Following a Twitter post by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr which called for gender segregation in the anti-government rallies, hundreds of women gathered to demand their rights. On Thursday, February 13, Baghdad\u2019s Tahrir Square was filled with defiant chants of “Stop discrimination against women, stop gender segregation.\u201d\u00a0
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In response to the protest, al-Sadr took to Twitter, calling the march sinful and warning against the country’s moral demise. “We are a religious country, and Muqtada al-Sadr refuses such contact with women,” he said.
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Iraqi Shia cleric, politician and militia leader; Muqtada al-Sadr is the leader of the Sadrist Movement and Saraya al-Salam, a Shia militia. The Sadrist Movement is religious and populist, focused on creating a society ordered by a combination of religious laws and tribal customs.
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Most women in Iraq have not mastered any skills or received an education because they were not allowed to. As a result, many women have become dependent on men and following the loss of their husbands in the war, they have been left to care for their families with no way to support them.
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Young women publicly challenging the long-standing patriarchal norms and recent attempts to exclude them from the country’s popular uprising is unique to today’s women of Iraq. Previously, women have been too afraid to speak out for what they believe in, but a new generation of young women are working to change that.
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As women carve out a place for themselves in leadership roles, Iraq’s historically conservative gender dynamics have started to shift. In a country where gender segregation is often the norm, protesters have challenged the country’s conservative communities by sharing the same living quarters and ensuring the equal participation of both sexes.
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In an evolving world, women are fighting for their rights all across the globe. There will always be men who wish to oppress women, even in countries like the United States women are fighting for their rights. However, even if total equality is a ways away, progress can still be made. Already, women in Iraq have made an impact, and with organizations such as the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) fighting for change, it is likely that with time women will see change everywhere, including Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following a Twitter post by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr which called for gender segregation in the anti-government rallies, hundreds of women gathered to demand their rights. On Thursday, February 13, Baghdad\u2019s Tahrir Square was filled with defiant chants of “Stop discrimination against women, stop gender segregation.\u201d\u00a0 In response to the protest, al-Sadr took to Twitter, calling the march sinful and… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4059,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions\/4059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}