Women, Islam, and the New Iraq

Isobel Coleman

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006

Summary:  Although questions of implementation remain, the new Iraqi constitution makes Islam the law of the land. This need not mean trouble for Iraq's women, however. Sharia is open to a wide range of interpretations, some quite egalitarian. If Washington still hopes for a liberal order in Iraq, it should start working with progressive Muslim scholars to advance women's rights through religious channels.

ISOBEL COLEMAN is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and U.S. Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the long term, female education may be the best way to advance the status of women. During the difficult decade of the 1990s, school-enrollment rates for girls in Iraq declined significantly, making Iraq one of the few countries in the world today where mothers are generally better educated than their daughters. Although reliable literacy figures are hard to come by, most observers agree that Iraq now has one of the worst gender literacy gaps in the world. As Iran, with its female literacy rate of more than 70 percent, has shown, educated women inevitably become effective advocates for their own rights. The United States should therefore champion female education in Iraq at all levels -- primary, secondary, and tertiary -- and promote adult-literacy programs for women.

In the next year, a new Iraqi parliament will be elected with the power to write laws that will shape the country for the next generation. Washington must therefore do everything it can to aid Iraqi women's groups and programs designed to help women leaders there. Efforts such as the U.S.-funded legal-education program at the University of Baghdad, where women make up 40 percent of the participants in rule-of-law seminars, should be expanded to other universities and cities across Iraq. Washington should also consider establishing a women's college in Baghdad, which could become a center of learning and critical thinking for the entire region.

The United States should also start channeling a significant portion of its reconstruction dollars to Iraqi businesswomen. Economic empowerment is a good way to boost the status of women. Despite the enormous sums of American aid flowing into Iraq, the U.S. mission in Baghdad has so far resisted having an adviser on gender issues on the ground in Iraq -- where programs to support women are actually implemented. As a result, its many gender initiatives have not been nearly as effective as they could have been.

Although the United States has now missed this and several other important opportunities to promote the role of women in post-Saddam Iraq, the imposition of sharia there was virtually inevitable. But the resurgence of Islamic law in Iraq need not be a disaster for women. Although it may well mean a short-term setback in certain rights enjoyed under Saddam, in the long run, Iraqis may manage to build a more equitable society that accommodates both Islamic principles and a modern role for women. This outcome is far from guaranteed, but it is also not too much to hope for.