ABSTRACT
About a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, I was approached by Zed Press to write a book about Iraqi women in the present situation. It was certainly an interesting and challenging proposal. But after thinking about it for a while, I refused, feeling strongly that a general Western readership would not be able to grasp the full extent to which women are losing out in the present period without being familiar with the broader historical context. I could see how a description and analysis of what was happening to women in the post-Saddam Hussein era could all too easily be misconstrued in terms of culture, tradition, or religion, raising familiar questions like: “Isn’t this just another instance of a Muslim country oppressing its women?” The idea for my 2007 book Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present emerged from this context. 1
