Post-Tishreen Online Feminism: Continuity, Rupture, Departure

Abstract

Iraqi women's struggle for equal rights has been shaped by similar circumstances and factors in both past and present. Since the founding of the Iraqi nation–state, ruling elites have repeatedly traded women's rights for building alliances with tribal and religious conservative forces in the interest of sustaining power. There was some progress in the areas of personal status and family law as well as women's access to education and the labor market throughout the years from the revolution of 1958 to the 1980s. Women's status declined dramatically during the 1990s due to intermittent wars, economic sanctions, repressive policies of the Baʿthist regime, and eroding state structures. Similar developments are notable since the toppling of that regime in 2003 at the hands of a US-led invasion. The selling rhetoric of liberating Iraqi women was quickly debunked when women's rights were de-prioritized and sacrificed for the sake of maintaining order and security, giving way for tribal and Islamist powers to control and discipline women. Iraqi women have been grappling with a new reality marked by a lack of security, an ethno-sectarian muḥāṣaṣa (quota-based) system, conflict, terrorist groups and militias, rampant corruption, the fragile rule of law, and the erosion of Iraqi institutions. All of these have allowed for the (re)emergence of different forms of patriarchies and masculinities, compounded by the empowerment of tribal and religious authorities, contributing to an increase in various forms of gender-based violence.