MESA Banner
Post-2003 Iraqi Women's Rights Activism: between Ngos, Sectarianism and Rise of Conservatisms
Abstract
As it has been the case in the time of postindependence Iraq, the issue of the Personal Status Code -a law related to private matters that gathers most of the legislation regarding women legal rights-, is at the core of the debates and mobilizations of Iraqi women’s rights activists in postinvasion Iraq. This presentation seeks to explore the realities and issues at stake for Iraqi women's rights activists in the post-Saddam era, focusing particularly on the mobilizations around women legal rights. My research is based on both an anthropological and socio-historical approaches: -The anthropological approach relies on an ethnography of women’s rights and political organizations in Baghdad primarily, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan secondarily, conducted between October 2010 and June 2012 (80 semi-structured interviews and life-stories, participant observation) -The socio-historical approach relies on an in depth socio-historical analysis of the relationship between Gender, Nation, State and Religion in Iraq since 1958. Based on that double approach, I want to focus on three dimensions:  the involvement of UN-Women and international Ngos and its concrete impact on the way in which Iraqi women activists organized and elaborated their advocacy for women's rights  the relationship between the sectarianization of Iraqi institutions and political life and the reconfiguration of women's rights issues and activism since 2003  the rise of social, political and religious conservatisms in relation to the weakness of the Iraqi state, the fragmentation of the Iraqi citizenship and the militarization of its society and public sphere, in the backdrop of dramatic politico-sectarian violence. Through the study of the realities and issues at stake for Iraqi women's rights activists in the post-Saddam era, this presentation seeks to provide a contextualized, complex and multidimensional reading of the relationship between Gender, Islam, and Nation-State in postinvasion Iraq. I am willing to show the importance to historicize, put in complexity and look at the diverse aspects of women social, economic and political realities intersectionally and socio-historically to be able to understand the way in which Iraqi women activists formulate their advocacy for women’s rights since 2003. Moreover, I want to show the importance of adopting a decolonial intersectional feminist reading of postinvasion Iraqi women activism that would break with the postcolonial focus on ‘cultural representations’ and ‘discourses’, and rather direct the look at the concrete material, economic, political and social realities in which gender discourses and practices are deployed in post-2003 Iraq.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Iraq
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies