Where are the Iraqi Women?

In a comment to my Where Are the American Women post, Teresa said she felt like she knew nothing from the media about the Iraqi women and that they seem to be some kind of a kept secret. That does seem to be the case. About the only time you see Iraqi women on TV is when some woman in long robes and head coverings come into some makeshift morgue wailing over bodies, and we cannot understand what they are shrieking and are not told what their relationship was to the deceased and often it is not clear who killed the person.

Sometimes we may see this TV stereotypical Iraqi woman in a group of people lashing out in unintelligible rage over some again unexplained affront. But we never see women in any positions of authority or in rational, unemotional discourse. There were three women reportedly on the first Council set up by the occupiers, only one of whom had political experience. That woman, Aquila Al-Hashimi, was assassinated.

Daughter Anna gave me an article from the Winter 2003 Amnesty Now magazine, which I only now have taken the time to read. The article points out how that women in pre-Saddam Iraq had made significant gains in human rights areas, but that under Saddam those right became eroded, especially after the first Gulf War and under the sanctions. With the occupation, the article indicates, women have not seen any return to the rights of the pre-Saddam days. The chaos of the inept occupation has led to further victimization and repression of women, and the repression has indeed caused most Iraqi women to retreat into a kind of hiding in self-defense.