ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—A new market in downtown Erbil hopes to become a place where women customers find their desired products and shop in more freedom than in places dominated by their male counterparts.
Wisal Abdulsalam was one of the first women to open a shop in what she describes as the modern and comfortable market just a couple of days before Christmas. Several other women run their shops on the same floor as hers.
Abdulsalam has since found a satisfying number of customers on a daily basis, but rather a mix of men and women.
Running a shoe store inside the market, Rekar Haider, stressed the importance of a shopping place for women, saying meanwhile, that men should be expected to visit the place either with their families or alone.
The initial news of the market’s opening suggested that it was an exclusively women’s market which seems to have confused some of the shopkeepers and their customers alike.
“I think they should change the name because most of the shopkeepers are not women,” said a young woman working there.
To others it does not matter whether male customers visit or run shops in the market so long as women can buy their products from women when they want to. That is Shilan Dali’s view, who opened a shop with her father after her recent return from Sweden.
Several statues at the market entrance pay tribute to well-known or revolutionary Kurdish women such as Komri Ismael Haji, an activist hanged in 1987 by the Iraqi regime.
On a cold winter day only few men and women as well as families browsed the clothing, footwear, accessories and jewelry shops in the main hall partly because the place is still new.
But Haider who has his own customers, remains hopeful that reasonable prices will eventually make the market more attractive than the popular shopping malls.
For Dali and her father, they have thus far kept the business going from customers who spend well and she believes that completion of construction in the rest of the shopping complex will bring in more people.
The market, located near the citadel, may in the future become the popular destination for women shoppers as the store owners hope, but with so many competitors out there and the market’s own young age they will have to do business with whoever ventures into the shop.
The market will not be successful if it sells solely to women, said Abdulsalam. “We need men for business too.”
Wisal Abdulsalam was one of the first women to open a shop in what she describes as the modern and comfortable market just a couple of days before Christmas. Several other women run their shops on the same floor as hers.
Abdulsalam has since found a satisfying number of customers on a daily basis, but rather a mix of men and women.
Running a shoe store inside the market, Rekar Haider, stressed the importance of a shopping place for women, saying meanwhile, that men should be expected to visit the place either with their families or alone.
The initial news of the market’s opening suggested that it was an exclusively women’s market which seems to have confused some of the shopkeepers and their customers alike.
“I think they should change the name because most of the shopkeepers are not women,” said a young woman working there.
To others it does not matter whether male customers visit or run shops in the market so long as women can buy their products from women when they want to. That is Shilan Dali’s view, who opened a shop with her father after her recent return from Sweden.
Several statues at the market entrance pay tribute to well-known or revolutionary Kurdish women such as Komri Ismael Haji, an activist hanged in 1987 by the Iraqi regime.
On a cold winter day only few men and women as well as families browsed the clothing, footwear, accessories and jewelry shops in the main hall partly because the place is still new.
But Haider who has his own customers, remains hopeful that reasonable prices will eventually make the market more attractive than the popular shopping malls.
For Dali and her father, they have thus far kept the business going from customers who spend well and she believes that completion of construction in the rest of the shopping complex will bring in more people.
The market, located near the citadel, may in the future become the popular destination for women shoppers as the store owners hope, but with so many competitors out there and the market’s own young age they will have to do business with whoever ventures into the shop.
The market will not be successful if it sells solely to women, said Abdulsalam. “We need men for business too.”
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