抄録
Women in Iraq have been always at the “periphery” of the multi-layered centre/periphery structures. They were located at the periphery of the traditional Muslim/Arab society in a Western/modernist sense. Iraq itself, on the other hand, is located at the periphery of the colonial and global economic system. Consequently, Iraqi women have found themselves in a double peripheral position, both at the international as well as the domestic level.
The leftist political elites who became dominant in Iraq after 1958 understood the liberation of women as evidence of the progressiveness of modern society, as they opposed both feudalism and Western colonialism. The state under the Ba'thist regime in the 1970s controlled women's organizations and included them in the system of revolutionary mobilization. State control was strengthened during the war period in the 1980s as a means to mobilise women into the labour force.
The leftist regimes in Iraq pursued this secular and de-Islamisation policy until after the Gulf war, but in the 1990s Saddam Hussein introduced a re-tribalisation and re-Islamisation policy as a means to compensate for the state's lack of ability to govern local society. This revival of traditional Muslim and tribal social systems drove women again to the periphery.
The US invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam's regime has led to a change in the previous central/peripheral relationship. Iraq was placed at the periphery of the world political system under US/UK control. At the same time, the new Iraq regime, established following the general election in 2005, is led by Islamist political parties, which were in a peripheral/outlaw position in Iraq before 2003. Under this new situation, women have been divided into three categories. First, there is a group who utilise the US/Western support to “liberate/democratise” Iraq and demand the introduction of a Western legal and social system to protect women's rights. A second group accepts the newly introduced Western electoral system but not the Western-type equal political rights for women. The third are women members of Islamist political parties, who act as a part of the revolutionary forces pursuing the establishment of an Islamic state.
Under both the leftist and Islamist regimes, revolutionaries have consistently pursued their own goal of “liberating” their nation from the rule of the “centre” of world politics, which is led by the Western system; sometimes they play up the nominal status of women to the state elites, but in other cases pursue their own aims at the expense of women's rights.
