Iraqi Women, Fighting for a Voice

"We're still suffering from the past," said Jinan Q. Ali, the minister of women's affairs in the Kurdish regional government. "You can't say the government and police are not doing their job. To transfer a society from a violent one to a peaceful one won't happen suddenly."

'The Habits and Traditions'

On a sultry morning in Basra, Muna Saud, her face framed by a black shawl, slipped unnoticed past the thick knots of men at the provincial health ministry. She glided from office to office until she found Zahra Abdul-Zahra, a former student, and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

"I want to find a job for Selma," Saud said quietly, pulling a résumé, tucked neatly in a blue folder, from her black bag.

Saud helps lead the Iraqi Women's League, an activist group whose members teach women computer skills, English and how to be assertive in a male-dominated world.

Saud is thin as a matchstick with an angular face and sad, piercing eyes behind oval glasses. She wore a black blouse and a black skirt -- and pink lipstick, just enough to not attract attention.

With violence falling across Iraq, urban women have gained some freedom. They can drive, wear makeup or walk in some areas without head scarves -- actions once forbidden by religious vigilantes.

Saud said she hopes that women such as Selma can help embolden other women and change perceptions by becoming role models in the workplaces. But on this day, as on many others, Saud was confronted with Iraq's reality: One of Abdul-Zahra's co-workers, also in a head scarf, blurted, "Doesn't she have wasta?"

Saud remembered when Iraqi women didn't need wasta -- connections -- to find a job. In the late 1970s, thousands of Iraqi women, then among the most liberated in the Arab world, worked as doctors, engineers and civil servants.

The daughter of a tailor, Saud wanted to become an accountant. But she soon realized that only women who joined Hussein's Baath Party could succeed in such a profession, so she left the university and found work in a pharmacy. There she held secret meetings of the Women's League.

Her brother, Mahmoud, was taken into custody for being a Communist. Inside her cramped bedroom, where buttery sunlight floats through tan curtains, Saud keeps her brother's execution order in a box under her bed. She has worn black since he was hanged in 1983.

"The power I get is because of these experiences," said Saud, who has not married.

After the invasion, she and 30 Women's League members started their workshops. But by 2005, Iraqi women were being attacked for not covering their faces or for being too educated. Some had acid thrown in their faces. Many feared leaving home.