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In an effort to combat the historical exclusion of women from politics, all international conventions and processes have emphasised the principle of equality and elimination of all forms of violence and discrimination against women. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates the need to have “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women.” Several international instruments explicitly enshrine the right to equality between men and women in political and public life, such as Article 25 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 7 of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was specifically linked to women’s right to political participation and representation at all international and national levels. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women’s General recommendation No. 23 also called upon states parties to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in political and public life. Resolution 1325 is the first UN Security Council resolution to acknowledge the importance of women’s meaningful and equal participation in political life, stressing their involvement in negotiations and peacekeeping efforts. However, women still face structural challenges in politics. In fact, women occupied only 26% of positions in national parliaments in 2020 worldwide.¹“Proportion of Seats Held by Women in National Parliaments”, World Bank, available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS (accessed 30 October 2022) (World Bank, “Proportion of seats”). Iraq ranks second after the UAE in women’s participation in Parliament, taking over 28.9% of the seats in the 2021 elections.²“The UAE Ranks First Regionally and Fourth Internationally in Women’s Representation in Parliament”, CNN Arabic, 21 February 2022, available at https://arabic.cnn.com/middle-east/article/2022/02/21/women-in-parliaments-ipu-jan-2022-infographic (CNN Arabic, “UAE Ranks First”). Women’s political participation and representation are not only fundamental human rights, but also indispensable requirements for democracy and sustainable development and peace.

Political parties across the world work on political mobilization, present candidates to represent their aspirations in local and national elections, raise funds for electoral campaigns, and provide public services to pave their way to power. Moreover, ruling parties set the priorities of public policy and laws that regulate the community and the lives of individuals. They also appoint people to leadership roles within the government. In this context, political parties play a pivotal role in women’s political participation. The parties’ social considerations – in terms of public stance and internal practices – affect the political empowerment of women. They are often the lynchpin to creating political opportunities and pathways for women. Hence, political parties are key and they constitute the main structure that would enable women to access political positions.

Following the change of the political regime in Iraq in 2003, a 25% women’s parliamentary quota was introduced into the new Iraqi Constitution of 2005. Most conservative and traditional political blocs and parties were not involved in setting the quota. Indeed, it was imposed upon them due to pressures by the feminist movement at the time.³Many researchers often use “feminism/feminist movement” and “women’s movement” interchangeably without a clear or explicit definition, especially when categorizing people, groups, or organizations. Researchers who differentiate between the women’s movement and the feminist movement focus on the objectives that actors and activists aim to achieve: the objectives of the women’s movement include working on women’s issues in different fields by a group of women and all those who identify as such, while the feminist movement focuses on specific patriarchy-related challenges and women’s dependency. In all cases, the feminist discourse differs from the women’s movement rhetoric in its focus on women’s status in society and politics, by using the analysis that aims to challenge women’s dependency and change the structure of the gender-based hierarchy. Dorothy E. McBride and Amy G. Mazur, “Women’s Movements, Feminism, and Feminist Movements”, in Politics, Gender, and Concepts: Theory and Methodology, ed. Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, Cambridge University Press, 2008. The political parties quickly adapted to the women’s quota, drawing in female candidates and electors. Additionally, they modified the application of the women’s quota by amending two electoral laws: Law No. 16 of 2005 on closed lists, specifying 18 electoral districts where voters don’t know candidate names; and Law No. 9 of 2020 on open districts, specifying 83 electoral districts where voters know the candidates, who come from their geographical area or electoral district.

According to the “Women in Politics: 2020” index issued by UN Women, Iraq ranked 70th globally in the “women in Parliament” category and 176th for “women in ministerial positions”.⁴“Women in Politics: 2020”, UN Women, 1 January 2020, available at https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2020/Women-in-politics-map-2020-en.pdf (UN Women, “Women in Politics”). This marked a decrease in women’s ministerial participation after the first round, with the persistence of the one-quarter quota for women’s participation in the legislature during the four elections post-2003. This disparity in representation raises many questions as to political agendas for involving and empowering women in politics and to the political parties’ commitments to equality. Were these commitments reflected in the parties’ internal structure, by having women in leadership positions in a party’s general secretariat? What kind of programmes and procedures are political parties actioning to empower women politically? How did political parties deal with equality issues when promulgating laws and making public policies that impact women’s lives? What is the relationship between women’s rights activists and the ruling political parties? And what kind of challenges and forms of violence do women face in politics?

To answer these questions, and to obtain a deeper understanding of the issue, this paper relied on in-depth interviews with 22 male politicians, 24 female politicians and candidates, and 19 female women’s-rights activists. Each interview was at minimum half an hour, with some lasting over an hour. The interviews began during the parliamentary elections of October 2021 and took three months to complete in five governorates (Basra, Kirkuk, Najaf, Nineveh, and the districts of Karkh and Rusafa in the Baghdad governorate). Some of these interviews were conducted before the elections, some were held after the election pre-results and others post-results. This yielded a variety of perceptions, especially from female candidates who won or lost. This process followed a review of key research and literature on related themes in order to analyse the contexts and data according to the conclusions drawn from these papers. A main challenge and difficulty faced in this paper was the respondents’ preoccupation with the elections, publicity and media activities, and results. The timing posed a great challenge for the researchers in terms of conducting the interviews, as well as respondents’ wariness because of their fear of political misrepresentation, especially when requesting an audio recording of the interview. Processing the large dataset to detect recurrent patterns was also difficult and required additional time and effort.

The paper draws several conclusions, primarily:

• The laws and measures aimed at implementing the quota system maintained a relatively fixed representation of women in the Iraqi Parliament at 25%, although the Constitution had set this percentage as a minimum requirement and not as a fixed representation percentage. Many women managed to win previous elections from 2005 to 2018 without the need for a set quota.
• Politicians’ answers revealed an explicit and direct alignment with partisan agendas, wherein they considered the women’s quota as a means to win seats in areas where it is difficult for a man to win because he cannot rally enough voters to secure the parliamentary seat.
• The women’s quota imposed on parties by law was very difficult to pass and adopt within the parties. Women occupied 18.3% of leadership positions, although their leadership is often confined to managing offices concerned with women’s and family affairs within the party’s structure.
• Parties did not provide means of empowerment and training for new female parliamentarians or enable them to make decisions. Additionally, they courted female candidates who were not well-versed in women’s rights issues and had no previous experience or expertise in political action. Such candidates submitted to the party leader’s authority, thus confirming the stereotype that women are incompetent and not suited to political work and that the legal quota is only the reason for their accession to Parliament, emphasizing that politics are “a man’s world.”
• New parties that were formed outside the traditionally dominant parties, especially after the October Revolution of 2019, tended to have greater political representation of women within party structures. For instance, in one of these new parties, women’s participation reached 50% of the number of candidates in the elections.
• Many female candidates received direct and significant support from local communities and clans. For the first time, women presented their electoral agenda at the clan’s madiaf (hosting room), a space that had been exclusive to men, thus overturning the idea that society, with its customs and traditions, is incapable of change.
• Most of the women interviewed (politicians and activists) agreed on the important role of the quota in promoting women’s participation in the political field. According to their responses, it is an effective and rapid mechanism to promote women’s participation in Parliament, the political field from which they have been historically excluded. Without such a quota, women would not have been elected to Parliament.
• Political parties impose significant requirements on female candidates. In addition to the conditions of sect and religion, loyalty to the party and its ideology, and having mass public support, parties have also imposed unofficial veil and dress codes on women to reflect the party’s religious identity. Some parties impose additional physical appearance criteria on female candidates (different from those imposed on men), often intended to limit traditionally feminine attire, in an attempt to promulgate a stereotypical image of women and femininity as being separate from and incompatible with political leadership and decision-making capacities.
• A clear pattern appeared in the responses of respondents: the roles most assigned to women within parties align with their stereotyped role as caregivers. This includes communicating with women in their constituencies, distributing humanitarian aid, and conducting awareness and publicity activities for the party. As for work within the party and in governmental authorities, women take on roles related to education, the party’s promotional campaigns, public relations, the media, offices related to human rights and women’s affairs, and civil society organisations.
• Most female politicians and candidates lack economic resources for structural reasons related to the nature of rentier economies and the exclusion of women from positions of control over the state’s financial resources, not to mention the lack of economic support for female candidates from parties.
• Female politicians and candidates face challenges related to social disparities; they are still tasked with caring for children and family alongside their responsibilities outside the home, which requires more effort and time. Moreover, the traditional link between honour and the female body reinforces rules that restrict women’s movement and limits their ability to travel, go out without an escort, or attend meetings with men, which further inhibits women’s opportunities for leadership training. These same social norms free men from the burdens of homelife responsibilities and encourage their presence in the public and political spheres, thus allowing them to acquire leadership skills and learn the art of political rhetoric.
• Politically active women face various forms of psychological violence against women such as mockery, contempt, trolling, threats of publishing “scandals” about their personal lives on social media, fabrication of pictures and videos, tearing up campaign images, and spreading sexual innuendos by posting photos on social media of someone kissing an image of a female candidate or politician. There is also attempted blackmail, using hacked personal accounts or threats of publishing compromising pictures, unless the targeted women withdraw from the political field or pay money.
• Many female activists and women’s rights advocates agreed that there is a rift and a lack of trust with political parties because most parties refuse to work and cooperate with female advocates. In addition, joining a political party hinges on them abandoning their feminist political agendas and working under the orders and directives of the leaders of political parties, which is opposed by most advocates.

Recommendations

For the government:

• Establish a comprehensive national process to promote women’s political participation, addressing all obstacles that constitute direct and indirect forms of discrimination against such participation at all levels, adopt a bottom-up approach, and allocate financial resources for this purpose.
• Issue a law on the women’s quota for the executive branch, as the percentage of women in the Council of Ministers is usually much lower than their percentage in Parliament, which highlights the importance of the quota in improving women’s participation in decision-making.
• Create safe and favourable environments for women’s political participation in the private and public sectors by taking measures to prevent and combat all forms of violence, hate speech, and sexist discourse against women.
• Adopt a comprehensive, social equality -sensitive, official media policy to counter the stereotypes of traditional social roles for women and men.
• Encourage women’s participation in politics and the labour market by ensuring affordable childcare and adopting measures in favour of a better work-life balance.

For political parties:

• Mainstream clear, equality-sensitive rules and procedures that guarantee a transparent nomination process for leadership positions within political parties.
• Ensure greater representation of women within party structures, such as the General Secretariat and central and subsidiary executive committees, and adopt a voluntary quota system within parties.
• Support and fund electoral campaigns to enable a larger and, ultimately, equal participation of women in elections.

For civil society organizations

• Encourage the establishment of women’s networks or coalitions that include women’s rights activists, advocates, and parliamentarians to pressure the government and Parliament into enacting laws and formulating policies that address forms of discrimination against women in various educational, social, economic, and political fields.
• Support and promote the electoral campaigns of independent women.
• Provide training and capacity-building programmes for female candidates to enhance their political skills.

For international organizations

• Provide financial support to non-governmental organizations that seek to promote equality and the inclusion and participation of women in political and public decision-making processes.
• Strengthen and ensure a sustainable and safe civic space for women and women’s rights organizations to meet and hold decision-makers accountable on issues of discrimination and violence against women.
• Create public-dialogue platforms between civil society organizations and political parties to discuss the obstacles and challenges facing women and develop mechanisms for joint action to increase women’s representation in the political field.