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Doors To Employment Closed

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The Washington Post

Published: December 21, 2008

BASRA, Iraq - On a sultry morning in Basra, Muna Saud, her face framed by a black shawl, slipped unnoticed past the thick knots of men at the provincial health ministry. She glided from office to office until she found Zahra Abdul-Zahra, a former student, and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

"I want to find a job for Selma," Saud said quietly, pulling a resume, tucked neatly in a blue folder, from her black bag.
Saud helps lead the Iraqi Women's League, an activist group whose members teach women computer skills, English and how to be assertive in a male-dominated world.
Saud is thin, with an angular face and sad, piercing eyes behind oval glasses. She wore a black blouse and a black skirt - and pink lipstick, just enough to not attract attention.
Saud said she hopes that women such as Selma can help embolden other women and change perceptions by becoming role models in workplaces. But on this day, Saud was confronted with Iraq's reality: One of Abdul-Zahra's co-workers, also in a head scarf, blurted, "Doesn't she have wasta?"
Saud remembered when Iraqi women didn't need wasta - connections - to find a job. In the late 1970s, thousands of Iraqi women worked as doctors, engineers and civil servants.

The daughter of a tailor, Saud wanted to become an accountant. But she soon realized that only women who joined Saddam Hussein's Baath Party could succeed in such a profession, so she left the university and found work in a pharmacy. There she held secret meetings of the Women's League.

Her brother Mahmoud was taken into custody for being a Communist. Inside her cramped bedroom, Saud keeps her brother's execution order in a box under her bed. She has worn black since he was hanged in 1983.

"The power I get is because of these experiences," said Saud, who has not married.

Last year, Saud visited morgues to tabulate the number of women killed in Basra for a report to Iraq's parliament. She found 150 victims. She said she had known three of them: Maysoon was killed with her brother, both shot five times in the head for being Christians; gunmen killed Lubna for walking a little too close to her fiance; Sabah was murdered in a market for not wearing a head scarf.
Saud says she understands her boundaries. "I'll get killed if I try to protect a woman from her tribe," she said.

At a meeting in Az-Zubayr, a dusty town about 18 miles southwest of Basra, local activists informed her that only three women from the last workshop had landed jobs.

"Some ministries only want men," Saud said.
Saud shakes hands with men in public. She refuses to wear a head scarf, which she views as a symbol of submission. She wears a shawl only because her family fears for her life. But she is careful not to anger the religious conservatives who rule Basra.

"I'm never aggressive with them. I respect their ideologies," Saud said.

At the health ministry, Saud urged Abdul-Zahra to be more assertive and speak to her male boss about Selma. But Abdul-Zahra balked. Saud was disappointed but not discouraged.

"I have my girls in every ministry," she said.

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