Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

Looking at the past through the lens of the present and the present through the lens of the past, Noga Efrati effectively shows how under Western rule Iraqi women's rights became a victim not once but twice, in eerily similar circumstances. In the first half of the twentieth century, the British occupation and Hashemite monarchy it spawned used tribal and family law to make women second-class citizens, disenfranchising them in the process. Women's activists fought for their rights, Efrati tells us, just as those in American-occupied Iraq in the early twenty-first century fought for theirs, opposing political marginalization, retribalization, and communalization of family law. For anyone trying to understand the contradictions and casualties of occupation, Women in Iraq is a must-read. [Beth Baron, City University of New York]