The Protest to Parliament Pipeline: Women’s Political Participation in Iraq

• In Event: Protest, Social Movements, and Political Competition in MENA

Abstract

Iraq’s October 2021 elections were considered a victory for women’s political participation in the country. A record high number of female candidates ran for office, winning 95 of the 329 seats and exceeding the 25% parliamentary quota. In every electoral district in Iraq, female political participation has become more common and more visible. In the lead up to the elections, the streets of Baghdad were lined with posters of female candidates, including civil activists who had participated in the Tishreen (October) protest movement. These women represented a new type of female candidate, one without ties to the entrenched elite and who represented Iraq’s youthful society. Their participation, like the protest movement itself, heralded to many a new era of Iraqi politics, one where younger women were confident enough to run for office and who relied on grassroots campaigning and social media to do so. In this paper, I examine how these female candidates arrived at the decision to run for office and what role civil society played in transforming female protestors into politicians. In other words, does the pipeline from protest to politics run through civil society?

Many members of the international community, at the state level and at the individual level, draw an implicit link between democratization and female participation in civil society and politics. In the early days of post-invasion Iraq, this resulted in a female quota as well as support for civil society organizations (CSOs) working on advocacy, human rights and women’s rights. Nearly two decades later, Iraq’s democratization process is stalled and efforts towards peacebuilding, national dialogue and conflict resolution have been scattered. Moreover, research has demonstrated that many of the Iraqi CSOs registered are either non-existent or are linked to existing political parties and thus are incapable of or disinterested in accomplishing their stated missions. Furthermore, the female quota system is perceived by the public (much like the minority quota system) to empower candidates who are associated with entrenched political parties and to do little for the populations they are intended to support.

How does this environment constrain female leadership in Iraq? In my proposed paper, I hope to examine female leadership across civil society and in formal politics and to uncover whether a pipeline exists between the two, particularly as the Tishreen protest movement propelled many civil activists to the political arena. In the process, I ask a series of questions: what issue areas do female Iraqi leaders engage in and what issue areas do they avoid? How are these issue areas shaped by civil society and by the political arena? How, in turn, do female civil society activists interact with female political leaders to advance their goals? And finally, how have each of their goals been adapted and shaped by the relationship to each other?

In order to answer these questions, this project begins with a mapping exercise of both civil society and female political participation. By relying on data from the Iraqi NGO directorate, I have constructed a database of women-led civil society organizations, which allows me to compare these organizations to other Iraqi organizations with regards to issue areas, experience (age), and geographic location. Similarly, I am constructing a database of Iraqi female parliamentarians since 2006 which includes party affiliation, education, age, district, and other biographical information. These databases allow me to provide basic statistical information about Iraqi female leadership and how it has transformed over time. The second set of analyses allows me to prod more deeply into the link between civil society and female political participation as well as the unique goals, challenges, aspirations, and activities of female leaders through in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Iraq with female MPs, women who ran for office unsuccessfully, civil society activists and leaders, and researchers.

Author

• Marsin Rahim Alshamary, Boston College