The Kurdish movement’s left-wing and secular orientation created increasing discursive spaces for Kurdish women to shape their own ideological positions in pursuit of gender equality. As a consequence, Kurdish women have been deeply engaged in various forms of communal participation through acts of solidarity and political protest. Achieving gender equality became a central theme that shaped Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria by pursuing modifications to organizational structures and the roles of women in larger society. The principle of co-leadership in Kurdish political parties and the formation of women’s militant groups such as the YPJ (Women's Protection Units, the all-female militia which is actively fighting in Rojava/Northern Syria) have fundamentally changed the lives of Kurdish women in the region. However, when Kurdish diaspora women in the Western Diaspora participate in acts of solidarity in support of their Kurdish sisters in the homeland, they regularly encounter unexpected challenges to their demands for equality and social justice. North-American and European-led grassroots organizations frequently focus on ending wars and militarism, and simultaneously demand that Kurdish women support elements of this particular agenda. On occasion, women-led peace initiatives in the West directly challenge Kurdish women in the Diaspora to re-think their positions and approaches in Rojava. This paper examines why Kurdish women encounter criticism from Western feminists instead of finding a sense of solidarity. In this context, several significant political developments are under examination, including the racial divisions within the Women’s March in 2019, the general lack of public support among feminists in the West for the revolution in Rojava, and patterns of cultural (mis)appropriation of the Kurdish struggle in the West. The presenter interviewed Kurdish women in the U.S., Canada, and Germany to contextualize the lived experiences of Kurdish diaspora women in pursuit of full equality and examines some of the causes for their disillusionment with feminist consciousness in the West.

Compared to the other Islamic societies around them, Kurdish women have often exercised more freedom and occasionally even played prominent roles in politics and the military, among others. In the territory ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraqi Kurdistan, women have won more rights than most of their sisters in other Middle Eastern states. Even earlier, moreover, Adila Khanem (1847-1924) was a famous and cultured chief of the Jaf tribe in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. Although actually an Assyrian, Margaret George (Shello) was a more recent example of a Kurdish female warrior. Hero Talabani, the wife of the late Jalal Talabani (died 2017), is a well-known personality in her own right. More than 30 percent of the KRG parliament elected on September 21, 2013 was female. There are currently three gender-based studies centers in the Iraqi Kurdish region: 1.) The Gender and Violence Studies Centre at the University of Sulaimani established in 2011, 2.) The Kurdistan Centre for Gender Studies at the Soran University established in 2014, and 3.) The Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the American University in Sulaymaniya (Sulaimani) established in 2016. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG representative in the United States, exudes a confident leadership role among her male Kurdish associates in Washington, DC. In private talks with her, she has told me that for the most part there is no gender discrimination against her, although she sometimes is left out of the loop during male social gatherings. Nevertheless, Iraqi Kurdish parties and especially Iranian ones lag behind in leadership roles compared to the Kurds in Turkey and Syria. Despite these positive examples, women’s rights, or the lack thereof, are increasingly issues in Iraqi Kurdistan. The KRG has recently sought to deal with honor killing and female genital mutilation (FGM). Female Kurdish refugees and widows suffer more than their male counter parts. The purpose of my paper is to analyze gender and equality in Iraqi Kurdistan and compare it to the situation in Turkey, Syria, and Iran along the lines listed in this abstract. My paper will be based mostly on my fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan and Europe involving interviews with Kurdish leaders and the regular population. I also will use secondary sources such as academic books and articles as well as news articles.

The Syrian civil war has brought two violent groups with diametrically opposed worldviews to the forefront of regional and global politics. Notwithstanding complexities involved, the war also witnessed the ascent of a radical Islamist group, the Islamic State, and its military defeat at the hands of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Kurdish forces have become under the spotlight not only for their tenacity and competence against the IS but also for their radically different views of gender equality. While much has been written on the Kurdish forces in Syria, the group from which the Syrian Kurdish group gets its cues and inspiration, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK) in Turkey, and its silent social revolution in the Kurdish parts of Turkey has escaped the world attention due in part to the listing of the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. In this paper, I aim at shedding light on this revolution that has enabled Kurdish women in Turkey to break with patriarchal gender roles and emerge as a key player both in the Kurdish movement and Turkish politics. Today, Kurdish women make up about a third of the PKK guerrilla units, and serve as mayors, parliamentarians, and co-chairs in the Kurdish political movement. This paper examines this phenomenal change with an emphasis on how more than three decades of armed conflict has affected gender norms and relations among the Kurds in Turkey.

Most Kurdish political parties in Turkey, Iran and Syria (Bakur, Rojhelat and Rojava) include women in both leadership positions and in their armed forces. Particularly the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its affiliated groups through Kurdistan, but also Komala in Iranian Kurdistan, make extensive use of female fighters. Such has traditionally not been the case for Iraqi Kurdish parties – particularly the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In the last 15 years or so, KDP and PUK officials claim that this has changed. Both parties now claim to field significant numbers of female peshmerga, insisting that they too incorporate women into their struggle for national liberation and security. This paper seeks to assess the extent to which this claim is true and why the difference existed in the first place. More importantly, it analyzes why the KDP and PUK felt the need to incorporate women fighters, or to at least claim they do.

While the Arab Spring did not spell freedom for Arab women throughout the Middle East and North Africa, from the horrors of the Syrian civil war, Rojava emerged as a women-led revolution which enabled ordinary Kurdish women to break through traditional gender roles and assume leadership positions in diverse sectors of society. The all-female Kurdish brigade, Women’s Protection Units (YPG), particularly came under international spotlight not only for its strength and military effectiveness against ISIS, but also for its advocacy for secular ideals and gender equality in the Middle East. The Kurdish women’s dynamism in Syria is largely inspired by the ideology of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its leader Abdullah Ocalan. If the PKK’s trajectory shows the potential of the Kurdish movement to generate transformative gender politics, Rojava represents the transformation of this potential into a substantial political force. This paper aims to shed light on how the Kurdish nationalist and feminist agendas intersect in the Syrian context with a focus on addressing a number of misconceptions regarding the understandings of the YPJ and its feminist outlook by the international community. Many Western feminists view nationalism as antithetical to feminist aims and struggles. Scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias view national state making as a gendered process which relegates women to the role of motherhood as the "reproducers of the collective” while assigning men to the status of protectors and defenders of the nation. As emphasized by Ofra Bengio, however, while during the greater part of modern history there seemed to be a clash of interests between the feminist and nationalist agendas in Kurdish society, the double revolution that Kurdish women have been recently undergoing in Syria has shown that the two agendas need not necessarily clash, but can actually complement one another. The paper first makes a theoretical discussion on how post-colonial feminism informs our understanding of the ways non-Western feminist struggles challenge the hegemonic women’s rights discourse articulated by Western liberal feminism. Then, the paper turns its focus to the case of Rojava to demonstrate how nationalism can facilitate women’s agency and empowerment in a context where the ideology of the nationalist project places gender relations and an anti-patriarchal agenda as to the fore of its analysis.