Women in Iraq: The Gender Impact of International Sanctions (review)

Based on original ethnographic research in Baghdad, Yasmin al-Jawa-heri presents the depressing picture of what happened to Iraqi women under international sanctions during the 1990s. In so doing, she informs several important debates: on the humanitarian impact of sanctions as a tool of international policy; on the differential impact of political and economic processes on women; on the shifting construction of femininity in response to changing socioeconomic conditions; as well as on the gendered nature of the state and its significance in shaping gender relations.

Overall, the book demonstrates how sanctions reversed many of the gains that women had made under the modernizing Ba’th regime. A combination of severe economic deterioration and the diminishing role of the state had a devastating impact on the status of women from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The author conducted research among approximately 180 women residents of three different neighborhoods in Baghdad: Madinat al-Thawra, or Revolution City (renamed Saddam City in the 1970s and Sadr City in 2003, and the poorest area of Baghdad), al-Adhamiya (populated mainly by the professional class), and al-Mansur (one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Baghdad, which lost many of its professional-class residents in the 1990s but gained some of the sanctions “profiteers”), as well as 50 women students at al-Mustanseriya and Baghdad Universities. These interviews took place in 2000 and 2002.

Through an analysis of her interviews, al-Jawaheri reveals how sanctions largely devalued women’s formal-sector work. In particular, decreasing job opportunities in the public sector, the withdrawal of benefits such as workplace childcare facilities, and the falling value of wages due to inflation pushed women out of this sector of the labor market, which had historically been the largest employer of middle-and working-class women. Meanwhile, a large number of working-class women and women heads of household were, out of economic necessity, obliged to work to support their families, and many of these women worked in the private or informal sectors, often exposing themselves to social stigma and/or poor working conditions. The author’s research also shows how the declining value of women’s employment contributed to the decline in the perceived social and economic benefits of education and, therefore, to the decrease in female education enrollment rates under sanctions.

The deterioration in the perceived value of women’s public roles, coupled with decreasing state commitment to improving women’s status, had a negative impact on gender relations within the private sphere and, consequently, on society’s perception of “women.” Women interviewed by the author became increasingly vulnerable, under sanctions, to control by male relatives, who were able to dictate whether their female relatives went out to work or to get an education. Meanwhile, young women sought out marriage as a path to financial security, even as marriage opportunities were reduced in the aftermath of two wars and the ongoing dictatorship (which resulted in there being fewer men than women in Iraq). This led to the growing acceptability of polygynous marriage and increasing social stigma attached to unmarried women. Simultaneously, sanctions gradually destroyed the ability of the family and extended kin networks to provide women with financial and emotional security.

Within this context, the author reveals how women became more exposed to domestic violence, honor crimes, and violence on the street, and how they increasingly donned the veil, partly as a means of deflecting unwanted male attention in public. Meanwhile, women were subject to mounting psychological pressures, resulting in depression, anxiety, insomnia, and other dimensions of stress, as they attempted to maintain their households against the backdrop of rising prices, failing infrastructure, diminishing incomes, and ever more negative attitudes toward female employment. In addition, the collapse of the public health system led to shocking statistics with regard to maternal and infant mortality, as well as other health complications.

I highly recommend this book for its rich ethnographic research, which is currently...