Iraqi Women Preserve Gains Despite Wartime Problems

By Andrea Laurenz

"The women of our country are the descendants of the immortal Arab women who fought valiantly side-by-side with their menfolk, wrote the poetry of chivalry and glory, and participated in the great Arab heritage of civilization."

—Saddam Hussein

This year Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, quoted above, told the seventh congress of the General Federation of Iraqi Women, "Unjustified divorce ought to be condemned everywhere. Polygamy ought to be condemned in every corner of our society." Yet only a year earlier, Saddam Hussein had taken a second wife.

Such seeming inconsistencies characterize the recent history of feminist reforms in Iraq. Yet, despite the pull of conservative tradition and the nation's goal, since the war with Iran, of a higher birthrate, Iraqi women today have more economic and social opportunities than women in most other Arab countries. It can also be argued that Iraqi women have more opportunities and legal rights than women in many Western countries.

Raising the status of women has been a cornerstone of Baath Party ideology and it has helped to consolidate support for the party among an important sector of the population. Asked why the Baath Party is so concerned with raising the political and social status of Iraqi women, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Nizar Hamdoon, a leading party member, replied: "First, because we believe in it in principle, and second, because we believe it is practical. It makes women more productive members of society."

Approximately 11 percent of Ba'ath Party members are women. By raising the level of benefits it offers to women, the government has alleviated the labor shortage and also created a strong base of support among the population.

During the past 20 years, Iraqi women have entered practically every profession, including the army. In 1980, according to statistics in Iraq: The Contemporary State, edited by Tim Niblock, 37 percent of oil-project designers working for the Ministry of Oil were women and 30 percent of construction supervisors were women. By 1982, women comprised 46 percent of teachers, 29 percent of doctors, 46 percent of dentists, 70 percent of pharmacists, 15 percent of accountants, 14 percent of factory workers, and four percent of senior management positions in Iraq.

How did Iraq do it? One might assume that these achievements came as the result of a ground swell of feminist sentiment, as in the United States, or after a long and frustrating struggle, as in Egypt. In fact, however, while a group of influential Iraqi women have worked hard to translate the ruling party's support for feminist reform into practical measures, a number of unusual factors have made their work easier.

The first is simply the country's geography. Modern Iraq is a large oil-rich country with a relatively small population of 17 million. Per capita income is approximately $2,298. To solve its severe shortage of manpower, Iraq chose to train women rather than import huge numbers of foreign guest workers, as did Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait in their initial stages of rapid economic development. At present Iraq plays host to some one million foreign workers, mostly from Egypt, but the percentage relative to the local population is smaller than in neighboring Arab oil-producing Arab states.

A second factor that has simplified matters for those in favor of the reforms is the current regime's attitude toward dissent. Iraq's secular government, modeled on socialist principles, has unhesitatingly implemented measures at which a regime more sensitive to religious opposition might have balked.

Saddam Hussein's acknowledgement of the potential for fundamentalist Islamic backlash is evident in his call for a "balanced forward movement." He stresses education "in the matter of the elementary rights of women" and cautions that revolutionary changes in the status of women are meaningless unless they are understood and supported by society. "There is no justification for putting forward hasty measures which would place a section of our people, who have so far been with us, in a hostile attitude to the revolution," he cautions.

With the establishment of the General Federation of Iraqi Women, however, the current regime has carried out its promises energetically and methodically. This April 4, the federation celebrated its 20th anniversary. Founded by Nawal Hilmi, Manal Younis and Ramzia Al-Khairou, the organization began as one office, the Baghdad bureau. Now the federation incorporates five regional subdivisions which in turn are divided into 21 branches, one in each governorate (except Baghdad which has four). Each branch has smaller subunits based in each province. More than 300,000 Iraqi women now belong to the federation.

To become a member of the federation "one must be an Iraqi citizen, have a good reputation, and believe in the revolution and the goals of the Ba'ath Party," Ilham Abd Al-Hamid Al-Zubaidi, director of the southern bureau, told me in a recent interview. New members also pay a moderate one-time fee.

Women Prepare for Return of POWs

Among the more serious challenges facing the federation is how to prepare Iraqi women for the return of thousands of prisoners of war-no one knows when. Because the Iranians refuse to release the names of the prisoners, many women do not know whether their husbands, sons or brothers will ever return. How to help the wives of men who have suffered immense psychological and emotional trauma, possibly including brainwashing, and how to reintegrate their husbands into normal day-to-day life are the challenges facing many Iraqi women. The federation's department of family assistance has trained psychologists on its staff, and many nonmembers, including men, seek counseling there.

The wives of "martyrs," men who died in the war, receive a great deal of attention from the federation. In addition to an acre or more of land, cash stipends and scholarships for her sons and daughters, a martyr's wife receives a car. The federation offers drivers' education classes, thus helping widows become independent. In addition, the federation organizes adult education classes and trains widows in marketable skills which help them become self-sufficient and, most importantly, "restore their sense of self-worth," as Mrs. AlZubaidi put it.

A second challenge the federation faces is changing attitudes about women's roles that have been ingrained in traditional Iraqi society for centuries. For example, when federation members discovered that the cover of a children's textbook depicted a boy holding a pen and notebook and a girl carrying a doll, they contacted the publisher and asked that the cover be changed so that it would not reinforce stereotyped sex roles. In addition, federation members run workshops for elementary school teachers to train them how to teach housekeeping and cooking classes to both boys and girls.

The federation also organizes sports events for girls, many of which are televised. These include women's basketball, swimming and volleyball games, whore girls are shown on television wearing shorts and swimsuits, a phenomenon unheard of in Iraq 20 years ago.

The federation still faces the opposition of conservative members of society. In spite of a "tremendous effort by the party to change women's position," according to Professor Alya Sousa, some of the reforms put forward encountered resistance. For example, the government initiated a law which would ensure that in the case of divorce, husband and wife receive equal shares of their common property. When it was first proposed, the National Assembly (made up of 250 popularly elected representatives) voted against the law. It eventually passed by the required three-fourths vote in a joint session of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and the National Assembly.

Women like Alya feel that only by electing more women to the National Assembly can the pace of reform continue. When asked for whom she voted in the just-completed 1989 parliamentary elections, Professor Sousa replied: "I voted for a woman. The more women in the National Assembly the better. They will work for our goals." Of 62 women who ran for election on April 1 of this year, 27 won.

One of the federation's main activities is in the area of health education. In an effort to reduce the rate of infant mortality, which is one of the organization's main goals, federation members spend several months living in rural villages in teams of two. The team members identify village women who possess leadership skills and train them to lead classes in basic hygiene, nutrition and health care. When the team members are satisfied that they have completed their work in one village, they move on to another.

In a visit this spring to the prosperous village of Rashid Al-Hamed, one of 216 villages in the province of Babylon, we witnessed two federation members at work at a monthly group meeting where village women can discuss their problems and receive advice. Both in their mid-twenties, the representatives wore business clothes and had an air of competence and efficiency. The villagers, most of whom were in their 20s and 30s, many cradling infants, sat on the floor in front of the class leader, a middle-aged woman. She, like the other villagers, was swathed in an abaya, a black robe, but unlike most of the younger women, she had wrapped the traditional Muslim scarf or hijab over her hair. Next to her was a stand for pictures and charts to which she would point periodically The topic of the day was the importance of vaccinating young children.

Women's Federation Addresses Day Care

The women's federation is trying to help Iraqi mothers balance their careers and their families by establishing nurseries throughout the country. In this way, working women have access to day-care facilities at a nominal cost. In addition, a new mother is allowed two half hours or one full hour during the work day to nurse her child. Mothers are given six months paid maternity leave for each child, to be taken at any time during the child's first three years. Moreover, as part of the campaign to increase the birth rate, parents are given a cash bonus for each child. The government also recently began giving school children free milk and fruit at school.

The regime is deeply concerned by the loss of young men to the war and its subsequent effect on the birth rate. Iran, with nearly three times Iraq's population, could overwhelm its Arab neighbor by force of sheer numbers. Thus, Iraqi women are being encouraged to produce larger families, with the objective of reaching a population of 25 million by the end of the century.

In spite of the conflicting goals which confront Iraqi women today, their position in the leadership of the nation has been solidly established. There is no question but that they will exert a great deal of influence on the lifestyle, social status and political rights of the next generation.

Andrea Laurenz is a program officer of the National Council on US-Arab Relations in Washington, DC