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woman: the cradle of civilization

by dina omar

Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War women in Iraq were given comparatively more legal, political, and social rights than other women in the Middle East and North Africa. Parallel to the rise of Ba`athism in 1968 was the increase of woman’s agency in Iraq. For example, article 19 of the 1970 Provisional Constitution declares that no person should be denied equal representation before the law on the basis of “sex, blood, language, social origin, or religion.”

According to Iraq’s historical archives, archives that have been destroyed by U.S. bombing during the first few months of the war, “In January 1971, Iraq also ratified the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), These international agreements provide equal protection under international law to all. Labor laws were also established that are similar to the sexual harassment laws in the United States to protect women in the work place.

Eager to generate economic development, Saddam Hussein and the Baathist party in 1971 authorized mandatory laws to educate people in rural areas. According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) the literacy rates between 1969 and 1989 grew over 45%. Women were specifically targeted; the laws aimed at women mandated that citizens from both sexes attend primary school and government assistance was provided to attend secondary school. Some oral sources claim that if fathers did not allow their daughters to attend school they would be imprisoned.

The Ba`athist party adopted even more unconventional laws; in 1979 they attempted to pass legislation to eradicate all illiteracy. The Government established “literacy centers”. The literacy centers were run by the GFIW (General Federation of Iraqi Women) almost all the teachers in the literacy centers were women. In the 1987 the literacy rate of women grew to almost 76% according to UNESCO. This statistic includes Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish women alike. In 1980 women were granted the right to vote and to hold public office. Unfortunately, the enjoyment of these new found rights for women were limited.

In 1972 Iraq made a provocative move to nationalize its oil. In 1980 the Iran-Iraq war started and during the eighth year of the war on March 16 and 17, 1988, Iraq dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja. According to Human Rights Watch, between 4,000 and 5,000 Kurdish rebels and Iranians tragically died. The straw that broke the camel’s back was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.

These events prelude UN resolution 661 which established economic sanctions on Iraq. An estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a result of those sanctions. Due to lack of infrastructure, water, and most importantly milk, women started to miscarry one-third of all pregnancies. Effects of the sanctions on women are still being felt today. Over 90% of Iraqi women suffer from iron deficiency anemia; also osteoporosis and other calcium deficient related illnesses have grown over 50% since 1990.


After the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 the progress made regarding women’s rights was reversed. This reversal is mostly due to Saddam Hussein’s lack of political capital.

To stay in power he decided to revert to the tribal and traditional ways to appeal to the religious aristocracy and pull more support from those he previously isolated in the early 1970’s. He embraced Islam as a political tool, thereby amplifying gender gap. He conveniently neglected that the Qur’an provides women with explicit rights to inheritance, independent property, divorce and the right to testify in a court of law. Another factor was that families no longer had the financial capability to send their children to school and the government no longer had the financial capability to subsidize education. Therefore, school enrollment decreased and female illiteracy increased.

When faced with limited resources and safety troubles, many families chose to keep their girl children at home. According to UNESCO in the year 2002, Iraq had the lowest regional adult literacy levels; literate women were less than 25%. At the same time that women produce 75 to 90 percent of food crops in the world, they are responsible for the running of households. According to the United Nations, in no country in the world do men come anywhere close to women in the amount of time spent in housework.

Furthermore, despite the efforts of ‘feminist’ movements, women in the wealthiest, Western countries still suffer disproportionately, leading to what sociologists refer to as the “feminization of poverty,” where two out of every three poor adults are women. The informal slogan of the Decade of Women became “Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own 1 percent of the means of production.” This is no more evident than in Iraq.

Women have witnessed the ugliness of war from both the battlefield and the sidelines – being widowed, displaced, detained, raped, separated from loved ones and becoming victims of violence and injury. The Red Cross has published a study entitled “Women facing War”, designed to increase awareness of the plight of women in conflict and of the protection to which they are entitled.

Upon the fall of Baghdad, President Bush claimed that the United States has played a vital role in liberating the women in Iraq. However upon further analysis and research we may just realize that what Iraqi women truly need is liberation from us.

Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, says that, “Women and girls today in Baghdad are scared, and many are not going to schools or jobs or looking for work. If Iraqi women are to participate in postwar society, their physical security needs to be an urgent priority.”

Women in Iraq today live in fear, they are isolated in their homes; sexual violence and abduction were not considered a problem until the first Gulf War. Victims, witnesses, and law enforcement authorities have documented some of these crimes. According to the Human Rights Watch these crimes often go undocumented and unreported due to the lack of stability and trust in local officials. There is no police; officials are not trusted to maintain the security. If women report to tribal leaders they face the risk of honor killings and social stigma.

It would be nice to give the women in Iraq some of our over the counter freedom or organically grown liberty. However, what Iraqi women need is not our intervention but running water, electricity, and security. What good are words like democracy and liberty if you can’t put food on the table?

Life originated in Iraq like life originates from women. Currently, life is awfully hard for the women who live in the “cradle of civilization.”


Dina Omar is a fourth year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley.