Oxfam International Releases Study Showing Decline in Women's Status
© Carey Hogg
Mar 29, 2009
Though violence has decreased throughout the war-torn country, Oxfam International finds that Iraqi women's new role as family breadwinners leads to increased hardships.
On March 8, 2009, Oxfam International released a study entitled “In Her Own Words: Iraqi Women Talk About Their Greatest Concerns and Challenges,” coinciding with International Women’s Day. The study finds that many women in Iraq have been widowed since the US-led invasion began in 2003, and subsequently have had to provide for their families without their husbands' financial support.
While no exact statistics exist, Oxfam estimates that there are currently 740,000 widows in Iraq. Many of these women have been unable to earn a decent living to support their families.
Decline of Women’s Status Since Pre-Saddam Iraq
The dire circumstances many Iraqi women now face seem particularly harsh in comparison to the relative autonomy and security women once enjoyed in pre-Saddam Iraq. According to Women for Women International, a charity that helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives, women were once encouraged to go to school and even held professional positions in government, medicine, and law.
Yet when Saddam Hussein came to power in the 1970s, women’s status began to decline, and has continued to do so throughout the US occupation of the country.
Interestingly enough, gender equality and the protection of women’s rights were cited as major reasons for the US-led invasion of Iraq. According to a December 13, 2007 article in The Guardian by Mark Lattimer, President Bush said in 2004 that "the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women...the systematic use of rape by Saddam's former regime to dishonour families has ended." However, as the situation in Iraq began to deteriorate after 2003's invasion, the status of women in the country became secondary to the stabilization of the country as a whole.
Today, according to Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs, “Women are the forgotten victims of Iraq. Despite the billions of dollars poured into rebuilding Iraq and recent security gains, a quarter of the women interviewed still do not have daily access to water, a third cannot send their children to school and since the war started, over half have been the victim of violence.”
Iraqi Government Can Improve Status of Women
The Iraqi government has the power to markedly improve the status of women throughout the country. Oxfam’s report calls upon the Iraqi government to begin a surge of investment into reviving social welfare and basic services, as women voiced having extreme difficulty in accessing adequate shelter, electricity, and clean water. Now that the fragility of the security situation has improved, albeit slightly, the government must invest a greater portion of its oil revenues into the women of Iraq, who make up the majority of the war-torn civilian population.
