Women in Iraq

For the dwindling band of us prepared to admit that we backed the war in Iraq, there appears to be yet more bad news from Baghdad. By next Monday the Iraqis are supposed to have agreed a new constitution, and early indications have been that it will not be an entirely progressive document.

Women’s groups in Iraq and the West are alarmed at concessions to the Shiite majority, which seem to destroy any advances made by women under the secular Baathist regime. One clause, inserted to please the mullahs, says that ‘the followers of any religion or sect are free to choose their civil status according to their religious or sectarian beliefs’. It is feared that this will permit the population to be governed by Sharia law, in which a woman’s economic and legal status is greatly inferior to a man’s. Another clause says that ‘The state shall ensure harmony between the duties of a woman towards her family and work in society and equality with men in the fields of political, social and economic life, without conflicting or disturbing the provisions of Islamic Sharia.’