Kurdish Women Make a Stand
By John Lloyd
May 15 2005

Dr Ariana Alazajani, an obstetrician and professor of medicine at Arbil University in Iraqi Kurdistan, has a number of reasons to be cautious about her future in post-war Iraq. One reason is because she is a Kurd, another is because she is a woman.

“When I studied in Baghdad, it was the same for all of us women,” she said, “none wanted a religion that held them down. But we Kurds had developed a different culture which is free of fundamentalism; men and women treat each other with respect.”

After 14 years of de facto independence, the status of women in Kurdistan is noticeably better than in the rest of Iraq, they say. They fear reintegration with the Arab-dominated south, and a government dominated by Shia fundamentalists.

The Kurds have constructed the outline of a democratic and secular society which they now see as threatened.

Dr Alazajani says all Iraqi women, not only Kurds, fear a shift to fundamentalism of the kind that happened in neighbouring Iran 25 years ago.

Though still largely absent from the senior ranks of power, whether political or economic, Kurdish women say that both their influence and liberties have flourished after Kurdistan was declared a safe haven by the US and the UK following the Gulf war.

Professor Vian Suleiman, one of 25 women in the 111-seat Kurdish parliament, still sees her identity as a Kurd rather than a woman. “There are lots of problems for the parliament, and some concern women. But I don't see myself being there as a woman, but as a Kurd. Iraqis regarded us as second class citizens not because we were women, but because we were Kurds.”

In truth, most meetings and public occasions are still run and attended largely by men. A gathering of political figures in Duhok, at which Professor Suleiman and other female MPs were speaking, had a slightly forced air, with the leading politician in the city yawning elaborately throughout the women's presentations. But if the progress is relative, it is felt as real and valuable, and to be quite distinct from the surrounding Arab societies.

In a meeting in Sulaimaniya of officials of the fledgling trade unions, a group of female officials, elected in the main from mixed-sex workforces, claimed that pay and conditions are equal, no jobs are barred to them and that women can organise successfully a claim echoed loudly by their male colleagues.