The picture says more than words. It shows a sandy, wide road with people in the distance who carry something. Only at second sight the piles of black garment all over the road become clear, and at third sight understood: these are discarded niqabs of Moslawi women leaving liberated areas.
For this week’s Women’s Day 2017 that is the major reason for celebration: no more Islamic State, no more obliging women to cover up completely, no more harsh punishment for those who did not.
With the terror group evicted from almost three quarters of Mosul now, it is clear how much women have suffered at their hands.
The Yezidi women who were abused, sold and resold as sex slaves, but also ordinary women suffered badly: from oppression, punishment and eventually from fear which made them decide to better stay home and out of the way of the brutal radicals and their even more brutal police.
Before, I had a hard time believing the stories about the metal tool called the biter that ISIS uses to punish women, but now I have heard so many stories that I must consider them true.
Like the one about the 11-year-old who was caught cleaning outside the gate without being ‘properly covered’, and died of the wounds inflicted on her chest by the biter.
We can celebrate that more Yezidi women are being liberated from ISIS, even though their mental state is terribly precarious and will need professional treatment that is not available in Iraq.
Good news is also that the rate of young girls victim to female genital mutilation (FGM) has gone down drastically in most of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, mostly because of law making and campaigning in the affected areas.
That more young girls go to university is a good development; yet the fact that many of them never are to find a job as they get married and stay home to raise the children is not.
And then there is this group of young men in Erbil, who founded a gentlemen’s club trying to change the mood and influence the fashion in Kurdistan, and made a better treatment of women one of their goals.
But after the sweet, there is the bitter, as for a large part, the situation of women remains unchanged.
Look at how women are treated; every time I return by plane, it strikes me how men offer no assistance to women who need to load their heavy luggage on the bus or off the belt.
How they even stand in front of women waiting for their bags in their hurry to get to their own, or get in their way with the same impatience when loading heavy luggage at the security check at the exit.
After being used during visits outside to men (and women) politely holding open doors for you, it is an unfriendly home coming when doors get slammed into your face by men without manners.
Of course, these are minor issues compared to the fact that last year dozens of women burned themselves because of family members believing they had damaged the family’s honor.
On top of that, media were biased enough to quote fathers and other male family members saying it was ‘an accident’, without making clear that there always is considerable doubt about the truth of these statements.
The fact that the whole honor issue still plays such a big role in the society, and in the way men treat women and how marriages are conducted, is bitter too.
Recently I was reminded of where this all derives from when I had to get my renewed rent contract registered at a local office of the security police.
When the clerk heard my husband is deceased, I was not only asked about the names of my (deceased) parents, but also about those of my brothers (and not my sister).
My male family members are seen as the ones who still own me, even though I will be sixty soon and had my own family next to a busy and successful professional life.
Kurdistan still is very much a patriarchal society, where women are not seen as equal, but more importantly are considered the responsibility of men.
Which means many men do not know how to handle a woman on her own – as her men should be looking after her, and they cannot be seen to take over that role as it might infringe her honor.
How to ever solve this complicated circle? Not by conferences, not by declarations, but mostly by education and upbringing.
The least we can do is to teach boys that their sisters are equal, and should not be treated less politely and kindly than their brothers.
That’s only a start, but needed not only for women’s sake, but for the society as a whole and its vulnerability to radicals who suppress and abuse women, based on existing cultural inequalities.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
