Iraq's Little Secret

October 1, 2002
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


BAGHDAD, Iraq - The White House is right that Iraq is by
far the most repressive country in the entire Middle East -
but that's true only if you're a man.

To see how many Arab countries are in some ways even more
repressive to women, consider how an invasion might play
out. If American ground troops are allowed to storm across
the desert from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, then American
servicewomen will theoretically not be able to drive
vehicles as long as they are in Saudi Arabia and will be
advised to wear an abaya over their heads. As soon as they
cross the border into enemy Iraq, they'll feel as if they
are entering the free world: they can legally drive,
uncover their heads, and even call men idiots.

Iraqi women routinely boss men and serve in non-combat
positions in the army. Indeed, if Iraq attacks us with
smallpox, we'll have a woman to thank: Dr. Rihab Rashida
Taha, the head of Iraq's biological warfare program, who is
also known to weapons inspectors as Dr. Germ.

A man can stop a woman on the street in Baghdad and ask for
directions without causing a scandal. Men and women can
pray at the mosque together, go to restaurants together,
swim together, court together or quarrel together. Girls
compete in after-school sports almost as often as boys, and
Iraqi television broadcasts women's sports as well as
men's.

"No one thinks that sports are just for men," said Nadia
Yasser, the captain of the Iraqi national women's soccer
team. "It's true that my mother was a bit concerned at
first when I took up soccer, but I insisted, and so she
accepted it and just started praying for me."

The point is not to be soft on Saddam Hussein, whose rash
wars and policies have killed hundreds of thousands of
women as well as men. Iraqi women would be much better off
with Saddam gone, and in any case the relative equality of
women in Iraq has little to do with his leadership. Iraq
has been civilized more than twice as long as Britain,
after all (it was old when Babylon arose), and Iraq got its
first woman doctor back in 1922. Then the Iran-Iraq war
boosted equality by sending men to the front lines and
forced women to fill in as factory workers, bus drivers and
government officials.

Still, we shouldn't demonize all of Iraq - just its demon
of a ruler - and it's worth pondering this contrast between
an enemy that empowers women and allies that repress them.
This gap should shame us as well as these allies, reminding
us to use our political capital to nudge Arab countries to
respect the human rights not just of Kurds or Shiites, but
also of women.

More broadly, in a region where women are treated as
doormats, Iraq offers an example of how an Arab country can
adhere to Islam and yet provide women with opportunities.

"I look at women in Saudi Arabia, and I feel sorry for
them," said Thuha Farook, a young woman doctor in Basra.
"They can't learn. They can't improve themselves."

At the Basra Maternity and Pediatric Teaching Hospital, 25
of the 26 students in ob-gyn are women. Across town, 54
percent of Basra University's students are female.

Iraqi women who work typically get six months' maternity
leave at full pay and another six months at half pay.
Subsidized day care is usually available at the workplace.
Female circumcision, still common in American allies like
Egypt and Nigeria, is absent in Iraq.

To be sure, aside from brutal political repression that is
gender-blind, Iraqi women also endure groping on crowded
buses and an occasional honor killing, in which a man kills
a daughter or sister for being unchaste. Honor killings
typically result in a six-month prison sentence in Iraq;
they sometimes go completely unpunished in other countries.


A glance around any Baghdad street also demonstrates that
Iraq doesn't have hang-ups about the female body that
neighboring countries do. A man can travel widely in the
Arab world and know about women's legs only by hearsay, but
careful reporting in Iraq confirms that Arab women do have
knees: In Baghdad I saw women volleyball players who felt
uninhibited enough to roll up their sweats.

So as we invade Iraq for its barbaric and repressive ways,
our allies in the Muslim world should feel deeply
embarrassed that a rogue state offers women more equality
than they do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?ex=1034518747&ei=1&en=bceca56e13d39128