In March 2017, the Iraqi Parliament and media experienced a huge uproar after a female MP called for the promotion of polygamy in order to support and help the high number of widows, divorcees and single women. Jamila Al-Obaidi, a Sunni member of the Iraqi Parliament from the National Coalition, convened a press conference, encouraging women to denounce the culture of monogamy. This was not the first time post-invasion Iraq that gender issues took centre stage in political and media debates. In fact, questions around women’s legal rights, their political representation as well as gender-based and domestic violence have constituted symbolic markers of difference between the old Ba‘th regime and new forms of governance in central and southern Iraq on the one hand, and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq on the other. At the same time, contestations around gender have also been at the heart of ethnic and sectarian tensions and conflict. In this talk I will illustrate that increases in gender-based violence, contestations about women’s legal rights, as well as wider gender norms and relations, are central to understanding and shaping sectarian and authoritarian governance in post-invasion Iraq. Moreover, I will show that Iraqi women’s rights mobilisation has not only attempted to challenge the shrinking of political and social spaces for women, as well as the different forms of violence they have been exposed to, but they have also been at the forefront of struggling against sectarianism and political authoritarianism. My arguments and findings are based on long-term and ongoing qualitative research on the gendered implications of the invasion and political transition in Iraq.