Positionalities, intersectionalities, and transnational feminism in researching women in post-invasion Iraq

Abstract

This chapter examines why military intervention to unseat a brutal dictatorship has not led to an improvement in women's rights or in women's situation in general. It focuses on the process of conducting feminist research on women in Iraq, including our respective positionalities and our methodological approach, rooted in transnational feminist politics. Women were part of political parties and movements, as well as more specific women's rights organizations, from the founding of Iraq in 1920 onwards. Women's empowerment, as the United States Administration called it, was seen as a pillar of democratization and peace building in supposedly post-conflict Iraq. The biggest challenge facing Iraqi women after the 2003 invasion is the lack of security coupled with the lack of rule of law, both contributing to increasing and wide-ranging forms of gender-based violence. A gendering of peace and post-conflict reconstruction does not merely focus on women's legal rights or counting the number of women in parliament.

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