ABSTRACT

This chapter examines some of the issues involved in the attempt by the Ba'th to effect changes in women's roles and status. In common with other Third World countries Iraq shares the challenge of modernising its economic, political and social systems. In the political sphere, the regime's stated task is to develop an effective state apparatus and nationwide institutions with integrative functions. The Arab Ba'th Socialist Party, which came to power in Iraq in 1968, has articulated a vision of a future society 'free from the old, obsolete, and exploitative relationships that held the peasant, the tribesman and the woman prisoner in their own society'. The statement is fairly straightforward; the party takes it upon itself to liberate the woman from all bonds, economic, social and legal. The political report, however, does not spell out the nature of these bonds nor how the party intends to go about effecting this process of liberation.