There are a lot of interesting aspects to the issue of women’s role and rights within Iraqi society.
On the one hand, according to the State Department, the “(t)he Transitional Administrative Law requires a 25 percent female membership in the Parliament”. [In fact, nearly a third of the Parliament is female]. That requirement, while impracticable, would be nice to see for our United States Senate.
Yet, the chaos and disruption that have marked Iraq since the American invasion have been catastrophic for women, and have been particularly difficult for secularized women.
The post-invasion period has seen a huge uptick in rapes, kidnappings, and intimidation. Women have lost jobs, or been forced to quit them out of fear for their security.
Now, the battle over women’s rights has entered the parliamentary phase:
They wanted women to run at least 10 of Iraq’s 30-odd government ministries. They wanted the number of places reserved for women on party slates raised to 40 percent in future elections. Most of all, they wanted a promise of respect for women’s rights.
Hours later, another group of women who are assembly members arrived in Dr. Jaafari’s office. They wore black abayas, the garments that cover a woman’s body from head to foot, and they had another agenda. They wanted to put aspects of Islamic law into Iraq’s legal code – including provisions that would allow men as many as four wives and reduce the amount of money allotted to women in inheritances.
NYT: Free Registration
:::Read More:::
This split among the new parliament’s women, can be roughly described as a battle between women that come from the Kurdish contingent and the more conservative women from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s shi’a dominated slate of candidates.
According to the Times: “The Shiite leadership…is shrewdly relying on these women to carry much of the fight in the new assembly over where Islam itself, not just its women, should fit in Iraqi society.”
The Shiite women “want to hinder woman, put shackles on her,” said Songul Chapuk Omer, an ethnic Turkmen from Kirkuk. “They despise secular women. They consider that she has committed crimes.”
For her part, Ms. Omer – who has highlights in her glossy brown hair and favors flared jeans and denim shirts – sometimes refers teasingly to her black-clad Shiite counterparts as “full cover girls.”
How this debate is resolved will have a lot of implications for Muslim women throughout the region. I hope that they are able to retain their rights within parliament, and that they are able to expand the rights of women within the context of the law.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the status and rights of women (unveiled, educated, full participants in civil and economic life), as well as such “basic” rights as safety, shelter, health care and so forth, were better under the secular government of Sadam Hussein than they are after two years of American rule . . . and the situation of women in Iraq looks set only to worsen further.
He was equally a bastard to men and women. </snark>
The Shiite majority does not bode well for women’s rights in Iraq. This is not the government that the CPA wanted either.
Even in Canada, there is a movement to establish a separate Sharia law for muslims. <cringe>
In Jeans or Veils, Iraqi Women Are Split on New Political Power
Hopefully that one will work…free reg is required.
This was one of the first things that I read at o’dark-thirty this morning. I agree with Deward in the post above that the plight of Iraqi women post-invasion is certainly worse than under Saddam.
This is just another instance of the Kurds and Shiites to having it out, but this time they are going to let the women carry the water for them.
I think one of the more telling passages from the article was this one, highlighting that there can be concensus coming from a Shiia Kurd:
“We should think about fixing these gaps, not going backward,” said Azhar Ramadan Rahim, a Kurdish assembly member from Baghdad. “I am a Muslim too, and Shiite, but rules written 1,400 years ago cannot be applied now.”
Hopefully, this will be the prevailing sentiment.
Fist off Saddam implemented certain rules that made women better off than in any other place (save Egypt, and maybe Syria) in the Arab world. 1. Women could hold jobs 2. Women could keep their children, instead of men 3. Women had positions in the military (non combat desk jobs) 4. Women could drive 5. Women could have exposed arms, legs. Saddam was a communist dictator, but secular, and any concessions that he made to the fundamentalists came during the sanctions. Having women in parliament is only for show only because in all other fields they are loosing their jobs. Top female judges, doctors etc are all loosing their jobs and are not being hired. Dress is becoming more conservative daily. You think these women in government aren’t carefully chosen to follow the others?
of this story is in conflict with your list?
The point of the NYT article is that the women are split on such issues. And yes, Sistani’s slate of women are the one’s least interested in maintaining or restoring the rights women had under Saddam.
But they have a formidable foe in the more secularized women (many of whom are Kurdish).
My apologies to everyone for this rant, and I meant to post this as a reply to the comment by polydactyl which I did indeed misread!, in response to the second comment.
I did a diary entry on dKos a while ago – actually just a translation of an article in my local paper – that made exactly these points in greater detail. It was my first stint on the reco list, but sparked quite a fury among some Kossacks who would not brook the idea that Hussein did something good.
The people Hussein did go after are the religious extremists. If we look at Egypt’s record it is hardly any more stellar but that’s morally acceptable to us. With the assassination of Sadat I wouldn’t call it entirely unjustified – though Sadat was by the far the most lenient and it cost him. What lesson do we learn from this? (Don’t get me wrong I don’t advocate mass arrest, torture or otherwise when it comes to religious freedom – but if you look at the rest of the Middle East it’s the extremists that have the run of their countries laws and are by far more brutal than any of the Baathist countries. Same point I tried to make yesterday about Africa: we don’t want them to advance.)
I had read your diary way back then, but probably before most of the comments were posted. You got a few posters riled up, but then, it really seemed they had not properly read the article or put it in the appropriate context.
Freedom is on the friggen march, dammit…only for the women in Iraq freedom is marching backwards every day.
I sincerely hope that all the Iraqi women there who are as bush might put it-forward thinking- will prevail.
The US often joins forces with the anti-women hardliners from various countries, in the UN, (Iran, Saudi, etc) to block resolutions and conventions (rights of the child, protection of women) from passing. So, that the rights of women in countries we invade (or even ones we don’t) would not be at the top of anyone’s list is not surprising.
It’s a tragedy that in so many places (and by so many) that women’s lives and rights are still used as bargaining chips.
Anyway, I wish for the best for the efforts of the secular women in Iraq, but with the Shia in the majority, it doesn’t look good.
This reminds me of the ERA movement here and how women who were against it got organized and did so much protesting against the ERA. This allowed many men and legislators to say well see even most women are against it. So at times you had to not only argue for the ERA but fight off stupid attacks that you were the crackpot and even most women didn’t want the ERA passed.
Seems like the women in the black abayas are being used to an extent in this fashion-front for the guys like Sistani behind this fight that would appear to be just between women.