The latest word on the prison-abuse scandal is that medical people were also involved. The revelation should help to deflate high-flown and actually harmful ideas about any category of people–including women–being morally superior.
Female soldiers who fought in Iraq provide a snapshot of just how close they were to combat areas at the opening stages of the war. Often, combat decisions on their duties were made on the battlefield, not by the book.
As car bombings and mortar attacks rock the country with alarming regularity, many women in Iraq have quit school or left jobs. But with the power handoff last week, many are also seizing political opportunities and looking forward to democracy.
Exceptional women in Iraq are pursuing newfound rights and freedoms and even getting husbands to help out with housework. But despite legal gains and new advocacy organizations, many women remain limited by poverty, tradition and security concerns.
Women’s religious education classes in Shiite mosques are gaining momentum and new students in Iraq. But activists there question whether newfound Shiite freedoms in the country will serve to empower women.
Iraq’s women’s rights activists are satisfied for now with a 25-percent quota on female representation in the country’s temporary constitution. It’s less than they wanted, but still more than the representation of women in the U.S. Congress.
Women represent one eighth of Iraq’s Governing Council until elections are held later this year. Activists there say without U.S. backed quotas for equal female representation in government, women’s rights are sure to be compromised.
Amid surging crime in postwar Baghdad, sexual violence and abductions of women appear to be increasing. But with police stations focused on bombing threats, no one is counting the women being attacked or sold into prostitution.
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