The Changing State for Women : Political and Social Mobilisation for Iraqi Women Members of Parliament Post-2003

Abstract

Throughout the modern history of Iraq as a nation-state, the ability of Iraqi women to achieve basic rights and pursue legitimate political agency has fluctuated in step with changes in the country's political climate. The invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and allied forces in 2003 set in motion a reconstruction of the Iraqi nation and its government, and in turn a sequence of events that have had diverse effects on Iraqi women in politics as well as in the domestic, religious, legal, and employment domains. The political transition towards democracy post-2003 included reforms to the judicial, legislative, and executive governing powers and had historic impact on Iraqi women's potential to take a role in the polity. Perhaps most important to this impact was the electoral gender quota enacted within the 2005 Constitution, stipulating no less than 25 per cent of seats in the Iraq Parliament to be filled by women.This research seeks to elucidate the strides made towards political mobilisation of women in the Iraqi Parliament and the evolution of their efficacy as political actors since the allied invasion of 2003. In the context of the historical, political, sectarian, and cultural influences on women's political agency, this thesis undertakes to evaluate the successes and failures encountered as a result of institutionalising the parliamentary gender quota.This thesis examines, therefore, the effect that the gender quota has had on descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation of Iraqi women in the post-2003 Iraqi elections. In doing so, it draws on three bodies of scholarship: democratisation theory, feminist theory, and the study of political gender quotas. These approaches have been selected because all three recognise the importance of gender inclusiveness to the development of a functioning democracy. However, the circumstances of Iraq have particularly highlighted a point that the general literature tends to understate: the difficulties of mobilising female politicians when instability and sectarian schisms have deepened as a result of international intervention, as well as when conservative Islam is politicised and has a profound influence on the emerging political order.The analyses will suggest that, whilst the gender quota has succeeded to increase sheer numbers of women in the Iraq Parliament (descriptive representation), it has had less value in supporting Iraqi female MPs as political agents (substantive representation). Female parliamentarians encounter substantial barriers, along with some supports, to achieving public office and to making their political voices heard. Further, women remain far from achieving the symbolic capital requisite to attain legitimacy as political agents (symbolic representation). In the absence of an independent media environment, true symbolic representation for women remains lacking. Show more