The lines dividing history, ideology, and politics are thinly drawn. Researchers of Iraq have observed that over the years institutions and ideological movements, both inside the country and in the West, have “hijacked” the country's history. The Iraqi state's grand narratives have excluded competing histories from the days of Satiʿ al-Husri, the “father of Iraqi education,” who introduced Arab history into the curriculum in order to foster Arab nationalism, up to the massive project of rewriting Iraqi history under the Baʿth regime.Footnote ¹ Western interests, too, from the time of the British-backed monarchy until the present day, have influenced the writing of Iraqi history—utilizing it in a way that would justify their foreign policies.

Contemporary historians, notably Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, have cautioned against uncritical reproduction of “official versions” of events presented by past and present regimes as “the history of Iraq.” They have emphasized the importance of taking into account alternative versions of the past offered by oppositionist Iraqi intellectuals living in exile.Footnote ² This essay recognizes and juxtaposes such competing narratives in order to develop a higher-resolution image of the history of the early women's movement in Iraq. It is concerned as well with the way in which these narratives (both official and unofficial) have been reproduced and the impact this has had on the historiography of the available literature.

The history of the women's movement in Iraq before 1958 has received little attention in contemporary scholarly literature published in English. Researchers have tended to treat the period in a cursory fashion, as a prologue to more elaborate discussions of the condition of women and their organized activities under Baʿth rule. When surveying these brief accounts in secondary sources, one is initially struck by their inconsistency and lack of clarity. Upon closer examination, two historiographical approaches emerge. One primarily follows the development of women's activities sanctioned by the regime, focusing on the organizations and activists associated with the Iraqi Women's Union (al-Ittihad al-Nisaʾi al-ʿIraqi), established in 1945. The most representative example of this approach is Doreen Ingrams's The Awakened: Women in Iraq, published in 1983.Footnote ³ The second approach follows developments and organizations linked with the underground League for the Defense of Women's Rights (Rabitat al-Difaʿ ʿan Huquq al-Marʾa), founded in 1952. This interpretation finds its most coherent expression in an article by Deborah Cobbett, “Women in Iraq,” published in 1989.Footnote ⁴

This essay will argue that members of the rival Iraqi Women's Union and League for the Defense of Women's Rights constructed two competing narratives in presenting the history of the women's movement in pre-1958 Iraq. Later scholars tended to base their accounts on one or the other narrative, thus providing an incomplete picture. The aim here is to unpack these two different narratives as they were originally articulated by activists in order to piece together a more elaborate portrayal of the evolution of the women's movement in Iraq, from its beginnings in the early 20th century until the end of the Hashemite period.

To trace the origins of these conflicting narratives, one must return to 1945. In that year, women's societies first joined hands and formed a coalition designed to support and coordinate their activities: the Iraqi Women's Union. The union sought to increase cooperation among different women's associations in Iraq and thus to strengthen women's efforts toward raising their social, civil, and economic position, as well as improving their health and legal status. It demanded that its constituent societies rise above sectarian, ethnic, and religious differences.Footnote ⁵ Initially, it demonstrated considerable tolerance for political differences.

The union consisted of five societies. It included three women's branches of mixed-gender philanthropic societies: the Red Crescent Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Hilal al-Ahmar), the Child Protection Society (Jamʿiyyat Himayat al-Atfal), and the Houses of the People Society (Jamʿiyyat Buyut al-Umma). It also encompassed the Women's Temperance and Social Welfare Society (Jamʿiyyat Mukafahat al-ʿIlal al-Ijtimaʿiyya). Many members of these groups were wives and relatives of politicians aligned with the government, but the union also included the left-leaning Women's League Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Rabita al-Nisaʾiyya).

Members of these societies, regardless of their political convictions, had many reasons to become active and work together. As the first generation to enjoy changing perceptions toward women in their society and the first to benefit from new opportunities in education, the labor market, and public life, these socially and politically conscious women were eager to participate in the process of state building. At the same time, they encountered many gender-based obstacles. Under the British-constructed constitutional monarchy, women were treated as second-class citizens. Formal politics throughout the period were tightly controlled and governed by an elite few, and women were disenfranchised by both the constitution and the election laws. The government, disinclined to alienate Sunni and Shiʿi clerics, hindered women's participation in public life even further by refraining from intervening in personal status matters, thus leaving women vulnerable to restrictive interpretations of Islamic law. A separate legal system for the “tribal” population, designed to win the loyalty of tribal shaykhs, exposed even women of the elite, with a remote tribal heritage, to restrictive customary laws. The government sealed the ultimate fate of the women's movement by sanctioning the establishment of only those organizations willing to confine their activities to welfare and social work.

Middle- and upper-class urban women were prompted to action by increasingly harsh realities. From the end of the 1920s and throughout the monarchy period, Baghdad had become the prime destination of a large-scale rural to urban migration. The land-tenure system, which enabled registration of tribal land as the property of shaykhs, city merchants, and former tax farmers, left cultivators with small reward or forced them into debt. Hunger, sickness, natural disasters, and almost total subjugation to landlords combined to spur this migration. Migrants crowded along the outskirts of big cities, living in small and crowded mud or reed huts that lacked even basic facilities. Poverty, disease, and illiteracy were rampant.Footnote ⁶ Activists saw it as their patriotic duty to alleviate these conditions. Some presented this plight as proof that women's resources were needed in parliament. Others, on the left, saw it as confirmation of a much farther-reaching need to radically change the socioeconomic and political order.

For a while, the union tolerated political differences. However, amid the 1947 government crackdown against left-wing organizations, it yielded to the government and removed representatives of the Women's League Society from its directorate. This dismissal split the women's movement and heralded the development of two competing women's organizations, the Iraqi Women's Union and the League for the Defense of Women's Rights.

After 1947 the union continued working within the boundaries of the socioeconomic and political order, enjoying support from the government and royal family. The government allocated a clubhouse and grounds, and the queen mother, ʿAliya, mother of Faysal II, served as the union's royal patroness.Footnote ⁷ The union's leaders, who came mostly from families of the ruling elite,Footnote ⁸ believed that improving the situation of women could be realized through political, social, and economic reforms and pledged to conduct their struggle by legal and constitutional means. They remained throughout the period a relatively small, elitist organization loyal to the regime. Although they saw themselves as part of a larger movement of “women's awakening” and concentrated their efforts against illiteracy, poverty, and disease—issues that affected the vast majority of Iraqi women—they did not attempt to mobilize women en masse, cautiously avoiding action that could have been perceived as critical of the regime. Although they allowed criticism against imperialist aggression in other Arab countries, they refrained from explicitly protesting British influence and involvement in Iraq.Footnote ⁹

After failed attempts to revive the suppressed Women's League Society and to obtain government permission to replace it, women, both Communist and non-Communist, decided to work underground and set up the League for the Defense of Women's Rights in 1952. League leaders, who came mainly from the lower-middle class,Footnote ¹⁰ believed that the liberation of women required comprehensive economic and political change. They were inspired by the influential head of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), Yusuf Salman Yusuf (also known as Fahd, executed in 1949), who insisted that problems faced by urban and rural women had to be resolved within the context of the country's fundamental dilemma: Iraq had lost its sovereignty to imperialist forces, who had fortified their position by allying with local reactionaries.

The heads of the league argued that women could not emancipate themselves unless they achieved economic independence. This, they reasoned, was impossible without addressing joblessness among the entire population. However, in order to significantly reduce unemployment, national industries would have to be established in urban centers and private land owned and worked by fellahin of both sexes in the countryside. Local industry and agriculture could not succeed as long as foreign monopolies were draining raw materials and flooding the local market with foreign goods. Hence, these foreign monopolies had to be driven out of Iraq. Because foreign military forces protected monopolies' interests, and their presence was mandated by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, the treaty had to be annulled. The genuine liberation of women, they concluded, could only follow Iraq's liberation. To effect such a radical change, league members sought to mobilize “the masses of women.” They tried to win over lower-class women by addressing their daily problems and linking their hardships to the political and socioeconomic order.Footnote ¹¹

The union and the league were at odds ideologically and had very different relationships with the center of power. Their goals and modes of operation in promoting women's causes diverged, as did the historical accounts offered by their respective members. The union's narrative is most clearly articulated by attorney Sabiha al-Shaykh Daʾud (1912–75), author of one of the most comprehensive books about the women's movement during the Hashemite period. A member of the directorate of two of the Iraqi Women's Union's constituent organizations since the 1940s, Daʾud became union vice president in the beginning of the 1950s.Footnote ¹² The league narrative finds its most coherent expression in writings by Naziha al-Dulaymi (1923–2007), a physician, Communist, and leader of the league from its foundation in 1952. In 1959, under ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim, al-Dulaymi was appointed minister of municipalities and became the first woman cabinet member in the Arab world. From the beginning of the 1950s al-Dulaymi provided a wealth of accounts and analysis of the conditions of women in Iraq and kept track of their organized activities both before and after 1958.Footnote ¹³

Understanding al-Dulaymi's and Daʾud's accounts as the unfolding of two competing narratives provides the key to explaining the different historiographical approaches of contemporary scholars. It also helps in categorizing and integrating fresh and complementary material. Most importantly, noting the similarities, differences, and sources of discrepancies in these narratives enriches our perspective on the evolution of the women's movement in Iraq prior to 1958.

BEGINNINGS: 1910–32

Both al-Dulaymi and Daʾud attributed the inspiration for the birth of an Iraqi women's movement to male intellectuals. They concurred on two figures of special importance—the poets Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (1863–1936) and Maʿruf al-Rusafi (1875–1945), whose writings on behalf of women preceded the establishment of the Iraqi state.Footnote ¹⁴

Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi was a contemporary of Qasim Amin, regarded until recently as the father of Egyptian and Arab feminism.Footnote ¹⁵ Al-Zahawi was inspired by Amin's writings and, according to some, was personally acquainted with him. Al-Zahawi called for the education of women and argued against veiling and seclusion, polygamy and male privileges in divorce, forced marriage, marriage without previous acquaintance, and large differences in age between spouses. Like his contemporaries in neighboring countries, he linked national development to the status of women, arguing that a nation could not expect progress when half of its population was stymied and uneducated.Footnote ¹⁶ In 1910 al-Zahawi published an article in an Egyptian newspaper entitled “The Woman and Her Defense,” in which he chastised men's oppressive treatment of women, the use of the veil, and Muslim male privileges in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. He claimed that women's seclusion and ignorance explained the “backwardness” of Muslims in comparison to “Westerners.” His article raised an outcry in Baghdad, which led to his dismissal from the faculty of the Baghdad Law School.Footnote ¹⁷ Al-Zahawi also urged the Ottoman governor of Baghdad to open a school for girls, and indeed such an institution was inaugurated in 1899 with almost a hundred pupils. He participated in the Arab women's conference held in Baghdad in 1932 and sent poems supporting women's issues to Arab and Eastern women's conferences outside the country as well as to women's magazines.Footnote ¹⁸ Those who sought to discredit him emphasized al-Zahawi's connections with British colonial authorities and the public support he lent to their occupation.Footnote ¹⁹ However, Daʾud, whose parents actively opposed the British occupation in 1920, managed to isolate these facts from his efforts on behalf of women. In a memorial service for al-Zahawi in March 1937, she gave a speech in which she praised him as “a supporter of Arab women.” Al-Dulaymi associated al-Zahawi with what she termed the “nationalist bourgeoisie” but avoided discussion of his political inclinations.Footnote ²⁰

Both activists also depicted Maʿruf al-Rusafi as a source of inspiration.Footnote ²¹ He not only opposed veiling, seclusion, and forced marriages but also advocated marriage based on mutual affection. His support for the education of women was already evident in his first collection of poems, published in 1910. Linking the status of women to the woes of his “Eastern society,” he argued that progress hinged on women's education and advancement.Footnote ²² Although critical of the “backward” East, al-Rusafi looked to the Islamic past rather than the Western present as a model. He argued that in Islam the pursuit of knowledge was a duty for both boys and girls, noting that ʿAʾisha, the Prophet's wife, was taught by Muhammad and became a great scholar. He challenged underlying fears of destabilizing the social status quo, declaring that Muslims should follow their ancestors and stop looking at women's ignorance as a virtue and a safeguard.Footnote ²³ Al-Rusafi's opinions, like those of al-Zahawi, caused a flurry in Baghdad. In response to a poem published in the newspaper al-Istiqlal in March 1922, a fatwa was issued against him, and on one occasion he only narrowly escaped a physical attack by critics.Footnote ²⁴

Al-Dulaymi and Daʾud were not in agreement, however, in assessing the impact of other male figures. In keeping with the nationalist government line, Daʾud emphasized supporters of women's issues from Iraq's diverse factions, listing Shiʿi mujtahid Husayn al-Naʾini and Christian but secular-minded journalist Rufaʾil Butti along with al-Zahawi and al-Rusafi, who were of Kurdish or mixed origin. According to Daʾud, al-Naʾini supported the education of women in the early years of the 20th century and stressed that seeking knowledge was the religious duty of every Muslim man and woman. She claimed that his opinions, unusual in Najaf and its religious surroundings, aroused a controversy that threatened to undermine his religious authority and silenced his voice. Rufaʾil Butti, Christian founder of the newspaper al-Bilad, was, according to Daʾud, the first publisher to devote an entire page of a newspaper to women. Articles followed women's activities in Iraq and around the world and encouraged women to play an important role in the life of the nation and its progress.Footnote ²⁵

Daʾud also stressed the work of a prominent government official, Satiʿ al-Husri. A former Ottoman official from Aleppo, al-Husri joined King Faysal's staff in Syria after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and came to Iraq after the fall of the sharifian administration in Damascus. As director-general of education between 1923 and 1927, he laid the foundations for an ordered, centralized, and elitist education system in Iraq and formulated a curriculum based on a secular understanding of Arab nationalism. His promotion of education for girls “in spite of all the obstacles standing in his way” was praised by Daʾud. It should be noted, however, that the table of statistics included at the end of her book indicates that during the 1925–26 school year, in the midst of al-Husri's career, there were only 4,053 female students in government elementary and primary schools. British statistics corroborate Daʾud's figures but also reveal that the number of boys at these schools that year was four times as great. They also show approximately the same number of girls in the previous year and only a slight increase in the year that followed.Footnote ²⁶ Daʾud clearly had access to British statistics. Her praise for al-Husri was probably a subjective expression of appreciation for the education she had enjoyed and for an education system that was established in response to demands by the first Iraqi women activists, who included her mother.

Al-Dulaymi and other left-leaning league activists emphasized a different cast of characters among the early promoters of women's causes. Heading the list were the first Iraqi Marxists, led by Husayn al-Rahhal. Their mouthpiece was al-Sahifa, which began publication at the end of 1924, after other newspapers refused to print their articles. It advocated not only unveiling and education but also women's social and economic liberation through entrance into the labor force.Footnote ²⁷ Historian Hanna Batatu sees al-Rahhal's article “Determinism in Society” as the embodiment of the “feminist argument” put forth by al-Rahhal and his circle. It posits that there is no “natural” or “immutable” social order; rather, all social institutions are transitory in nature because they are “the product of a changing economic environment.” The position of women was dictated by this “general law.” According to the article, the Arab family was a vestige of feudalism, and the harem and the veil bore the imprint of a feudal system of values. The aristocracy was “able to build harems and keep so many women in them only by exploiting the labor of the people.” Among the “people's class” of laboring peasants, argued al-Rahhal, the harem and the veil were unknown. When the people's class established its supremacy, the harem and the veil would disappear altogether. Al-Rahhal's circle further questioned the relevance of shariʿa and its implications for the position of women in contemporary Iraqi society. This and declarations such as “it is not religion that propels social life but social life that propels religion” roused the fury of conservatives and clerics, and al-Sahifa was shut down.Footnote ²⁸

Although women were not seen either by Daʾud or al-Dulaymi as the first to advocate their cause, Daʾud brought enough evidence to suggest that women in Iraq, like their sisters in neighboring countries, were not merely passive objects of the debate.Footnote ²⁹ Daʾud mentioned, for example, the teacher Zahra Khidir, who in 1918 established a private school for girls in Baghdad.Footnote ³⁰ In a letter to the periodical al-Lisan in 1919, Khidir, like al-Zahawi and al-Rusafi, linked the cause of educating women to the nation's progress. She stressed the contribution of educated mothers to the rearing of healthy, virtuous, and patriotic children—future members of the modern nation. She rejected the proposition that female illiteracy in Iraq was rooted in Islam or Eastern culture, noting that Islam called for the education of girls and that the East had produced remarkable women. Instead, she looked for cause in the absence of government girls' schools in Baghdad, thereby implicitly criticizing British education policy.Footnote ³¹

Daʾud also recounted another instance of women endeavoring to promote their cause at these early stages. When Gertrude Bell invited prominent women from Baghdad to a tea party in May 1919 and asked for their opinions regarding planned British reforms in Iraq, Daʾud's mother, Naʿima Sultan Hamuda, declared in the name of all the women present that any reforms not giving due consideration to women would be deficient, and this included education for girls.Footnote ³²

The 1920 revolt against the British occupation is presented by both activists as a defining moment for the women's movement.Footnote ³³ Catalyzed by the announcement that the San Remo Conference had awarded Britain the Mandate for Iraq, the uprising was instigated by a coalition of nationalists in Baghdad, Shiʿi religious leaders of the holy cities, and mid-Euphrates tribal leaders. Although motivated by a variety of factors, these groups shared the desire to shed British rule. Women participated both in urban and rural areas. In Baghdad a women's committee was organized, headed by Naʿima Sultan Hamuda, wife of Ahmad al-Shaykh Daʾud, who was among the Iraqi leaders arrested and exiled during the revolt. The committee explained the goals of the revolt to women, encouraged their support, and collected donations of money and jewelry. Their activities were acknowledged in a letter from the leaders of the uprising.

Baghdadi women appealed to Gertrude Bell regarding the fate of nationalist detainees and also participated in mass funeral processions that turned into nationalist demonstrations. Dressed in black and veiled, they shouted nationalist slogans against British imperialism. In the countryside, rural women accompanied men to battle and urged them on. They also carried equipment and provided supplies. There have been claims that women actually participated in combat, but details of when and where this occurred were not provided. The 1920 revolt, according to both activists, spurred the awakening of women in Iraq—rousing their hopes, uniting their voices with those demanding freedom and sovereignty for their country, and prompting them to act. The revolt, they claimed, not only manifested women's nationalist awareness but also demonstrated their willingness to make sacrifices for their country. It broke down barriers that had prevented them from realizing their talents and capabilities. Their participation encouraged more positive attitudes toward women and prompted “progressive” elements to call for acknowledging women's roles in the development of society and for giving them the rights that were their due.Footnote ³⁴

The period following the revolt saw the establishment of the first Iraqi women's organization, the Women's Awakening Club (Nadi al-Nahda al-Nisaʾiyya), but the two activists treated its formation differently. Daʾud saw its appearance as an important step for the development of the women's movement; al-Dulaymi, on the other hand, mentioned it only in passing as a product of “nationalist bourgeoisie” efforts, dedicated to educated women, incapable of withstanding social and political pressures, and unable to bring about a real “women's awakening.”Footnote ³⁵ Founded in November 1923, the Women's Awakening Club drew most of its members from the political and intellectual elite. Its president was Asmaʾ al-Zahawi, sister of poet Jamil; the vice president was Naʿima, sister of then prime minister Jaʿfar al-ʿAskari and wife of Nuri al-Saʿid, minister of defense. The secretary was Mari, wife of Christian author and translator ʿAbd al-Masih Wazir, and the treasurer was Fakhriyya, wife of the prime minister and sister of Nuri al-Saʿid. Other members included the spouse of Yasin al-Hashimi, prime minister in 1924; Fatima, wife of the interior minister, ʿAli Jawdat; the wife of al-Husri, director-general of education, and his niece, Badiʿa; the wife of Husayn Afnan; Daʾud's mother; and publisher Paulina Hassun. The club also numbered British women among its honorary members. Among them were Oriental secretary Gertrude Bell; author E. S. (Ethel Stefana) Stevens, wife of Edwin Drower, adviser to the Ministry of Justice; and Lady Dobbs, wife of high commissioner Henry Dobbs. In all there were about sixty members.Footnote ³⁶

The club's objectives were to guide women and girls toward recognizing “their true identity” and to encourage “their enlightenment” in order to improve their social and cultural circumstances and to prepare them to perform the duties “their nation expected of them” to help themselves, their families, and their homeland. It sought to expand and improve the education of girls and young women and offered special classes in economics, hygiene, childcare, and housework. The club concentrated its practical efforts in three fields: opening literacy classes for women, sewing clothes for the poor, and educating orphan girls. Members met every other week and listened to lectures and speeches. Symposiums were held once or twice a year. Free sewing classes were also offered.Footnote ³⁷ At first, meetings were held in the members' residences; later a house was rented for the club's activities. Early in 1924, members of the club were invited to a meeting with King Faysal and Queen Huzayma, during which the king expressed his support as well as his intent to allot them a permanent facility. Activities were financed by membership dues and donations, but whether the royal family ultimately made good on its promises is unknown.Footnote ³⁸

Daʾud marked the 1923 appearance of the Women's Awakening Club as a significant first step in the development of the women's movement. As a daughter of a founding member and heir to its legacy, she was concerned with how its establishment and later demise were portrayed. She took issue with E. S. Stevens, an honorary member, regarding her description in 1929 of Asmaʾ al-Zahawi as the moving spirit behind the movement.Footnote ³⁹ Probably speaking for her mother as well, Daʾud saw the excessive credit Stevens attributed to al-Zahawi as a distortion of history. She argued that the idea had simultaneously ripened in the minds of a number of Iraqi women, noting that the club founders had met several times before al-Zahawi had even joined them.Footnote ⁴⁰ Daʾud also countered versions that overemphasized external intervention as a major factor leading to the club's founding.Footnote ⁴¹ She acknowledged that in the early 1920s women had been greatly affected by the news about women's struggles in Turkey, Egypt, and Syria and that the participation of Egyptian women in the 1919 nationalist struggle had had a profound impact.Footnote ⁴² She stressed, however, that the club was an initiative by Iraqi women alone.

Daʾud also pointed out that Stevens refused to see the connection between opposition aroused by the club and the decline in its activities. Stevens wrote that the establishment of the club produced an immediate outcry. “Reactionaries fulminated against it in the newspapers, die-hards appealed to the government to scotch the movement in its infancy.” Iraqi society was on the verge of sufūr (unveiling), they said, “and Muslim homes were threatened by Western abomination.” Stevens, however, saw no correlation between this response and the decline of the organization, which she blamed on lack of enthusiasm and an incompetent steering committee. These claims Daʾud rejected. She pointed out that according to club president Asmaʾ al-Zahawi, a group of clerics had objected to the name “Women's Awakening Club”; they registered official complaints with the government and demanded that the word “awakening” be removed. Al-Zahawi refused, arguing that “awakening” was one of the club's manifest aims. A prominent club member, whose name was not mentioned, explained that adversaries had misinterpreted the word “awakening,” assuming that it called for discarding the veil rather than working for the advancement of the nation, caring for orphans, and helping the needy. The authorities, al-Zahawi recounted, nonetheless supported the opponents of the club, and this led to its closure.Footnote ⁴³

The inauguration of the Awakening Club's activities in October 1923 was accompanied by the appearance of the first women's journal in Iraq, Layla, issued over a period of two years. Although the club did not own the magazine, its publisher, Paulina Hassun, was a member and allowed it to be used as a platform for the club's ideas. Daʾud presented Layla as the first modern women's magazine in Iraq that succeeded, within a short period of time, in becoming a true mouthpiece for women's demands. The magazine urged members of the Iraqi Constituent Assembly to improve the status of women and to recognize their democratic rights. It also advocated education for girls and concerned itself with proper upbringing of children and women's health, especially during pregnancy. It encouraged students' excellence by publishing their work—including Daʾud's.Footnote ⁴⁴ Al-Dulaymi's approach underscores the differing views of the two women. She acknowledges the existence of the publication only in passing as the magazine of the ineffective Awakening Club.Footnote ⁴⁵

Finally, advancements in the education of Iraqi women during these early days were depicted by both activists as a victory and as an impetus for the establishment of the women's movement. Making progress in this area demanded an intense struggle. Families who sent their daughters to the government school in Baghdad received anonymous threatening letters, and in the early stages, students were pelted with stones.Footnote ⁴⁶ Both al-Dulaymi and Daʾud noted similar milestones and indicators of progress in the development of women's education: the establishment in 1920 of a government school for girls; an increase in the number of government elementary and primary schools for girls to twenty-seven schools in 1926 and forty-five in 1930; an increased number of Iraqi women teachers, graduates of Iraqi teaching–training institutions; the opening of a secondary school for girls during the 1929–30 school year; and the entrance in the 1930s of the first women to the medical college and law school in Baghdad. Daʾud credited these achievements to King Faysal, who held women's education “close to his heart,” and Satiʿ al-Husri. In contrast, league members emphasized the backing of women's cause by “nationalist and progressive elements.”Footnote ⁴⁷

THE END OF THE MANDATE UNTIL THE END OF WORLD WAR II

The end of the Mandate marks a further divergence in the trajectories taken by the two activists, yet neither acknowledged receipt of formal independence as a turning point. Al-Dulaymi placed developments affecting working-class women and the role played by the Iraqi Communist Party and leftist women in the foreground of her narrative. She argued that the 1930s marked the awakening of the Iraqi working class, which started defending its rights and participating in the nationalist and democratic struggle. Working-class women were influenced by this struggle, and their awareness grew. During this time the ICP included women's liberation in its platform and inculcated the idea that women's social and democratic rights would be realized only through the struggle of the female masses. It was the ICP, together with women “communists and democrats,” who set out to organize the masses of women and rally them to the nationalist and democratic cause. Subsequently, a group of “communist and democratic” women approached the government in 1935 with a formal request for permission to establish a women's organization. Their request, however, was denied by the authorities. Al-Dulaymi contended that until the beginning of the 1940s, the only open, serious discussion of the liberation of women in Iraq “based on proletarian ideology” was to be found in the Marxist and Communist press.Footnote ⁴⁸

It is surprising that al-Dulaymi did not elaborate on the early Communist platform regarding women and refers to the affiliation of women with Communist activity only in the mid 1930s. Other sources, however, gave more details. In 1929 the Association of Liberals (Jamʿiyyat al-Ahrar), or, as it soon became known, the Irreligious Liberal Party (al-Hizb al-Hurr al-Ladini), was established by Communists from Nasiriyya and Basra. In its program, which according to Batatu was the earliest Iraqi statement of Communist intent on record, the association included among its aims “liberation of the Arab woman from the fetters of degradation and ignorance” and working “for the separation of religion from all temporal affairs,” such as politics, education, and “family life.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Nadi al-Shabiba (the Youth Club), where Jamʿiyyat al-Ahrar was first introduced in 1929, was depicted by Batatu as a center for activities of the earliest Communist circle in Basra, “a club in which the young men of the town foregathered to discuss the varied new-fashioned theories that were beginning to percolate into Iraqi social life.”Footnote ⁵⁰ British accounts, however, noted the involvement of women in the club's activities as well. A report from Basra stated that sixty to eighty people had gathered in January 1930 in an apparent attempt to reorganize the club as a Communist organization, among them twelve female teachers. Two of the meeting's initiators were ʿAbd al-Hamid al-Khatib and Zakariyya Elias Duka, members of the earliest Communist circle in Basra. Duka spoke during the meeting about the status of women in the East, saying that they had always been oppressed by men and insisting that only in those countries in which women were granted their rights had progress been made. He advised the women of Iraq to “follow their sisters and obtain their rights.”Footnote ⁵¹

Daʾud did not see the 1930s as a particularly important or decisive historical period. She did not discuss its major achievements in chronological context. For example, the appearance of women's magazines, such as al-Marʾa al-Haditha (The Modern Woman, 1936), Fatat al-ʿIraq (The Young Iraqi Woman, 1936), and Fatat al-ʿArab (The Young Arab Woman, 1937) were mentioned together with the earlier Layla (1923) and later magazines affiliated with the Iraqi Women's Union: al-Umm wa-l-Tifl (The Mother and Child, 1946), of the Child Protection Society; al-Hilal al-Ahmar (The Red Crescent, 1951), affiliated with the Red Crescent Society; and al-Ittihad al-Nisaʾi, the mouthpiece of the union since 1949.Footnote ⁵² Likewise, she mentioned women's organizations appearing in the 1930s as part of her discussion of later organizations.

Two such organizations were the Temperance Society (Jamʿiyyat Mukafahat al-Muskirat) and the women's branch of the Red Crescent Society, both eventually encompassed in the Iraqi Women's Union. The Temperance Society was established in 1937 by Sara Fadil al-JamaliFootnote ⁵³ and was affiliated with the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Its initial primary aim was to combat alcoholism. However, its goals were soon expanded to deal with three social ills: poverty, illiteracy, and disease. As a result, the organization eventually changed its name to the Women's Temperance and Social Welfare Society. More specifically, the organization focused on antialcohol education, aid to disabled children and women prisoners, the education of young women, and occupational training. It established a school for disabled children and opened sewing and home economics workshops for destitute women.Footnote ⁵⁴ The second organization, the women's branch of the Red Crescent Society, was established in 1933 under the auspices of Queen Huzayma. Until 1945 it was dependent administratively and monetarily on the general Red Crescent Society.Footnote ⁵⁵

Daʾud neglected to mention organizational efforts of the 1930s mentioned by al-Dulaymi, while al-Dulaymi played down the significance of the two women's organizations mentioned by Daʾud. For example, she dismissed the women's branch of the Red Crescent Society as an association established by “nationalist-bourgeois” circles, with limited charitable goals and membership.Footnote ⁵⁶ Indeed, some scholars agree with al-Dulaymi and depict it, at this stage, as not much more than a sewing circle, entirely dependent upon male members of the society with no separate programs.Footnote ⁵⁷ A survey of the available Iraqi press from the 1930s, however, contradicts this representation. In 1936, for example, the women's branch organized a series of lectures for women on first aid and childcare by a nurse sent to Iraq by the Red Cross. The branch operated a clinic that provided medical care and guidance for mothers and trained women to work in additional clinics the branch intended to open. The primary target of these efforts was combating infant mortality. Branch members also prepared for emergencies and disasters, and with that goal in mind they organized the collection and sewing of items of clothing.Footnote ⁵⁸

Al-Dulaymi and Daʾud concurred on the contribution of a prominent activist during the 1930s. Amina al-Rahhal, sister of Marxist Husayn al-Rahhal, is given a place of prominence as one of the first women to represent Iraq in women's regional conferences; she took part in the first conference of Eastern Arab women held in Damascus. According to al-Dulaymi, this conference took place in 1938. Daʾud rightly put the date at 1930. It is surprising that it is Daʾud who presented us with a detailed account of al-Rahhal's speech on that occasion. In it she called upon Arab women to stand by men in their struggle for liberation, stressed the importance of women's domestic roles, and, at the same time, underscored the need for their economic independence.Footnote ⁵⁹ Al-Dulaymi pointed out that in 1938 al-Rahhal was a prominent member of the ICP but surprisingly failed to mention that between 1941 and 1943 she was one of its highest-ranking members, serving on the ICP Central Committee.

Both al-Dulaymi and Daʾud discussed the establishment of the (Women's) League Against Nazism and Fascism (LANF, Jamʿiyyat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-Fashiyya), which became the Women's League Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Rabita al-Nisaʾiyya) at the beginning of the 1940s,Footnote ⁶⁰ but they did not always agree on the dating of milestones in their development and viewed these organizations from completely different perspectives. Deemphasizing their “political character,” Daʾud saw their appearance as part of a natural progression; like other organizations of that time, a main aspect of their mission was to raise the “cultural level” of women and combat illiteracy.Footnote ⁶¹ Al-Dulaymi, on the other hand, saw the formation of LANF, which later became the Women's League Society, as a watershed—“an indicator of the birth of a democratic women's movement in Iraq.”Footnote ⁶² Merely hinting at the anti-British Rashid ʿAli coup and disregarding the consequent British reoccupation of the country in 1941, she nevertheless noted that before Iraq had entered the war on the side of the Allies, the German embassy had taken advantage of nationalist anti-British feelings to promote National Socialist ideology. She pointed out that even after the embassy had been closed, sympathy for Hitler persisted, explaining this phenomenon as a conviction among some that “the enemy of your enemy is your friend.” She perceived the establishment of LANF as part of an overall effort to combat Nazi and Fascist ideas. At the end of the war, with the victory of the Allies, LANF changed its name and adopted a broader set of goals. Al-Dulaymi saw the primary significance of the establishment of these organizations as a reflection of the seriousness with which “the proletariat and its party” regarded the liberation of women and the creation of a nationalist democratic women's organization that would mobilize the mass of women toward the struggle for their rights, for their people, and for their homeland. At a time when the nationalist-bourgeois parties contented themselves with working through existing charitable societies and concerned themselves only with education, combating illiteracy, and extending help to some poor families, this approach marked, according to al-Dulaymi, a leap forward in the development of women's organizations.Footnote ⁶³

THE END OF THE WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

The end of World War II, according to activists of the union and the league, marked a turning point in the development of the women's movement in Iraq. Scholar Ruth Woodsmall, who in the mid-1950s interviewed women affiliated with the union, quotes one leader describing the postwar period: “It seemed that a flood of activities and ideals had been dammed up, waiting for the final breakthrough.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Daʾud noted the increase in the number of women's organizations. She focused in particular on the establishment of the Iraqi Women's Union in 1945 and constituent organizations that were either founded or gained momentum that year: the women's branch of the Red Crescent Society, founded in the 1930s but becoming financially and administratively independent in 1945; the women's branch of the Child Protection Society, set up in March 1945; and Sara Fadil al-Jamali's Temperance Society, which changed its name to the Women's Temperance and Social Welfare Society and noticeably expanded its activities the same year.Footnote ⁶⁵ Al-Dulaymi saw these developments as a direct outcome of the relatively liberal political atmosphere characterizing the postwar period. She focused her attention on the left-oriented Women's League Society, the successor of the war era's LANF.Footnote ⁶⁶

In 1945 the women's branches of the Red Crescent Society, the Child Protection Society, and the Houses of the People Society, as well as the Women's Temperance and Social Welfare Society, and the left-oriented Women's League Society, joined to form the Iraqi Women's Union. Both al-Dulaymi and Daʾud credited the Cairo women's conference of December 1944 as a catalyst. The Iraqi delegation to the conference included, among others, Maʾida Najib Mahmud, who represented the Child Protection Society and was also a member of the Red Crescent Society; Rose Khadduri, who represented the Houses of the People Society; and ʿAfifa Raʾuf, who spoke for the Women's League Society. Responding to the conference's call to establish unions for women's societies in all Arab states, participants returned determined to organize themselves. The Ministry of the Interior was duly approached, meetings took place, and plans were made. Finally, in mid-1945, the Iraqi Women's Union was founded.Footnote ⁶⁷ Each of the five societies comprising the union had three representatives on the executive committee.

The union's stated aims, according to Daʾud, were to help women, to elevate the level of the family, and to serve society. It sought to increase cooperation between the different women's associations in Iraq and thereby strengthen women's efforts to raise their social, civil, and economic position, as well as improve their health and legal status. It aspired to reinforce cultural, social, and Pan-Arab ties with Arab women's organizations and to strengthen relations with international organizations seeking the advancement of women around the world. The union required its constituent societies to rise above sectarian, racial, and religious considerations and to abide by the law.Footnote ⁶⁸

Until 1947 the Women's League Society not only had three representatives in the union's directorate, but ʿAfifa Raʾuf, head of the society, had served since June 1946 as the union's secretary.Footnote ⁶⁹ However, in 1947, with the repression of left-wing organizations, the society's gatherings, illiteracy schools, and publication were banned, and its representation in the union's directorate was cancelled. Al-Dulaymi, as a leftist, depicted this event as a defining moment in the history of the women's movement because the union was taken over by groups associated with the government and league activities ceased. Daʾud, in line with her progovernment sympathies, completely ignored this moment.Footnote ⁷⁰ Henceforward, Daʾud and al-Dulaymi's accounts of the women's movement increasingly diverged and excluded developments and events not directly associated with their respective organizations.

It is evident from Daʾud's account that after 1947 the union continued as before to pursue its stated goals. It encouraged women's education; organized special lectures, films, and plays for women; and supported and coordinated the various charitable activities of its constituent organizations. Through them and independently it aided casualties of natural disasters and supported Iraqi troops fighting in Palestine in 1948. Through protest letters sent to the United Nations and foreign representatives in Iraq, fund raising, organization of first-aid courses, and so on, the union expressed its support of the Palestinian, Algerian, and Egyptian national struggles. In addition, as the union sought to strengthen ties with Arab and international women's organizations, it represented Iraq in Arab and international women's conferences. The union was affiliated with the International Alliance of Women,Footnote ⁷¹ a global sisterhood promoting universal suffrage and other women's rights without confronting colonialism and imperialism.

During the 1950s, union activities for women's causes gained momentum. The union contributed to the annulment of legalized prostitution. It also submitted a request to parliament to discuss divorce and demanded a law that “would restrict divorce as much as possible.” It demanded that in divorce, child custody be granted to the most competent parent. The union was responsible for inserting a clause into the law regulating juvenile courts that required judicial panels to include a woman. It strove to improve working conditions for women, notably nurses. Finally, during the 1950s, the union led the struggle for women's political rights.Footnote ⁷²

Members of the Iraqi Women's Union and its constituent organizations saw their work as benefiting the nation in general and women in particular. Al-Dulaymi, however, like other critics of upper-class, state-supported organizations in the Middle East, depicted union activities as government controlled, elitist, and ineffectual in bringing change to women and to the country.Footnote ⁷³ Yet the work of union societies in combating the country's ills was not insignificant, and their contribution to the development of the country's social services should be noted. Many welfare and social projects they initiated were later imitated or taken over and expanded by the government.Footnote ⁷⁴ Available data regarding projects the women's branch of the Child Protection Society initiated, for example, serve to counter al-Dulaymi's criticism. The society opened several clinics in Baghdad, including one in 1946 in Shaykh Omar, a migrant slum adjoining the sewage dumps. Observers reported that disease was rampant among its poor and neglected inhabitants, with infant mortality reaching 250 per thousand; children had a 50:50 chance of reaching the age of ten.Footnote ⁷⁵ The clinic provided fresh milk, fish oil, and clothing for babies and inoculated children against typhoid and smallpox. The number of people assisted by this clinic grew steadily, reaching about 30,000 in 1948.Footnote ⁷⁶

The society operated several other projects for urban mothers and children. In 1953 the society cared for almost 100,000, visiting 4,500 homes to instruct mothers on how to breastfeed and raise their children. Almost 18,000 women attended lectures on these subjects, and more than 2,000 pregnant women received attention. The society claimed that from its inception and due to its efforts, child mortality rates dropped from thirty-three percent in the mid-1940s to three percent in the mid-1950s.Footnote ⁷⁷ Even if these numbers cannot be confirmed,Footnote ⁷⁸ the society's contribution to reducing urban child mortality cannot be ignored. Moreover, when a maternal and childcare section was created in the health ministry, officials approached this branch of the Child Protection Society to work through one of its centers.Footnote ⁷⁹

The emphasis of league activists, on the other hand, when elaborating on developments that occurred after World War II and the 1947 split, was on events leading to the establishment of the League for the Defense of Women's Rights in 1952 and its underground activities. Although they acknowledged the Communist Party connection, al-Dulaymi and other league members denied persistent claims that the league was merely a front organization for the ICP.Footnote ⁸⁰ The first Communist women's cell, “The Women's Committee,” was set up in 1946 and supervised and directed by Yusuf Salman Yusuf, the party's secretary-general (1941–49). Women active in this and similar cells were arrested and sentenced for up to life imprisonment.Footnote ⁸¹ Al-Dulaymi, however, refrained from mentioning these cells among the developments leading to the establishment of the league. She pointed to the January 1948 wathba Footnote ⁸² and the participation of peasant and working-class women as well as female students in its demonstrations and strikes as the impetus that propelled the resumption of efforts to organize women. She believed that the sheer number of women who were involved in this event and became active afterward heralded a democratic women's organization that would combine the struggle for women's rights with the struggle for nationalist and popular demands.

After several years of government persecutions of left-leaning activists, an attempt was made in 1950 to revive the Women's League Society on the grounds that it had never officially been dissolved. Its former head, ʿAfifa Raʾuf, was asked to resume her role but declined. About thirty women—students, university graduates, and housewives, Communist and non-Communist—convened to prepare a program and to tackle the bureaucratic requirements for the establishment of a new society. An application to form an organization, Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Marʾa), was finally submitted in 1951.Footnote ⁸³ The group took advantage of the grace period afforded them until the ministry made a final decision on the request to publish articles outlining the goals of the new organization in an effort to rally support. According to al-Dulaymi, the press published letters with hundreds of signatures, which had arrived from all parts of Iraq. After a month, however, the government denied the request.Footnote ⁸⁴

There are conflicting accounts among Iraqi Communist activists about what happened next. This reflects the debate about the role of women in establishing the league and the degree of ICP involvement. According to al-Dulaymi, after the government denied their request, women petitioners, both Communist and non-Communist, met to discuss their future actions. After a heated debate they decided to continue their work underground, changing their organization's name from The Women's Liberation to The League for the Defense of Women's Rights.

However, Bahaʾ al-Din Nuri, then secretary-general of the ICP, rejected al-Dulaymi's contention that women primarily initiated either the legal or underground women's organizations. He maintained that the idea came from the party, which had encouraged women to appeal to the Ministry of Interior. When their appeal was rejected, the women Communists turned to the party and were instructed to resume activities as an underground organization.Footnote ⁸⁵ A third version was related by Bushra Perto, a Communist league member. She asserted in an interview that the league was not a Communist organization, although Communists were among its leaders. According to her version, Communist members did receive instructions, but the party did not dictate decisions and actions.Footnote ⁸⁶

The league fought for national liberation and democracy and opposed “imperialist schemes” such as the Baghdad Pact. It campaigned for world peace, education, health and welfare, and women's rights. Many of the league's leaders believed that women's liberation would follow Iraq's liberation from imperialism; the marginalization of women would be resolved once the socioeconomic and political order it supported was changed. The league sought to include women from all social classes, religious and political beliefs, and ethnic communities. To win over “the masses of women,” members addressed their daily problems, drawing connections to the socioeconomic and political order in Iraq and the need to fight “imperialism and reactionism.” They helped women from poor neighborhoods to organize and demand schools, health clinics, running water, electricity, and women doctors. They also provided free legal and childcare advice.

In 1953 the league joined the Women's International Democratic Federation, an organization in which gender and class struggle were fused with a strong anti-imperialist campaign. The league's delegate to the federation's 1953 Copenhagen conference described the harsh conditions of Iraqi women and brought to light their struggle against “the Iraqi reactionary government propped up by imperialism.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Empowered by international support and experience, league members returned home to pursue actions proposed at the conference. By March 1955, when the league's first national conference took place, it had branches in most of the country's districts and around 1,000 members.

League members often mentioned women's participation in the 1952 intifada and the 1956 demonstrations, but the league's actual role in the organization of women in these events remains unclear. On 14 July 1958, the day of the military coup d'etat that overthrew the monarchy, members of the League for the Defense of Women's Rights, successor of the Women's League Society, which was ousted from the Iraqi Women's Union in 1947, took over the union offices.Footnote ⁸⁸

COMPLETING NARRATIVES

Sabiha al-Shaykh Daʾud and Naziha al-Dulaymi have constructed two competing narratives. Similar to historical depictions of the development of the women's movements in neighboring countries, both addressed such issues as the emergence of intellectual debate on the position of women, which paved the way for the appearance of the women's movement; education and participation in the national struggle as catalysts to “women's awakening”; and the empowerment of women by organizing and by fostering bonds of national and international sisterhood.Footnote ⁸⁹ The critical point in the divergence of their narratives dates back to 1947, when conflicting ideologies and loyalties overrode solidarity among women: the progovernment union forced the left-leaning Women's League Society out of its executive committee and excluded leftist activists from legally organized women's activities and pushed them underground. Al-Dulaymi and Daʾud voiced the histories of the two rival women's organizations that subsequently emerged: the Iraqi Women's Union and League for the Defense of Women's Rights.

Their narratives, however, are two sides of the same coin. Allowing them to complete rather than compete enables us to piece together a layered and textured portrait of past events. It more accurately indicates the breadth of the intellectual debate about women's issues and the immense impact participation in the 1920 revolt had on women's awareness, as well as the scope of their struggle for education. It also highlights the wide range of organizations active during the Hashemite period and the different transregional and international relationships forged among women. Only consideration of both narratives reveals the true scope of women's contributions and the hardships they endured. If the union narrative is ignored, the pioneering role women activists played in the development of state welfare, health, and education systems cannot be fully appreciated. Without the league narrative, the degree of repression many women activists suffered may be overlooked. If underground work goes unnoticed, it is also impossible to understand the broad support women lent to the overthrow of the monarchy and the immediate appearance of a massive women's movement led by the league after 1958.

Daʾud and al-Dulaymi constructed the two dominant narratives of the period. The choices they made regarding content and composition left many voices unheard. Their accounts naturally emphasized those activities and events connected to their respective lives. Daʾud, daughter of a member of the first Iraqi women's organization, represented a select group of women who had benefited from the government's new education system. As a student she was commended by the royal family, presented as the embodiment of the “new Iraqi woman” by some secular intellectuals, and groomed for leadership by women activists. The accounts of other, less privileged union members might have portrayed a different reality. Al-Dulaymi, too, omitted experiences of many other league activists, most notably its non-Communist members.

Both women also played down the contribution religious communities made to the women's movement. The Jewish and Christian women's organizations operating in Iraq from the 1920s were not mentioned.Footnote ⁹⁰ The work of religious organizations such as the Muslim Sisters Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Aukht al-Muslima), founded in 1951, and the Sisters of Charity for the Poor (Jamʿiyyat Akhawat al-Rifq bi-l-Faqir), founded in 1945, was also largely ignored. Even the contribution of denominational schools to the education of women was not deemed worthy of discussion—in spite of the fact that in the 1931–32 school year, for example, denominational primary girls' schools had enrollments of more than 3,000 pupils (as compared to about 8,000 in government primary and elementary schools).Footnote ⁹¹

Not only did Daʾud and Dulaymi's voices drown out all others, Western researchers tended to rely on only one or the other. Doreen Ingrams and Deborah Cobbett present the clearest examples of following only one narrative. Whereas Ingrams favors the union narrative, Cobbett bases her work upon the league. Many reasons underlie the adoption of a particular narrative by researchers, and the scarcity of source material about the league is probably a compelling one. However, Ingrams' and Cobbett's histories are influenced mainly by their conflicting attitudes toward the Baʿth regime and by their connections with different Iraqi women. Ingrams, at least in the beginning of the 1980s, sided with regime supporters while Cobbett sided with its opponents.

A founder in 1967 of the Council for the Advancement of Arab–British Understanding (CAABU), Doreen Ingrams maintained a lengthy connection to the Arab world and took a keen interest in the situation of Arab women.Footnote ⁹² One of the aims of CAABU was to counter negative images of Arabs and misconceptions about the Arab world. Indeed, what prompted Ingrams to visit Iraq and write about Iraqi women in the early 1980s, as she notes in the introduction to her book, was an effort to remove Western misconceptions about Arab women. She was warmly received by the Iraqi Ministry of Information and especially by the Baʿthi General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW). She was so impressed with these women's hard work and devotion to women's causes that she dedicated her book to the GFIW.

Throughout her book Ingrams hails the Baʿth regime for its “policy of equality for women,” which could not have been achieved without the work of its women's organization and the support of a courageous president. She accepts the Baʿth portrayal of women's reality and adopts its version of the history of the early women's movement. The brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's regime had not fully surfaced when Ingrams visited Iraq, but the state-sponsored effort to reconstruct the country's history was in full force. The history of the women's movement received its due, and it was the union narrative that was adopted.Footnote ⁹³ In embracing Daʾud's account, the Baʿth obliterated almost all references to the league, which in its eyes posed an enormous threat. Under ʿAbd al-Karim Qasim (1958–63) the league had received government sanction and became very powerful. It had 42,000 members, 53 branches, 87 literacy centers, and 111 housework-training centers. Naziha al-Dulaymi was appointed a cabinet minister, and the league played a role in formulating legislation. When Qasim clashed with the ICP, league activities were severely curtailed. It was banned only in 1963, when the Baʿth first seized power.Footnote ⁹⁴ After 1968, when the Baʿth again rose to power, league members, although not the league itself, were allowed for several years to engage in the women's movement. Over time, however, the league came to be depicted as a tool in the hands of the dangerous ICP, and league leaders and activists were persecuted, detained, tortured, and even murdered.Footnote ⁹⁵ When Ingrams remarks that during the days of the monarchy “there was an Iraqi Women's Federation. . .and after the revolution of 1958 there was the Women of the Republic Association [a competing organization with the league],”Footnote ⁹⁶ she is uncritically following the official line of the Baʿth regime, which had completely erased the league from the pages of the history books.

Deborah Cobbett was a researcher and editor for the Committee against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI), formed in 1979 with the stated aim of “exposing the brutality of the Baʿth regime and developing solidarity with those in Iraq struggling for human and democratic rights.” In her article “Women in Iraq,” which appears in a book published by CARDRI, she attempts to trace the changes that had taken place over the previous decades in the lives of women in Iraq “and, in particular, to study the impact of the Baʿthist dictatorship.”Footnote ⁹⁷ She severely criticizes Baʿth policies toward women and exposes the fate of women who opposed the regime. Women in Iraq, she contends, had been granted equal rights with men only in detention and torture.

Cobbett interviewed league activists who managed to escape persecution. In the 1980s she edited for CARDRI the writings of dissident Iraqi women living in London.Footnote ⁹⁸ At that time the league was preparing its own version of events, no doubt in an effort to counter the Baʿth rewriting of history. Indeed, an unpublished league manuscript entitled a Brief History of Iraqi Women was Cobbett's main source of information about the early history of the women's movement. Thus, when Cobbett plays down the activities of all other women's organizations besides the league in 1950s and fails to even mention the union, she is accepting the domination of the league's narrative in her work.

Ingrams and Cobbett, like Daʾud and al-Dulaymi, were active participants in a “war of narratives” that left women's history as the unfortunate casualty. Only tracking down and juxtaposing these and other narratives will allow the presentation of a full picture of the early women's movement in Iraq. In fleshing out and piecing together the mosaic of the rich and varied past of the Iraqi women's movement, much work remains to be done.