★ ★ ★

It is 47 degrees Celsius in Baghdad, and my skin feels like it’s melting off my body as I walk to the Women’s Study Center at Baghdad University, Iraq. Accompanied by locals and university staff, fully dressed in formal attire, I must look like a very sad case of an unseasoned rotisserie chicken left in the oven too long. “It’s not that bad, just wait until it’s summer!” says someone from the company. A real insult to injury, I thought to myself, while running from one shade to another on my 3-minute walk from the car to the center. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so white in my life.

I came here to talk about women’s rights in Baghdad, and the visit was somewhat arranged by Iraqi government officials, since the university is a governmental body here. I was expecting an intimate interview with the head of the center, Dr. Athraa Ismail Zaidan, about the pressing issues Iraqi women face, women’s right to work, setbacks in women’s rights made by the government, and all that. The center, like most of the university campus, is a brutalistic building, overgrown with plants and surrounded by gardens and fountains. There are a bunch of students hanging out both outside and in the halls during breaks in their exam season. Inside the stairwell to the center, there are posters in Arabic talking about the prevention of violence against women, International Women’s Day, and a universal “don’t do drugs, kids” amongst others. Dr. Ismail Zaidan greets me halfway, and the university’s translator gets to work. We say our hellos, and a tour begins.

Out of the sudden, a girl is filming me and taking pictures with her phone, and a few more people start circling us. As the head of the center recites the center's mission statement and goals from a poster on the wall, my translator gets a call from someone and leaves me to my own devices. The head of the department continues in Arabic. She shows me their library, full of literature about women’s rights in politics, economy, business, religion, and so on. The translator comes back. We go through the center, and it seems that more and more people are joining in. The girl is still taking pictures. As we finally reach the head office at the end of the hall and settle down for the interview, four other people are in the room with us.

There is coffee served, everyone settles in, and the interview begins. As we talk, everyone has something to add. The girl with the phone stands awkwardly at the door, still taking pictures, or filming, I have no idea, as I was not informed. I realized this will be quite the fumble from the first question. I asked something along the lines of “How do social norms in Iraq or religion affect women’s ability to choose a career over a traditional family life here?”. I got quite the looks of disapproval. “Religion frees women”, she said, “ religion as a whole gave women many rights, gave women the right to educate themselves,  religion is with women, not against women”.

According to data provided by humanitarian organisations and Iraqi officials, in 2021, the female labour force participation rate in Iraq was particularly low, standing at about 11% in comparison to 68% for males. As for education, Iraqi women have been facing obstacles for decades. According to the UN, 27.9% of women aged 20–24 years old in Iraq were married or in a union before age 18. Also, women and girls aged 10+ spend 24.1% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to 4.2% spent by men. In rural areas of Iraq, girls face the danger of being abducted or sexually assaulted on their way to school; therefore, many families forbid their girls from completing middle or high school.

According to Unicef, there are close 3.2 million school-aged Iraqi children out of school in general, despite the Iraqi constitution, that states that primary education should be free and obligatory for all children (artcl. 34). On top of that, this year the parliament of Iraq has passed amendments to its 1959 Personal Status Law, granting religious courts greater authority over family matters and enabling girls—particularly under Shia Ja’afari law—to be married as young as nine, effectively overturning the long-standing national ban on child marriage. Critics and human rights activists have condemned the move as “legalizing child rape” that dismantles protections for women and children, risks undermining alimony, custody, and inheritance rights, and marks a significant regression in gender equality.

All of this, of course, doesn’t derive just from religion. There’s no need for an explanation, that religion is in the eyes of the beholder and doesn’t automatically take away women’s rights. A huge mark on the Iraqi people has also been left by a series of wars, starting with the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, and ending with the Second Persian Gulf War in 2003. The country is putting its best efforts into rebuilding, setting up a sustainable and safe state, and taking off the barbed wires left over from the wars. A free Iraq is still young and trying to figure out the next steps to take.

After bringing all of this data up during the interview, I was told not to trust humanitarian organisations, and to instead look at the Ministry of Planning (which is aware of the situation as well and taking actions to better it). I received a speech about total gender equality both in education and work under Iraq’s law. I could see that Dr. Ismail Zaidan was getting frustrated and nervous about the questions. I decided to ease the tension by asking about the center and the work they do here to specifically help women in Iraq. The head of the department started scrambling for a pamphlet and reading out the mission statement and goals again. Someone from the room brought me a printed copy in Arabic. Then, an English printed copy. I asked about specific research, and they told me to check their website.

I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t my ignorance and illpreparedness leading this conversation, so I tried again - this time about violence against women in Iraq. I asked about the posters I saw on the walls and the general situation in the country. “ It's an international campaign that aims to seize violence against women. And as we all know, every society has a certain percentage of violence, it's impossible to find a society where there's no violence against women”, she said.

When the interview ended, I was given a few books in Arabic to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I took a few rushed photographs before being accompanied to meet a few female students at the university. I will not state their names to protect their privacy. It was a group of young women studying in their later years of biomedical engineering. They were extremely smart and quick-witted. One of them told me about finishing her  two-part project about Parkinson's disease, where she tested signal processing and data analysis. The conversation started out just about the same as the one with Dr. Ismail Zaidan, but it took a much more honest turn. They started talking about how their fields of study “fulfilled their curiosity for the world”, but how difficult it is to actually find work after graduation.

“ The most famous company in medical devices in Iraq doesn't hire females. Because they like their employees to work all day. That doesn't suit a girl here. So it's really difficult to find a job that suits our education. You know, we're dealing with large devices such as MRI, and it's not really a female job as well, because it requires you to be strong. And, like, women can be strong, but they [the men?] don't believe in that. The thing is, because you're a woman, you have to prove yourself 10,000 times more”, said one of them. “But do you believe that they can do that?” I asked.”I believe that we can do whatever we want. But they are gonna make it a nightmare for you. 'Cause men don't like this idea. It's not really about being in Iraq. It's about mentality, I guess. Muslim women don’t want to go work overnight outside in different cities with a group of men. It's not that they are forced or obligated; it's kind of the thing that we were raised on. Like, we don't really like to be in a situation in which that doesn't feel comfortable to us”, she replied.

The women talked about how employers in their field would always choose a man over a woman in a job application process. I asked them how they feel about that. “ I do agree with them, especially since working with men is easier and flexible because most of them can travel more. Even though women are qualified and want to work, it’s harder to get opportunities. We wish it to be easier, but companies are companies, they're looking for how to get more profit. So if they think that men are giving them more profit, of course, they're gonna prefer men, and they are correct about it. Men are really giving them more profit”, says one of the students.

We started talking about their dreams and aspirations. It was clear to me that these young women were extremely motivated and ambitious. “We don't have any other choice than working hard. I work hard so that I can prove to myself and to other people that I'm living this life for a reason. Like, I don't believe humans came to live just to be happy and just waste their time, or I think it's valuable over time is valuable or our mind is valuable. We have this ability to do something good, to learn, and maybe do something for the universe. Why not do it? Work hard, like no pay, no gain”, said one of them.

This visit to the University of Baghdad wasn’t quite what I expected. I was confused by the dichotomy in both conversations. Later, on the center’s website, they made a post about my visit, saying that “it was highlighted that Islam has not been an obstacle to women’s participation in public life but rather a driving force in promoting their active and positive role in society”. You can also see some extremely flattering pictures of me there, made with what I can only assume was a fish lens.

The meeting with the center felt like an attempt by government officials to downplay women’s struggles in exchange for bettering the country’s image. The cost of this is a bunch of women fighting a cultural war of social norms and gender inequality in the workforce of Iraq. And, admittedly, I knew that was at least somewhat the case, because the day before this visit, I talked to working women in Baghdad.

★ ★ ★

A flight of swallows is playing outside the window of my hotel room. They’re diving up and down in the evening sun. The open door to the balcony is letting in warm, dry air. I ask Maryam and Badraa to stand there while I take some pictures in what might be the only place in the hotel not filled with glitz and glamor.

Maryam Jameel, 26, and Badraa Bashar, 30, used to be colleagues at an Uber subsidiary startup in Iraq called “Kareem”. It was the first of its kind in Iraq and changed the game for traveling around the ever-so-busy Baghdad. They both work in Iraq’s private sector. Badraa was participating in a digital skills development project “Digital Explorers - Iraq Edition” by a Lithuanian think- and- do tank called OSMOS“Osmos”. Their project aimed to establish newmore collaborations between Lithuania and Iraq, by s attract more foreign investments to the country, and help strengthening the digital sector. Badraa is a data analyst, and she participated in the intense remote training programme hosted by OSMOS and partners, a Lithuanian EdTech startup Turing College and Iraq-based Five One Labs, an entrepreneurship support organisation workshops “Osmos” hosted. I met her at the project’s closing event there. Meanwhile, Maryam now works in the NGO sector as a communications specialist specialising in working with humanitarian aid. As it gets dark and the swallows return to their nests on the hotel walls, we three also sit down to talk.

“You know, in recent years I've seen that Iraq is only getting better in terms of the economic situation and stability, and there's a lot of investment coming in”, says Maryam. Both she and Badraa still remember the war. They were kids back then. Maryam and her family fled and took refuge in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, so she traveled around a lot. Badraa experienced everything happening in Baghdad first hand: “All the bad things that happened in Baghdad, I lived them. And thank God we survived.”

When Maryam and her sister reached the pivotal point of their education, their parents made the decision to move back to Iraq and settle there. “Every Iraqi citizen has to make that decision at some point in their life,” she says. And it wasn’t always perfect. Finding jobs was difficult, and so was leaving behind friends. But they ended up completing the Iraqi family dream: her sister got into med school, and Maryam into engineering, where she specialized in polymer and petrochemicals. “You'll go to any NGO, you will go into any company, and you'll find that there are like six engineers out of 10 people. There are so many engineers and doctors in Iraq,” she laughs.

College was a big life shift for Maryam. She went from being awkward and shy to being a “toastmaster,” as Badraa calls her. Maryam recalls her coursemates worrying about getting a governmental job. To this day, in Iraq, working for the government is the preferred option. Even though wages are far lower than working in the private sector, a governmental job offers stability. Usually, the top three students in class get offered governmental positions in ministries or labs. Maryam was nr 5. But she didn’t want a governmental job anyway: “I would’ve died of boredom”.

Neither did Badraa. She also studied engineering, and her family insisted she get a government job. Her mother works for the judiciary and could’ve helped her get a job there. Instead, Badraa decided to look for a job in the private sector. At first, she got a job as a cashier in a pharmacy without telling her dad. Her paycheck was 200 USD a month and she worked 6 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day. “Thankfully, my brother supported me a lot because my father wouldn't have wanted me to work a job like that. And so I just kept building my CV.”

The private sector in Iraq was very limited back then. There were no special workshops, people didn’t think about CV’s, even internet was still new.  It was much harder to find a job in the private sector. “One day my friend invited me to an interview with a French company, who wanted a customer care agent. I said yes, things went well. I got the job and my salary tripled. so like I accepted it because like, no, I'm refusing to work with my mom,” says Badraa.

She started as a customer care agent and after three months became a marketing coordinator, later a marketing executive, then a senior marketing executive, then a senior growth executive. “I didn't know what I was doing except that I was passionate about learning, and I wanted to do something meaningful for myself. Now I'm fulfilling my dream, which is growth hacking. Kareem, they introduced me to this field, which is a combination of data marketing and engineering,” she says.

The aftermath of wars and a lack of job opportunities are causing a lot of young Iraqis to emigrate in search of better opportunities. However, Badraa is set to stay. After getting married, she feels settled down.  ”I think because of what we lived through, everyone is aiming to get out of Iraq and have a better, decent life. But now things are getting much better. Now there are better opportunities for young people. Life is safe and calm. I hope things will keep improving. Because like no one wants to go back to what was happening,” she says. Badraa feels like she’s done a lot more than she ever imagined she could. Now she’s planning a start-up with her husband, and thinking of having kids. After all, Iraq is home, and that feeling of home is the most important.

Maryam says she is flexible and open to opportunities. She has worked with lifesaving assistance, infrastructure, rehabilitation, and providing economic opportunities. And when someone chooses to go through that path, it's not just for the status, she says. “For me it's mostly knowing that I'm making an impact. Even if I go into a company, it's important for me to know that they have a corporate social responsibility system and that they're fighting for the right causes, or at least providing a service that's making people's lives better,” says Maryam.

Everything is about impact and purpose to Maryam. It makes her feel like she’s helping her people and her country. She can see her sense of nationality grow as she gets older. As a teenager, Maryam wanted to leave. Now she feels the happiest when contributing to the lives of other Iraqis. “They are survivors,” she says, “the GDPs increasing every year, but that's only on the surface. There are a lot of people who still need help. Contributing to that mission is something that makes me feel good. This country is part of my identity, the food, the family, you know. And as a woman who has lived in my family's home my whole life, I cannot imagine leaving. I love them.”

Being women, they have both experienced their fair share of the patriarchy and sexism in the workforce. Maryam and Badraa are very transparent, that they do not represent what the majority of women in Iraq experience. Living in the capital, their lives are very different from those of women living in rural Iraq. If I was talking to them, this would probably be quite a different conversation. “What  I can tell you, younger women work three times as hard. People know it and they exploit it because at the back of my mind I’m always thinking I have to prove myself. They probably think I'm pretty and stupid,” says Maryam. The amount of steps you have to take as a woman to land a good job just seems to multiply.

Companies won't hire married women who plan to have families, and will actively lay off pregnant ones. Badraa would lie about her age on her resume, for fear that it might impact the employer's decision. “Depends on where you work. If you work in an Iraqi company, it's still very much male dominated. You see women doing the admin work no matter how qualified they are, they get assigned the fluff stuff. When you work in international organizations, it's much different, because they have a lot of rules and guidelines. They follow the HQs policy, you're protected. But you are still in Iraq, there you are working with Iraqi mindsets, Iraqi people,” says Maryam.

The mentality of male employees and colleagues is outdated. A lot of them don’t take women seriously, undermine their expertise, ask them to fetch the paper and coffee constantly. They find it easier to mistreat female colleagues. “I even noticed that sometimes young female colleagues get assigned more work beyond their position description. And I see that it's a pattern. We're not crazy. We all talk about it sometimes,” says Maryam.

The constant pressure to outperform everyone and fight three times as hard to get equal treatment follows Iraqi women from girlhood. Parents could very easily make the decision to stop them from getting an education or from getting a job. In high school, women and men are separated and not allowed to interact. So a woman working with men is still taboo. “My dad, he's a good man, but he would have forced me to stay at home just because he didn’t want me to work as a cashier. He's well educated, he just wants to protect me. But I know other parents forbid their girls from working just because she would be talking to a boy,” says Badraa. Maryam’s dad insisted that her mom takes her everywhere for the longest time. Because he feared she might get abducted or assaulted when taking a taxi.

“Now I travel. I stayed in the US for a month. I went to Europe, I toured Italy, and you know, I got to do lots of cool things. This is the thing, we are privileged Badraa and I, because women in the south cannot even get a proper education,” says Maryam. “In most places in Iraq, women just exist to get married and have children,” Badraa adds.

“ I had an interview a while back and I was told that I was very qualified. But you’re young, and you are a woman and the team is all males and they're older than anyone. They would be triggered, even though in many organizations, I have managed people who are maybe 70 and 60 years old,” says Maryam. She states that sometimes companies want to hire women just to use them for marketing.

Their main support through everything has always been their mothers. They understand what it’s like. Badraa’s mother turned away any marriage proposals to the family, because she wanted her daughter to enjoy life, to try and learn to depend on herself: “My mom was an amazing supporter for me. I had this big fight with my dad about hijab. I didn't like it. One day I just gave up and decided to wear it. And my mother said no, if you don’t like it, don’t wear it. You are not forced. It's about how convinced you are about the concept of it. And so I never wore it again because my mom was amazing. If she wasn't supporting me, it would be very different.”

Maryam’s mother has also been her advocate: “You know, I'm crazy. I always do adventurous things. My parents were against many of my jobs. They were against my travels. But I can imagine if my mom wasn't there, I don't know what I would've done because she’s the one who always stands up to my dad and reasons him. She's the greatest.”

Women supporting women have been lifting each other up for many years in Iraq. Now there are a lot of opportunities and communities that support other women. The private sector is massively expanding, which is giving not only women, but all young people in Iraq better job opportunities. There’s incubators, workshops, training programs, etc.

“When you think about Iraq, just think about the fact that people started, we didn't have internet or digital innovation up until after 2003 [because of international sanctions against Sadam’s regime] . We were aliens to the world. We don't know anything. Our access to the world was very limited, restricted and highly supervised.  So everything, every, every innovation in life, every new concept in life came to us late. And so it's normal. You don't compare us with the US or Europe. Now young people are starting companies and startups. There are so many resources now that we didn’t have. I feel like even in the workforce, we have to give seniors some mercy because they didn't have the exposure that we have today. Like my cousin started working and he had his own startup at 15 and you know, that's crazy. I never did that in my age,” says Maryam.

And while foreign investment is making its way into the country and opening up new opportunities, Maryam wishes that the Iraqi government would do the same: “This is our government. They should be providing these opportunities for us. They should be doing all of that. Now there's AI, we are way behind. They need to think about all of that and we would love for our government to do that work.”

Iraq is putting in a lot of effort to expand the private sector themselves with banking reforms, that will expand access to savings accounts, loans, and credit, a focus shift from the oil industry to the private sector in hopes of diversifying their market, amending The National Investment Law governs foreign direct investments, allowing investors to repatriate returns and capital, trade in the Iraqi stock market, and offering temporary tax exemptions, and creating support for Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs), which included identifying and recommending legislation to promote the MSME sector, revising banking regulations to provide access to credit for MSMEs, and supporting lenders to develop new financial products.

All of this sounds nice on paper, but there is still work to be done. Outdated laws and regulations, coupled with a cumbersome and bureaucratic business registration process, deter entrepreneurs. Registering online businesses is particularly challenging as they often don't legally exist, forcing tech startups to register as traditional businesses. Entrepreneurs frequently face roadblocks in securing funding due to limited financing options, a weak banking system, and a lack of venture capital funds, angel investor networks, and microfinance institutions. For instance, if you want to take a loan to start a business, you have to have a person working in a government position to officially vouch for you, because they’re seen as more reliable.

There is also a lack of talent with the right skills, which is what organisations like “Osmos” and Five One Labs are trying to tackle. A shortage of coders and developers increases the time and cost of launching tech startups, often requiring entrepreneurs to work with remote developers. Also, a significant portion of the Iraqi workforce (over 50%) operates informally, which limits potential for business growth, expansion, and government tax revenue collection. Lastly, mentally, there is a lot more trust in the governmental sector, employing about 38% of the workforce. This creates structural imbalances and limits job creation in the private sector.

But Maryam stays hopeful and thankful. “I pray for the government. This is probably the best government that we've had so far. At least there is peace. There are no explosions. Politically we are safe. The government is very accepting and cooperative of international businesses coming into Iraq. They're building partnerships, they're getting smarter, especially Kurdistan [Region of Iraq]. They're working on the digital economy, e-commerce and fine tech platforms. They're much better than anyone that has ever come, they're trying to do better,” says Maryam.

However, the government is creating setbacks for women’s rights in Iraq. Though seen as a pretty progressive country in the Middle East in this regard, Iraq needs a change of mentality. “They are mixing religion with the state, with the country, with the government. It’s something that serves their interests. It’s good for the patriarchy, good for men, but not for women. I think the government needs to do a better job to protect women. For example, if a woman were to complain to police, sometimes they don't believe her. Women can be assaulted during tribal fights. Here in Iraq calling someone the wrong gender or saying the wrong pronouns isn’t the issue. Our problems are still at a fundamental human rights level,” says Maryam. But she is tired of blaming the government. It’s the people, the companies, the stakeholders that need to be aware: “People need to educate themselves,” she says.

★ ★ ★

There is just a nightstand light holding the room together now. And a very bright future ahead of Badraa and Maryam. The conversation now has this pleasant heaviness of three tired people, that feels like a weighted blanket. We’ve been talking for about an hour and I feel as inspired as I’ve ever felt to create my own future, to take life into my own hands. “Independence is the most beautiful feeling in the world,” says Maryam. And I feel the weight of those words with my soul.

“I work because I want to be independent,” she says, “I don't want anyone paying for my jewelry and clothing or unnecessary snacking. You need that, especially as a woman. Everything is more expensive for us. Everything is pink-washedpink washed. We have a lot of things we need to buy. I am the biggest woman supporter because I think women are empathetic, they're diplomatic, they have good communication skills. They should work, they should get an education to serve the country, to serve themselves, their families. Especially for Iraqi women, I would say never give up. Try as hard as you can. Be stubborn. Prove yourself. Be a good communicator. Make your case and fight for yourself. Don't settle for things, not at work, not with your family. And always aim for the stars. God opens doors for you. Living in a patriarchal world and in a country that is still making steps to become more accepting and supporting of women, you need a solid foundation so that you are never left on the street. You need an education, you need a good job.”

As Maryam reflects on her career she feels that she has done much more than she ever anticipated. And she doesn’t intend to stop. “I don't wanna be in my fifties wondering what I did with my life. I don't want to be in the victim mindset and say, oh, life is against me,” she says, “It's difficult for everyone. There's problems everywhere in the world. So I think about my blessings, I think about my family, that I have a good life, you know, the nice things. God or life gave us the gift of having the brain that we have today. And we can think, we can work, we're good at our jobs, and that keeps me going. I don't believe that life is roses and butterflies. There is always hardship. You have to get over it. You have to be able to overcome the challenges. It's not always rainbows and sunshine, but you work hard for the nice moments.”

“We have suffered enough trauma. Now we just want to build our country,” says Badraa, “we would love to see Iraq as one of the countries that people would like to come to study in. There’s a lot of work to be done, but beautiful and good things are happening.” Iraqi people are ready to take barbed wire off of their walls. And young women like these are leading the way.