Noga Efrati outlines the first social and political history of
women in Iraq during the periods of British occupation and the
British-backed Hashimite monarchy (1917--1958). She traces the
harsh and long-lasting implications of British state building on
Iraqi women, particularly their legal and political enshrinement as
second-class citizens, and the struggle by women's rights activists
to counter this precedent. Efrati concludes with a discussion of
post-Saddam Iraq and the women's associations now claiming their
place in government. Finding common threads between these two
generations of women, Efrati underscores the organic roots of the
current fight for gender equality shaped by a memory of oppression
under the monarchy.
Efrati revisits the British strategy of efficient rule, largely
adopted by the Iraqi government they erected and the consequent
gender policy that emerged. The attempt to control Iraq through
"authentic leaders" -- giving them legal and political powers --
marginalized the interests of women and virtually sacrificed their
well-being altogether. Iraqi women refused to resign themselves to
this fate. From the state's early days, they drew attention to the
biases of the Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation (TCCDR)
and the absence of state intervention in matters of personal status
and resisted women's disenfranchisement. Following the coup of
1958, their criticism helped precipitate the dissolution of the
TCCDR and the ratification of the Personal Status Law. A new
government gender discourse shaped by these past battles arose, yet
the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, rather than helping cement women's
rights into law, reinstated the British approach. Pressured to
secure order and reestablish a pro-Western Iraq, the Americans
increasingly turned to the country's "authentic leaders" to
maintain control while continuing to marginalize women. Efrati
considers Iraqi women's efforts to preserve the progress they have
made, utterly defeating the notion that they have been passive
witnesses to history.
eISBN: 978-0-231-53024-8
Subjects: History, Anthropology, Sociology
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