> Actually, if you're a woman, there are *much* suckier rulers to live
> under. (Or die under.) Saudi Arabia, for a biggie. Iraqi women > enjoy
> greater freedoms than women in almost all other Mideast countries. So
> if I were a woman in Iraq and knew that, sure it would suck, but many
> other options would suck a lot worse.
> Julia
> trying to remember which columnist it was that wrote the column that
> brought this to her attention, so she could post a non-sucky link
...
We decided that this was the article:
> Iraq's Little Secret
>
> October 1, 2002
> By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
>
>
>
> BAGHDAD, Iraq - The White House is right that Iraq is by
> far the most repressive country in the entire Middle East -
> but that's true only if you're a man.
>
> To see how many Arab countries are in some ways even more
> repressive to women, consider how an invasion might play
> out. If American ground troops are allowed to storm across
> the desert from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, then American
> servicewomen will theoretically not be able to drive
> vehicles as long as they are in Saudi Arabia and will be
> advised to wear an abaya over their heads. As soon as they
> cross the border into enemy Iraq, they'll feel as if they
> are entering the free world: they can legally drive,
> uncover their heads, and even call men idiots.
>
> Iraqi women routinely boss men and serve in non-combat
> positions in the army. Indeed, if Iraq attacks us with
> smallpox, we'll have a woman to thank: Dr. Rihab Rashida
> Taha, the head of Iraq's biological warfare program, who is
> also known to weapons inspectors as Dr. Germ.
>
> A man can stop a woman on the street in Baghdad and ask for
> directions without causing a scandal. Men and women can
> pray at the mosque together, go to restaurants together,
> swim together, court together or quarrel together. Girls
> compete in after-school sports almost as often as boys, and
> Iraqi television broadcasts women's sports as well as
> men's.
>
> "No one thinks that sports are just for men," said Nadia
> Yasser, the captain of the Iraqi national women's soccer
> team. "It's true that my mother was a bit concerned at
> first when I took up soccer, but I insisted, and so she
> accepted it and just started praying for me."
>
> The point is not to be soft on Saddam Hussein, whose rash
> wars and policies have killed hundreds of thousands of
> women as well as men. Iraqi women would be much better off
> with Saddam gone, and in any case the relative equality of
> women in Iraq has little to do with his leadership. Iraq
> has been civilized more than twice as long as Britain,
> after all (it was old when Babylon arose), and Iraq got its
> first woman doctor back in 1922. Then the Iran-Iraq war
> boosted equality by sending men to the front lines and
> forced women to fill in as factory workers, bus drivers and
> government officials.
>
> Still, we shouldn't demonize all of Iraq - just its demon
> of a ruler - and it's worth pondering this contrast between
> an enemy that empowers women and allies that repress them.
> This gap should shame us as well as these allies, reminding
> us to use our political capital to nudge Arab countries to
> respect the human rights not just of Kurds or Shiites, but
> also of women.
>
> More broadly, in a region where women are treated as
> doormats, Iraq offers an example of how an Arab country can
> adhere to Islam and yet provide women with opportunities.
>
> "I look at women in Saudi Arabia, and I feel sorry for
> them," said Thuha Farook, a young woman doctor in Basra.
> "They can't learn. They can't improve themselves."
>
> At the Basra Maternity and Pediatric Teaching Hospital, 25
> of the 26 students in ob-gyn are women. Across town, 54
> percent of Basra University's students are female.
>
> Iraqi women who work typically get six months' maternity
> leave at full pay and another six months at half pay.
> Subsidized day care is usually available at the workplace.
> Female circumcision, still common in American allies like
> Egypt and Nigeria, is absent in Iraq.
>
> To be sure, aside from brutal political repression that is
> gender-blind, Iraqi women also endure groping on crowded
> buses and an occasional honor killing, in which a man kills
> a daughter or sister for being unchaste. Honor killings
> typically result in a six-month prison sentence in Iraq;
> they sometimes go completely unpunished in other countries.
>
> A glance around any Baghdad street also demonstrates that
> Iraq doesn't have hang-ups about the female body that
> neighboring countries do. A man can travel widely in the
> Arab world and know about women's legs only by hearsay, but
> careful reporting in Iraq confirms that Arab women do have
> knees: In Baghdad I saw women volleyball players who felt
> uninhibited enough to roll up their sweats.
>
> So as we invade Iraq for its barbaric and repressive ways,
> our allies in the Muslim world should feel deeply
> embarrassed that a rogue state offers women more equality
> than they do.
>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?ex=1034961041&ei=1&en=b3d3a3d828650037
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