Iraqi Women's History
Iraqi women have historically played a greater role in public life than many of their counterparts in neighboring countries. Still, women's rights have remained transient and existed without legal safeguards or guarantees of permanency. Some upper-class Iraqi women first entered the Iraqi job market in the early 1920s, but it wasn't until the socialist Ba'ath Party came into power in 1963 that large numbers of women entered the public sphere. Their socialist ideology, coupled with an economic boom bolstered by oil revenues in the mid-60s, helped foster an expansion of a broad middle class which included women for the first time. The state educated women and incorporated them into an expanding workforce. Working outside the home became not only acceptable for women but prestigious and even expected. Iraq was among the most progressive countries in the region, allowing women in government and almost all professions such as the oil industry and military.
In 1979, Saddam Hussein took control of the Ba'ath party, became Prime Minister and began to consolidate his power over the Iraqi people. In 1980, Iraq attacked Iran starting what became a brutal war that persisted throughout the decade. Initially the war opened more doors for women as the men went to the front to fight and women were left behind to fill their jobs. Women's roles as decision-makers grew, both domestically and in the work place, but as is often the case with social changes brought on by wars, these advances lacked roots in cultural and institutional change. With the men away at war, women's rights advanced, but only in order to maintain civil society in Iraq. When the war ended, men arrived home from the war to a faltering economy where jobs were difficult to come by. Women had been welcomed into the workforce because of patriotic necessity, and that same patriotism now called for them to hand their jobs back to returning 'heroes' of the Iran-Iraq war. Educated and successful women were forced to return to the domestic sphere and the social gains made during the war quickly eroded. Other economic forces, such as unequal pay for men and women and rising commuting costs, also conspired to force women out of the workplace.
The status of women proved to be one of the greatest casualties to Saddam's declining status in a war-weary nation. In order to bolster his sagging image, Saddam (previously a strict secularist) began to embrace Islamic "moral authority" which included passing many laws that infringed on women's fundamental rights and freedoms. Laws restricted women's ability to travel abroad without a male relative and reintroduced single-sex education in high school.
When economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, women were disproportionately affected. These sanctions created wild inflation that shut down the whole economy, brought on massive unemployment, and cut off revenue to the public sector: the largest employer of women. Physical and psychological violence was committed against women throughout the Saddam regime, but increased as Saddam tried to maintain his power. He clamped down on opposition groups, often targeting female family members of accused male opposition activists. Women were subjected to a variety of human rights violations such as rape and trafficking for sexual exploitation. There was even an official governmental position of rapists whose sole job was to rape detained women. The acceptability of crimes against women was codified in a presidential decree in 1990 that granted immunity to men who committed honor crimes. More than 4,000 women were victims as a result of this law.
In 2003, with the fall of the Saddam regime, women were exposed to greater threats than ever before. The lawlessness and increase of killings, abductions and rapes that followed the overthrow of the government of Saddam greatly restricted women's freedom of movement and their ability to go to school or to work has essentially disappeared. Women victims of the sexual violence face further harm from so-called "honor killings," when their male family members kill the victim in order to restore family honor—a practice that prevents victims from reporting these heinous crimes.
In order for Iraqi women to regain the status they had in the 1980s, there needs to be female voices in all branches of government to advocate women's interests. While there have never been many women working as judges in Iraq, women were completely excluded from the Judiciary in 1993. Therefore, in post-Saddam Iraq, there are very few women who have served as judges. At the end of 2004 there were about 700 Iraqi judges, and fewer than three per cent of them were women. The appointment of women judges has created problems. In July 2003 the swearing in of Nidal Nasser Hussain as a judge in Najaf was indefinitely postponed after religious leaders protested the occupation of the position by a woman.
With a new society being formed in Iraq after Saddam's removal, Iraq finds itself at a pivotal moment in history. Iraqi women have the opportunity to institutionalize the fundamental rights which International law guarantees them with the help of the international community. If this opportunity is missed, women's exclusion from the most basic rights and freedoms will be institutionalized as a part of the new Iraq.
For additional information about Iraq, see Human Rights Watch: Background on Women's Status in Iraq Prior to the Fall of the Saddam Hussein Government (November, 2003).