Journal of Women's History

Abstract:

Recent scholarship has emphasized the centrality of gender to nation-building projects in the modern Middle East, particularly in constituting the legal rights of citizens and behavioral norms that shaped the relations of men and women to one another and defined their public roles, particularly in the workforce. The example of post-independence Iraq under the Baʿath Party demonstrates—using official publications—how women's organizations were consolidated under state control within a framework of official feminism. The Iraqi woman became crucial both symbolically to the Party's ideology, as well as instrumentally in the name of economic progress. Elite women in Iraq attempted to negotiate the constraints of the patriarchal bargain and push for progress through the avenues available via state feminism. Simultaneously, the sole legal organization constrained women's activities through coordination and surveillance, and co-opted women's labor on behalf of the state, the Party, and its leading personalities (which became increasingly commensurate).