The women of Iraq have had a life style like no other women in the world. Their rights had been violated for a number of years and still are, but as the 20th century is aproaching, there are some changes in the lifestyles of women that aren't as harsh as they were before.
During the 1960's the peasant women and urban housewife were treated as mere peasants to men, but as the 1980's started to roll by the working women, education, and women in legislation changed for the better.
The peasant Women led difficult and bitter lives in the underdeveloped countryside.1 They worked hard on manually cultivated farms from dawn to dusk. They had many resonsibilities which included dairy work, household duties and maternal duties. The women were also victims of oppressive social convections which means that they are subordinated to men and that they were forced into arranged marriages and treated them as mere productive tools.
The Urban housewife was subjected to the same social discrimintion as the peasant women the only main difference was that the urban housewife was kept out of the production process, since the production in towns was no longer run on a family basis. The only careers for which girls were trained were wifehood and motherhood. These weren't suitable careers for women which threatened to drive them into the dangerous path of the consumer race.
Eventhough the first move toward salaried employment of women in Iraq came in 1923, when a teachers' training Institute was opened. 2 This still left some lower class women without a job. There was also some women that were still getting descriminated. It is worthy of note that almost 90 percent of employed women belonged to upper and middle class families and that most of them were educated.
The primary education for girls had begun early in the century, 3 the first secondary school for girls opened in 1929. Only ...