Women in Iraq

Noga Efrati's exceptionally well-researched monograph focuses on the history of Iraqi women during the first half of the twentieth century. This period witnessed the development of the modern Iraqi state under the heavy influence of the British colonial regime. Efrati narrates this familiar history from the perspective of Iraqi women, contributing to the body of work on gender and the history of women in the Middle East, a field that has grown significantly in recent years. Her work also provides an important reinterpretation of Iraqi history, particularly focusing on political history, including the role of political elites and Iraqi women activists during the Mandate period and under monarchical rule. The historical context she provides allows for a nuanced understanding of the current moment in the history of Iraq, especially pertaining to the role and experience of women after 2003. In her words, the book “presents the ways Iraqi women were constructed as citizens by the gender discourse of Iraq's rulers from the outset of the British occupation until the overthrow of the British-backed monarchy and traces efforts by the Iraqi women's movement to contest this construct” (xiii).The strength of this book lies in Efrati's skillful use of available sources on Iraq, particularly given their scarcity in the country, due especially to the partial destruction of Iraq's national archives in Baghdad in 2003.1 Her sources include British archival documents retrieved from Britain and India, drafts of Iraqi personal status and other documents produced at the Iraqi assembly, Iraqi newspapers, women's magazines, diaries and biographical works concerning British and Iraqi political figures, and religious interpretations and rulings on contemporary legislation and public debate relating to the Iraqi suffrage movement and the personal status law, issued by both Sunni and Shiʿi scholars of the period.She deftly weaves these sources together and undertakes a critical examination of state legislation, religious law, and public opinion, registering the agency of women in all of these areas, particularly toward the end of the monarchical period. In the process, she succeeds in avoiding a structuralist approach by demonstrating the complexity of these issues and illustrating how conflicting opinions on the role of women within society were in play, as articulated by institutions operating within a hierarchically structured system controlled by Britain (the British Mandate, the Iraqi monarchical state, and religious institutions).Nevertheless, the effects produced by these institutions did not necessarily diverge. Each group was concerned with extending its influence and placating others within its circle. For instance, although some British officials believed tribal laws were too extreme in their treatment of women, and that the well-being of women as individuals had to be protected—advancing “rational individualism”—others within the British apparatus proposed a “romantic collectivism” that highlighted the tribe's needs and customs over those of individual women (26–27).Efrati concludes that in practice British romantic collectivism and rational individualism yielded similar results for rural women. In her words, “those who put a premium on the building of a modern state allowed the utility of customary law in a society perceived as culturally different. Those convinced of the validity of the tribal system tended to legitimize its laws and to moderate criticism that could undermine it” (29). Women were ultimately viewed as tribal possessions, not as citizens of a modern nation-state with rights of their own. Other sources used by Efrati include biographical works, press clippings, and speeches, and aim to provide a balanced approach by incorporating the voices of educated Iraqis outside the immediate power circle. The result is a nuanced historical work that not only fills a gap in our understanding of the history of Iraqi women, but also complements the existing literature.The first three chapters describe the legislation that defined women's role in the private and public spheres, from the onset of British occupation, throughout the British Mandate, and during the Iraqi monarchy. They also outline the evolution of the legal system, which led to the construction of women as second-class citizens during the state-building process. The introduction re-examines historical accounts and presents major events in a way that will be clear and accessible both to undergraduates and to the nonspecialist reader—taking the time, for instance, to define the differences between Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims (3). She does this while thoroughly integrating women into the formative history of the Iraqi nation-state. In the first chapter Efrati addresses customary law and the Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation (TCCDR), which was introduced by the British during World War I to deal with disputes within the rural population. The British TCCDR became state law after the end of the Mandate period and was observed among rural populations until the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy. Existing literature on the TCCDR has primarily addressed the invention of tribal law, based on British conceptions of social structure. Efrati expands on earlier literature by addressing the TCCDR's gender discourses and its ramifications for women.While the rural population was subjected to the TCCDR, the urban population was regulated by the civil and criminal courts, in parallel with religious shariʿa (Islamic law) courts designated by the British to handle personal matters pertaining to Muslims. Moreover, Shiʿi qadi(s) (judges), excluded by the Ottomans, were gradually incorporated into the new legal system. In the March 1925 version of the Iraqi constitution, shariʿa courts were allocated responsibility for handling personal status among Muslims (marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance), in accordance with the shariʿa stipulations of each Islamic sect (55).In her second chapter Efrati examines the regulation of family law according to Islamic interpretations adopted by the new Iraqi state, and the push by Iraqi intellectuals to bring personal status regulations under the jurisdiction of civil courts, in line with the Turkish judicial system—which had been adopted in 1926 on the model of the Swiss Civil Code (55). Efrati examines British policy in fashioning the personal status law in accordance with Islamic jurisprudence, and notes both internal and colonial opposition to it, as well as the responses of the Iraqi political and intellectual elites. She notes, once again, that such opposition focused largely on the priority of extending central authority and influence over such matters, rather than advocating on behalf of women. For example, Arab nationalist state officials such as Dr. Sami Shawkat, director-general of education in the 1930s, argued against polygamy because it produced children and families that were mentally and physically unhealthy (64). Efrati also explores the repercussions of this policy for women. She demonstrates that several drafts of the personal status law existed prior to the 1947 draft. Dating from the 1930s, these drafts are incorporated in her analysis—although they were never promulgated as law—because they represent the “only detailed expression” of the government's gender discourse with regards to personal status law before 1958, and were taught in state law schools as well (57). She uses legal texts penned by religious or legal state authorities, which also shaped the opinions of legislators.In the book's third chapter, Efrati shifts her focus to women's suffrage and participation in formal politics. It examines reasons for the exclusion of women from the electoral system, arguing that the government, concerned about its own political position, refrained from upsetting the conservative establishment that opposed women's suffrage, while simultaneously appeasing those supporting it. Efrati gives a nuanced and detailed description of the position taken on women's suffrage by Iraq's political parties—the National Democratic Party, the al-Istiqlal Party, and the Iraqi Communist Party—along with the opinions of the religious establishment, showing how, for women, citizenship was defined in terms established by men. She includes among her sources the less-serious sections of newspapers, such as gossip columns, “Talk, Comments, and Rumors,” published by the pro-government al-Hawadith newspaper.Efrati also directs her attention to activism within the women's movement (chapters 4–5), showing how the government's gender discourse was challenged from below. Efrati reveals that the difficulty of tracing women's responses to the gender discourse is due, on the one hand, to the restrictive system established by the Hashemite government, and, on the other, to the presence of two competing historical narratives within the women's movement (chapter 4). The first wave of historiography focused on women's activity sanctioned by the regime and associated with the Iraqi Women's Union, while the second focused on organizations affiliated with the League for the Defense of Women's Rights, which was at one point banned. Efrati pieces these two narratives together, arguing that they support each other, rather than being in tension (133). Her sources include biographies and speeches by women activists. Efrati reveals the struggle of activists, within both the Union and the League, against gender discourses constructed during this period (chapter 5). In the late 1940s women's organizations were established that were able to oppose the policies of the TCCDR and the marginalization of women by the government and society. In the process, new gender discourses were advanced that would set in motion more positive policies toward women in the second half of the twentieth century.The book concludes with an epilogue, which draws alarming parallels between the pre-1958 and the post-2003 periods, asserting that women have recently been subjected to a new wave of tribalization and subordination: “similar threads running through the post British and present American policies influenced the fate of two generations of Iraqi women separated by half a century” (165).This book focuses on Iraq's urban centers, particularly the capital Baghdad, and the political elites and the educated effendiyya, with some attention to circles of power. Efrati also takes into account rural women when discussing the TCCDR, and mentions women with authority in the northern provinces. However, this work leaves the door open for future scholars to conduct additional research on rural and provincial women, as well as women from minority communities (for example, Assyrians, Jews, Kurds, Turkomens, and Yezidis). Future work in these areas might examine ways in which the gendered discourse identified by Efrati can be applied to provincial women and minorities, and the ways in which socioeconomic, ethnoreligious, and linguistic positions subjected women to further marginalization within the state and the wider society. Sources on both rural and minority women are difficult to locate, however

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