History of Modern Iraq

“Challenging Iraq’s Gender Discourse under the British Mandate: The Creation of the “Women’s 

Awakening Club”” (2013)

Abstract: The plight and oppression of Iraqi women is a common topic in contemporary Western 

media. Contemporary Western scholarship tends to follow this trend, again focusing on Iraqi 

women in current contexts, often choosing to overlook the Hashemite period as a critical 

formation period for Iraqi women activists. In actuality, the 1920 revolt against the British 

is a defining moment that needs to be acknowledged in academia as the premier catalyst for 

organizing the Iraqi women’s movement (uniting women in both rural and urban areas) and

founding the first women’s organization in 1923: the Women’s Awakening Club (Nadi al-Nahda

a-Nisa’iyya). In 1999 Ellen Fleischmann published a comprehensive comparative article entitled

“The Other "Awakening": The Emergence of Women's Movements in the Modern Middle 

East, 1900-1940.” In it, she classifies history of these movements into three flexible stages of 

development. The first stage is called “The Awakening”, and it is in this stage that women and 

men begin to question women’s status and related social policies. Using her first developmental 

model of “The Awakening”, I will describe the organization and function of the Women’s 

Awakening Club in the context of 1920s Iraq.

“The Status of Iraqi Women Post-Invasion” (2013)

Abstract: At a press conference held a mere two weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in

March 2003, Paula Dobriansky, who was then the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and

Global Affairs, declared: “We are at a critical point in dealing with Saddam Hussein. However 

[the invasion] turns out, it is clear that the women of Iraq have a critical role to play in the 

future revival of their society.” This quote highlights how, from the very beginning, official US 

rhetoric put Iraqi women at center stage, claiming that they would benefit from the fall of the 

Baʿth party by obtaining new-found freedoms. A decade after the US invasion of Iraq, ‘women’ 

remain as one of the only arguments still standing as a justification for going to war: “We did 

it for democracy and women’s rights.” However, even though the US government gave the 

impression that the issue of Iraq women was central to the US/UK invasion, this is far from the 

case. The fact is that, ten years later, Iraqi women’s lives have become immeasurably worse, 

as the “status of women” (defined here to mean access to knowledge, economic resources, and 

political power, as well as personal autonomy in the process of decision making) in Iraq has 

markedly decreased. Once recognized as among the most liberated countries in the Middle East 

(even under Saddam Hussein), historically Iraqi women enjoyed labor force participation, high 

levels of education, and progressive laws which protected their rights in society. However, post-

2003, the advances Iraqi women have made over the past fifty years have quickly crumbled 

away, indicating that the US’s proclamations of support of women are merely superficial and 

have not in actuality translated into greater empowerment of Iraqi women. Rather, as symbols 

of the post-Saddam political order, Iraqi women have become instruments for achieving (USdefined) security ends. In this paper, I maintain that it is not Islam or “culture” that has pushed 

Iraqi women back into their homes. Instead it is more appropriate to blame specific and rapidly 

changing political, economic, and social conditions as well as a wide range of national, regional, 

and international actors. To explain and describe Iraqi women’s worsening circumstances, I will 

here discuss multiple culprits, specifically historical discriminatory practices, the rewriting of the 

Iraqi constitution, and increasing pervasive violence against women.