Women’s rights in Kurdistan have a dedicated champion in Pakshan Zangana; a physics graduate from Baghdad University, life-long communist, MP for four years and former Peshmerga who took to the mountains to fight Saddam Hussein.
She has just answered the appeal for retired Peshmerga to rejoin if and when they are needed in combatting the so-called Islamic State. But she is of greater use in the battle for equality as the secretary-general of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s High Council on Women’s Affairs. The institution is part of the Council of Ministers, chaired by the prime minister, and spearheads policy and strategies for equality.
Kurdistan ticks more boxes than most other countries in the Middle East. There are proportionately more female MPs than the UK – 30 per cent versus 23 per cent. But there is currently only one woman cabinet minister and one female university chancellor. Most judges are men and, while there is a roughly even representation in the lower echelons of government, that tapers dramatically up the scale in what is still a man’s world, the common feature of the Middle East. Zangana’s vision is empowering women in decision-making roles in parliament, parties, and public life.
The obstacles are firmly rooted in a culture which is based on discrimination against women but things are getting better. Zangana proudly cites the rise in the number of women who go to the police about domestic violence. It used to be, she told me in London on a flying visit to see equality practitioners, that abused women would say ‘this is a matter of shame to be kept in the family’ but they increasingly contact the police, whose training includes taking it seriously. We shouldn’t be smug about this. Two women a week are killed by their partners in Britain and it wasn’t that long ago that the police were dismissive of ‘domestics’.
Another issue is female genital mutilation – no one has precise figures but some say it is over half – which came as a great shock to liberal Kurdish leaders when they found out about its prevalence, especially in small rural villages. FGM has been banned but that’s just the first step given its deep cultural grip. Today all pregnant women are examined and their daughters then have to see a doctor at regular intervals to make sure that they are not cut. Zangana has begun a major research programme to track all females between one and 20. Kurdish leaders have put considerable political capital into the campaign which is not easy given what Zangana describes as the constant pull of conservative opinion and the probability that FGM has been driven underground.
Some Kurdish laws were inherited from the old Iraq. Saddam changed the law in 1969 to punish women but not men for adultery, an issue recently raised in the Commons. But Zangana told critics that the KRG scrapped this law a decade ago and that both men and women are treated equally in Kurdish law.
Another priority is encouraging women into the private sector, which is miniscule by comparison to the gargantuan state sector in Kurdistan. The problem is that ‘women don’t have their own money, which is under the control of the family, and women are afraid to spend or lose money’. Self-employment challenges this. Typical work might be hairdressing and beauty – there is a union for such women – dressmaking, and making carpets. The National Textile Museum in the 6,000 year old Citadel at the heart of Erbil – the longest continually inhabited city in the world – displays elegant hand-made carpets and runs courses for women to maintain the ancient skill.
But the Islamic State crisis means more immediate and heart-rending problems. Zangana says that there are up to two million refugees and internally displaced people in Kurdistan and that the region has ‘not received a penny from Baghdad’ to assist them or, indeed, for anything all year.
She urges the world and Islamic leaders and institutions to ‘vocally condemn’ the Islamic State trade in slaves and sex slaves, which she has heard about directly from women and children who have escaped to Erbil. Many saw husbands and children slain in front of them and are deeply traumatised. She has also put great effort into reintegrating 100 women who escaped Islamic State rapists but who are seen by some to have lost their ‘honour’ and faced a difficult time in being accepted by their communities and families. She talks passionately about the 200 children who have lost everything – parents, family, home, school – and should be ‘adopted by the international community’ or, more accurately, sponsored to show that they are not alone.
More widely, Zangana says education and stability are prerequisites for rooting equality in Kurdistan and shows no slacking in her determination to make Kurdistan work for women.
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Gary Kent is director of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq and writes in a personal capacity. He tweets @GaryKent
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