they were particularly active in the Peace Partisans,
the Federation of Democratic Youth, the Iraqi
Teachers’ Union, and, above all, the League for the
Defense of Women’s Rights.
The league achieved some substantial victories
during its two years of active public life. In 1959, it
won its legal campaigns to outlaw honor killings
and to implement the personal status law, which
stipulated a minimum age of 18 years for marriage
and expanded women’s protection against arbitrary
divorce; most controversially, female descendants
were accorded equal rights with males in matters of
intestate succession. Also in 1959, Prime Minister
Qàsim appointed a founder of the league, Nazìha
Dulaymì, as his minister of municipalities, making
her the first woman and the first member of the
Communist Party to serve in the Iraqi cabinet.
Dulaymìclaimed in her opening speech at the league’s
second conference, on 8 March 1960, that league
membership had grown from 20,000 to 42,000 in
a single year, and that thousands of additional
women were receiving literacy training and medical
services at league branches throughout the country.
An Iraqi women’s art exhibit was opened at the
Institute of Modern Art in Baghdad in conjunction
with the conference; it contained works “depicting
the Iraqi woman’s struggle in the eradicated regime
and her gains and efforts in the flourishing era of
the Revolution” (Iraq Times, 3 August 1960).
In 1960, Qàsim’s regime began suppressing the
country’s revolutionary organizations, including
the League for the Defense of Women’s Rights, and
the first Ba≠th coup of 1963 dealt the final death
blow to a public, autonomous women’s movement
in twentieth-century Iraq. One of the new regime’s
first policy acts was to repeal the clause of the per-
sonal status law that guaranteed equality between
male and female heirs. The second Ba≠th govern-
ment, which ruled Iraq from 1963 to 2003, was
more progressive on women’s issues, and strove to
integrate women more fully into the national labor
force and educational system. It was also fond of
using such achievements as evidence that a state-
directed approach to women’s rights was more
effective than one led by an autonomous feminist
movement.But the Ba≠th Party’s success in this area
rested at least partly on its ability to contain and
control gender challenges and women’s rights dis-
courses that emerged before and during the revolu-
tionary years of 1958–60. Ba≠th leaders adopted the
popular if highly contested rhetoric of women’s
equality produced by the League for the Defense of
Women’s Rights and other revolutionary groups,
while effectively containing their more radical
implications and possibilities.
north africa 653BibliographyPrimary Sources
Iraq Times, 1958–60.
Itti™àd al-sha≠b, 1958–9.
United States Department of Commerce Joint Publi-
cations Research Service, The communist movement in
Iraq, parts I and II, Washington, D.C. 1967.Secondary Sources
H. Batatu, The old social classes and the revolutionary
movements of Iraq, Princeton, N.J. 1978.
J. Ismael and S. Ismael, Gender and state in Iraq, in
S. Joseph (ed.), Gender and citizenship in the Middle
East, Syracuse, N.Y. 2000, 107–36.Sara PursleyNorth AfricaAlthough largely ignored in the official recorded
histories of the Maghrib, women have greatly con-
tributed to the political and social construction of
the modern countries of this region of the world.
They fought for independence, militated in political
parties, initiated activism and civil society, infil-
trated academia, and boldly combated religious
fanaticism. Throughout the period that extends
from pre-colonization, colonization, independence,
and state-building to the era of democratization,
women have always been active in private and pub-
lic spaces. Their movements started as political,
focusing on education and legal rights, and moved
to include civil society and academia as well. The
strategies used by women to counter the inequities
they protest against have been shaped by specific
historical, social, political, economic, and linguistic
environments where reformism, colonization, left-
ist political parties, civil society, multilingualism,
academia, and Islamism played a significant role.
The history of women’s movements in the Magh-
rib goes back to the pre-colonization and the colo-
nization periods during which male leaders of the
Islah (reform) movement such as Allal al-Fassi
(Morocco), Ibn Badis (Algeria), and Tahar Haddad
(Tunisia) argued for women’s emancipation within
the cultural/religious value systems of Maghribian
societies. These leaders linked social development
and modernization with women’s education. This
instigated many women of the 1930s and 1940s to
start claiming their rights through pioneer women’s
organizations such as Akhawàt al-Íafà±(Sisters
of purity) in Morocco, the Association of Muslim
Women in Algeria, and the Union of Tunisian
Women. These associations were created and led by
educated urban elite women who had connections
with the larger national liberation movements.