pp. 29-30. 

37. Ibid. See Articles 128, 130, 131, and discussion.

38. Zeinab Naji, “Women’s Rights in Iraq Compromised,” in 

Middle East Times, July 13, 2006.

39. Ibid.

40. Press briefing, Tony Snow, July 26, 2005.

41. Sameer Yacoub, “Two Female Suicide Bombers Kill 27 

in Iraq,” ABC News International at abcnews.go.com/International/

wireStory?id=1376602.

42. Rania Sabbah Ghandour, “I Went to One Corner, He Went 

to Another,” Times Online, November, 14, 2005, www.timesonline.

co.uk/article/0,251-1871428,00.html.

43. Michael Slackman, Souad Mekhennet, Edward Wong, and 

anonymous, “Jordan Says Bombing Suspect Aimed to Avenge 

Brothers,” New York Times, November 15, 2005, p. A3.

44. Miriam Cooke, “Women’s Jihad Before and After 9/11,” 

Sherifa Zuhur, ed., Women and Gender in the Middle East and the 

Muslim World. 

45. Brian Bennett, “Stolen Away: As Criminal Gangs Run 

Amuck in Iraq, Hundreds of Girls Have Gone Missing. Are They 

Being Sold for Sex?” Time Magazine, April 23, 2006.

46. Women for Women International, “Windows of Opportunity: The Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-War Iraq,” January 

2005.

47. Mona Iskander, “Female Troops in Iraq Redefine Combat 

Rules.” Women’s ENews, also on Alternet, July 5, 2004. 
43

48. This Woman’s War, Director, Meg McLagan, Room 11 

Productions, New York Times, November 20, 2005.

49. George Bush remarks on the global promotion of women’s 

rights, March 12, 2004, in Fact Sheet, August 15, 2005.

50. Women for Women International, 2005.

51. Elizabeth L. Cheney, Remarks to Foreign Policy Association 

Annual Dinner, June 14, 2005, mepi.state.gov/mepi/48856.htm. 

52. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, “Iraq”; E. W. Fernea, In Search of 

Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global Journey, New York: Anchor, 

1998.

53. John Esposito, Women and Muslim Family Law, Syracuse, 

NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982, pp. 53-55.

54. Coleman.

55. Alean Al-Krenawi, “The Psychosocial Impact of Polygamous 

Marriages on Bedouin Women of the Negev,” paper presented 

to the Middle East Studies Association meetings, Orlando, FL, 

November 17, 2000; and see Alean al-Krenawi, John R. Graham, 

and Salem Al-Krenawi, “Social Work Practice with Polygamous 

Families,” Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, Vol. 14, No. 6, 

December 1997.

56. Efrati, p. 587.

57. Al-Hayani, pp. 129-131.

58. See Elizabeth Fernea’s exchange with a Ba`thi woman 

official on this point in Fernea, p. 323.

59. Efrati, pp. 591-593.

60. Gordon quoted Salama al-Khafaji, a SCIRI leader as saying 

that under shari`a, her children will be “protected in the case of 

divorce, I will gain custody.” Whether this means that Khafaji 

is unaware of shari`a, as Gordon suggests, or naively hopes for 

reform, or correctly believes she would most likely be granted 

custody if she did not remarry is unclear. One can interpret these 

comments in several ways, but at least the impact of sectarianism 

is acknowledged here. Judy Colp Rubin, et al., “Women in 

the Middle East: Progress or Regress?” Middle East Review of 

International Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 2, Article 2, June 2006. 

61. For a more complete description of the phenomenon as 

it is practiced in Iran, see Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary 
44

Marriage in Shi’i Iran, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 

1989.

62. Rick Jervis, “Pleasure Marriages Regain Popularity in Iraq” 

USA Today, May 4, 2005.

63. Anne Gerrels, “Concern Grows over Iraqi ‘Honor’ Killings,” 

National Public Radio, December 7, 2005.

64. Al-Ali and Hussein.

65. Human Rights Watch, “Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence 

and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad,” July 2003, hrw.

org/reports/2003/iraq0703/.

66. Al-Hayani, pp. 97-98.

67. Al-Thawra, p. 1976, cited in Ismael and Ismael, “Gender and 

State in Iraq,” p. 195.

68. Chibli Mallat, “Sunnism and Shi’ism in Iraq: Revisiting the 

Codes,” Chibli Mallat and Jane Connors, eds., Islamic Family Law, 

London: Graham and Trotman, 1990.

69. Efrati, p. 593.

70. Ismail Jalili, “Plight of Iraqi Academics,” Paper presented 

to the Madrid International Conference on the Assassination of 

Iraqi Academics, April 23-24, 2006. 

71. Personal communications to the author from Baghdad. 

72. Peter Beaumont, “Iraq’s Universities and Schools Near 

Collapse as Teachers and Pupils Flee,” The Guardian, October 5, 

2006. 

73. Amnesty 2005, Women for Women, 2005.

74. Coleman.

75. Irin News Org, “Iraq: Survey Suggests Widespread 

Female Circumcision in North,” UN Office for Coordination of 

Humanitarian Affairs, January 6, 2005, www.irnnews.org/, last 

visited 02/02/06.

76. Ibid.

77. Margaret Besheer, “Domestic Accidents, Self-Immolation 

Kill More Kurds Than War,” Voice of America, July 29, 2006; “‘I Don’t 

Want to Die’: Domestic Violence in Iraq,” Amnesty International, 

n.d., c. 2003, web.amnesty.org, last visited July 31, 2006.

78. Azza Karam, Women, Islamisms and State: Contemporary 

Feminisms in Egypt, London and New York: Macmillan and St. 
45

Martin’s Press. 1999; Sherifa Zuhur, Revealing Reveiling: Islamist 

Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt, Albany: State University 

of New York Press, 1992; Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy 

and Resistance, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999; Yesim Arat, 

Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish 

Politics, Albany: State University of New York, 2005; Judy Brink 

and Joan Mencher, eds., Mixed Blessings: Gender and Religious 

Fundamentalisms, New York and London: Routledge, 1997.

79. As in the case cited by al-Ali and Hussein.

80. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, September 4, 2004.

81. Nimrod Raphaeli, “Islamist Pressures in Iraq,” MEMRI, 

September 2004. MEMRI is by no means a neutral source on this 

issue, but I can confirm the pressure and necessity to wear hijab in 

Basra, al-Kut, and many other places in Iraq.

82. Sunday Times, June 4, 2006.

83. Patrick Basham “Can Iraq Be Democratic?” Policy Analysis

505, Cato Institute, January 5, 2004.

84. Robert Worth, “In Jeans or Veils, Iraqi Women Are Split 

on New Political Power,” New York Times, April 13, 2005, pp. A1, 

A10.

85. Human Rights Watch, “Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence 

and the Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad,” July 2003, 

www.hrw.org.

86. Gwen Okruhlik, “The Slippery Slope: Women and the 

Struggle for Nation in Saudi Arabia,” paper presented to the 

panel “Democratizing Reform and Gender in the Arab World,” 

Washington, DC: Middle East Studies Association, November 21, 

2005.

87. Susan Miller Okin, et al., Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

88. Diane Feinstein, address on International Women’s Day, 

Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the 109th 

Congress, First Session, Vol. 151, No. 26, Tuesday, March 8, 2005.

89. Shatha al-Awsy, “Minister’s Vow Lifts Veil on Iraqi 

Women’s Rights,” Miami Herald, July 31, 2006.

90. Ylli Majraktari, “Economic Empowerment of Women in 

Iraq: The Way Forward,” USIP Briefing, May 2006.
46

91. Haifa Zangana, “Why Iraqi Women Aren’t Complaining,” 

The Guardian, February 19, 2004.

92. Haifa Zangana, “The Height of Humiliation,” Al-Ahram 

Weekly, accessed July 27, 2006.

93. Ruth Rosen, “The Hidden War on Women in Iraq,” July 13, 

2006, available at www.longviewinstitute.org.
47

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