The Enduring Challenges of Women’s Economic Participation in Iraq

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the supposedly democratic system it brought forth, did not deliver on its promise of women’s economic empowerment. Iraqi women continue to confront familiar obstacles twenty years later, with the additional threat of an unfeasible continuously expanding public sector. Understanding how to reform the labor market while encouraging growth in the female labor force participation (FLFP) is a daunting task. In this essay, I explore the declining participation of women in the economy, their position in labor codes and in the public sector, and complementary reforms.

Iraq ranks among the top countries globally when it comes to public sector domination of the job market. At the same time, Iraq has one of the lowest FLFP in the world, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). As of 2021, with a population of 43 million, where 49.7 percent are females and 6.63 percent are of working age, the female unemployment rate was 28.19 percent, females similarly lag far behind the 30 percent target in leadership positions.

A Historical Account: Labor Codes and Women

The first Iraqi Labor Code was established in 1959 as a result of social and political changes during the 1950s, accompanied by rapid modernization and industrialization. The 1960s socialist reforms offered public sector employment for all, regardless of the skills they possess and market needs. In Iraq and the region, labor unions and workers’ organizations demanded better working conditions, higher wages, and improved labor rights. The law guaranteed equal pay and prohibited discrimination based on gender in hiring, promotion, and training. Women were entitled to maternity leave, provisions to protect them from dismissal during pregnancy, and limited working hours to eight per day. However, the code also imposed restrictions such as preventing women from working at night and performing arduous or harmful physical work.

In 1987, the Ba’athist regime passed a new labor code which reflected party ideology and was fundamentally secular, in theory. It required employers to hire one or more female workers, it included increased maternity leave, and working hours to nine per day with keeping the abovementioned restrictions on night shifts and performing arduous or harmful physical works in place. The Ba’athist regime, however, considered women a key policy objective for advancing the economy and granted them a variety of legal and economic rights to access education and the labor market. As Nadje Al Ali argues, this was a strategy to shift patriarchal power away from fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, and uncles and towards the state, allowing Saddam Hussein to become the main patriarch of the country. School children were often indoctrinated to refer to him, in fact, as “baba Saddam”.

The 1987 labor code was revisited and updated by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) after the US-led invasion, but not passed. The free-market economy prioritized by the CPA entailed several challenges, the sudden shift from a controlled economy to a free-market system exacerbated inequalities, market volatility and increased threats of currency devaluation. The privatization and liberalization with the absence of sound regulatory mechanisms and fiscal adjustments, and at the pace reform was introduced, left little room to mitigate negative impacts by the transitional government. The 2015 labor code in effect currently still prohibits women from working at night, subject to exceptions. They are permitted to work at night in administrative or commercial work and in health, recreational, transport, or communication services. In other respects, it extends the pregnancy leave from 90 days to a period no less than 14 weeks with full pay. Most notably, the code prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace, with penalties for sexual harassment up to six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of 1 million IQD. These penalties have been criticized as not proportionate with the psychological effects of sexual harassment. However, according to the Iraqi Observatory of Human Rights, most victims from the public sector, universities, and media do not file discrimination claims, fearing social stigmas.

In my own work in Iraq, I also noticed that victims rarely speak up – and when they do – they face significant obstacles. A twenty-year-old woman who was working at an organization to cover her university fees, spoke to me of her experience. She was on a field trip from Erbil to Duhok with a male colleague to visit a center where training was being held. Her colleague, who was 32 years her senior, was driving his personal vehicle because there wasn’t enough project funding to cover a driver. During this trip, her colleague surprised her with an alleged gift – a breast enlargement cream, claiming that she needed it and that he could help her apply it. She recalls emailing her direct supervisor, and copying the organization’s chairman informing them of the incident, resulting in them calling her colleague and returning to their Erbil-based office. The direct supervisor, with complete consideration of the sensitivity of the situation, backed the employee. The female chairman backed the perpetrator, who claimed to not own any creams, and went so far as faking evidence in confrontations, to prevent funding entities from hearing about the incident.

Legal protections can only go so far in a culture that casts doubt on women’s experiences and authenticity.

The Public Sector and Women

In 2020, a roadmap to economic reform known as the White Paper was published. It came with the approval of leading international organizations, like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The goal was to drive the country away from its bloated public sector which is draining its budget. The authors were a team of Iraqi economists and financial experts, led by Iraq’s Minister of Finance Ali Allawi, and included members from the Ministry of Finance, the Prime Minister’s Office, and other government agencies. The gender composition of the team was not disclosed. The paper did not address the declining rates of female participation in particular, though that can be attributed to lack of nationwide data.

This time period was considered to be a golden opportunity for real economic reform through addressing the root causes of a volatile economy, but soon things drifted off course as oil prices recovered, allowing the government to meet public sector payments – the single most burdening element of the fiscal budget. This result was the abandonment of the proposed reforms. The government announced adding 370,000 additional employees to its payroll, and it is unclear how many of them are women.

Women in turn have always associated public sector jobs with higher social status and wages, continued stability, and benefits such as paid leave and retirement plans, which are not always available in the private sector. As a result, 71 percent of females are interested in pursuing a career in the public sector. The perception of women working in the public sector of the ones working in the private sector is quite negative, due to the number of hours spent outside their homes, maximized exposure to men and foreign workers, and the instability of the careers.

A Slightly Brighter Outlook

On May 17, the Iraqi Council of Representatives approved the adoption of a new Social Security Law for Private Sector Workers. The new law aims to align the social security system for private sector workers more closely to ILO’s Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) which the Iraqi government officially ratified in March 2023. The new law expands its legal coverage to all workers, including those in informal employment, self-employed, and family workers. It also introduces maternity and unemployment benefits, which is expected to contribute to better health outcomes by ensuring support for women before, during, and after childbirth.

As daily subsistence has become a priority for women over education, healthcare, and employment, women have decided to tolerate the pre-existing inequalities and to continue steering their ship in less fortunate directions, and remain mostly in the safer “private sphere”. However, if the new Social Security Law is implemented, it will improve women’s participation rate and strike a balance between the private and public sectors.

This essay is part of a special series – Iraq after 2003: The Voices of Iraqi Women