By Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti

BARCELONA, Spain - Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman enjoys the reaction of people who meet her for the first time and find a woman representing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Britain, breaking the usual Middle Eastern stereotypes.

“I am delighted when I meet people here for the first time and they are surprised that a region in the Middle East has a woman representative,” Abdul Rahman told Rudaw in an interview from London.

She is one of three women representatives of the KRG in the world out of 13. The other two are in France and Italy.

“I want to surprise people with the fact that I am a woman and reach the point when people will not be surprised anymore. Why shouldn't a woman be representing Kurdistan?” said Abdul Rahman, who is from the Kurdish city of Shangal.

Although the Kurdistan Region is part of Iraq, the autonomous northern enclave maintains several foreign representations abroad. The Kurds have their own language and culture, and Kurdish women enjoy a degree of freedom in some cases larger than their Arab counterparts in the rest of Iraq.

“The reason why women are respected in our society is because throughout our ancient history women have been in power,” said Rezan Kader, the KRG representative in Italy since 2004. “Other reasons are the fact that we had a secular country under Saddam Hussein and that we have always had women who were militia fighters,” she explained to Rudaw.

“A woman could be easily in the mountains with the militia fighters or in the city with the family,” said Kader, who studied medicine in Italy but chose a political career. She is also the KRG representative of the Balkans, Malta and The Vatican.

Abdul Rahman, the UK representative, praised the KRG for choosing women in sensitive positions, but said that a lot more still needs to be done.

“We should do better in the Cabinet and I feel we are going backwards. I have expressed this view to the prime minister (Nechirvan Barzani), who supports women. But I have to give the KRG a mixed report,” Abdul Rahman said.

There is only one female minister in the Cabinet: Asos Najib Abdullah was appointed the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in 2009 and was reappointed again last year. She was previously a judge and a member of the public prosecution.

In Kurdistan’s own 111-seat parliament, women retain a 30 per cent quota. That, said Abdul Rahman, has forced political parties to accept more women in their ranks.

“If it wasn't for the quota the political parties wouldn't take women. That's the reality, but now even Islamic parties are forced to have women in their ranks,” Abdul Rahman added.

Kader, in Italy, agreed with Abdul Rahman: “The role of woman in the KRG is important, but we need to enhance it.”

The KRG representative in France, Khaman Zirar Asaad, told Rudaw that she believed there is greater social acceptance of women in politics.

“But there are still difficulties because it’s an oriental society with a Muslim majority and we have some religious and mental obstacles,” Assad said in an interview from Paris. “There are also many cultural obstacles and women need to demonstrate that they do things better than men to be accepted,” added Assad, who studied law under a scholarship.

In a culture dominated by men, all three women attributed their career success to education, an interest in politics from an early age and their tenacious characters.

“I have always been a fighter since the time I was a student in Kurdistan until I arrived in Italy when I was 16-years-old and escaping Saddam's persecution,” said Kader, who is originally from Sulaimani and descends from a family of poets and Peshmarga fighters.

She said she was chosen by the KRG not for her gender, but because of her “merits and background.”

Assad was also involved in politics from an early age.

“I started getting mixed up in politics in Kurdistan since I was 17-years-old with the students association. I had been also a member of parliament at the age of 30 and three years ago I came to Paris to open the KRG office,” said Assad.

She was pulled into politics after witnessing the many injustices and attacks on the Kurds under Saddam’s brutal regime.

“I believe in justice, in freedom and in the education of women to gain respect as citizens and I have fought for all of these things,” Assad said.

Abdul Rahman, who studied journalism and worked for 17 years with Britain’s respected Financial Times daily, believes there are several ingredients necessary for Kurdish women to succeed professionally: “Education, constantly training, having an extra push over men, the support of the family and networking.”

But in the Kurdistan Region’s largely traditional and conservative society, women like the three KRG representatives are the exception, not the rule, according to NGOs.

So-called “honor killings,” in which male relatives murder female kin seen to have besmirched family honor by engaging in a romantic or sexual relationship, remain common in Kurdistan. Female genital mutilation (FGM), is also widespread, according to a 2012 report by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The regional government has begun to run awareness campaigns, train judges, and issue orders to police on the articles of the law dealing with domestic violence. But it apparently has not taken similar steps to implement the FGM ban,” the report said.

“One positive thing in Kurdistan is that we admit we have problems and we have rights activists,” Abdul Rahman said. “But this gives the impression to the world that we have more violence than in other places,” she added.


RUDAW