Al-Jawaheri, Yasmin Husein, Women in Iraq, The Gender Impact of International Sanctions, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008
Women’s issues is an understudied topic in Iraq. In Women in Iraq, The Gender Impact of International Sanctions Yasmin Husein al-Jawaheri dives into how United Nations sanctions in the 1990s impacted women in the workplace, educationally and within society and the family. Part of the work was research into government and international studies and the other was surveying and interviewing 227 Iraqi women from three parts of Baghdad. She found that sanctions had a profound effect upon women driving them not only from jobs but public space as the government stepped back from protecting their rights.
The Baath Party is associated with dictatorship in Iraq but when it first took power in 1968 it began a massive development project using its oil wealth to create a modern state. Part of that included empowering women to break down traditional society and build a new one centered around the government and party. Laws were passed to ensure equal rights while women were encouraged to go to school and college and hired within the growing public workforce. Jawaheri documented how this had a wide ranging effect upon Iraqi women and society transforming their position in the country.
For instance, the female labor participation rate when from 4% in 1967 to 17.5% in 1977 and then up to 25% in 1985. In 1977 70% of women ages 15-45 years old were illiterate. Ten years later in 1987 the government claimed 75% of women were literate although the author questioned that statistic because the Iran-Iraq War cut into public spending. This highlights one part of the Jawaheri’s work which was to go through Iraqi government and United Nations reports to find numbers that documented how the position of women changed from before sanctions to during them.
The author then documented how sanctions reversed all of those advances. In the 1970s women were able to venture out of their homes and go to school and work which was a major change from traditional Iraqi society. When sanctions took hold the state’s finances were devastated and it took a step back from supporting women. For instance, Saddam Hussein looked to tribes for backing and turned a blind eye to honor killings of women.
The book’s interviews show how life completely changed for women in the 1990s. The unemployment and massive drops in income that impoverished many Iraqis during that decade also meant men tried to re-establish their dominance over women. There are several interviews with women who talked about how their family and husbands didn’t want them leaving the house anymore to go to school or work. There was also an increase in women covering themselves because they thought that would protect them from public scrutiny and attacks when they did venture out in public. Polygamy grew as women were willing to accept being a second wife in return for some economic security. The book shows how Iraq went from one of the most progressive Middle Eastern countries for women to a new form of patriarchal society.
Women in Iraq is a must read for not only how the sanctions devastated Iraq but how they changed its society. Women in the country made large advances in terms of rights and opportunities in the 1970s under the Baath Party. That was all erased in the 1990s due to the sanctions. Women went from an active part of society, education and the workforce to being relegated to second class status like during earlier periods in Iraqi history. Jawaheri does an excellent job documenting how this transformation occurred.
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