By Piştiwan Cemal

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region— Less than 5 percent of registered business owners in the Kurdistan region are women, according to official statistics provided by the Kurdistan Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The report says only 150 businesses with at least one woman in the top position are registered at the chamber out of a total of 30,000 businesses.

“One of the reasons behind low female participation in business is that the Kurdish government has not been particularly encouraging for women,” Sirwan Muhammad of the Sulaimani Chamber of Commerce told Rudaw.

“Businesswomen in particular have not been successful in securing government financial support to start their companies,” he continued, adding that conservative social perceptions have also hindered women from reaching top positions in the market.

In the expansionary years following the 2003 US-led invasion, the Kurdistan region experienced financial stability and an economy that grew by 12 percent between 2009 and 2011. This brought large numbers of women into the labor market.

In turn, the rapidly growing demand for skilled labor pushed young men—and now in much greater numbers—women into higher education.

Nigar Ali, a social worker, runs special courses for women in Kurdistan and lectures on how female participation in the work force can increase. She told Rudaw that despite more women becoming educated in the last decade, female participation in business is modest because the economy is still “very much patriarchal.”

“Women are unable, for various reasons, to travel like men, which many businesses require; they cannot freely travel in and out of the country either,” Nigar said.

According to the statistics from the Kurdistan Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry, female business owners on average own capital worth $250,000.

However, Mustafa Abdulrahman, the head of the Union of Kurdish Exporters and Importers, said some female business leaders have as much as $500,000 in assets. “This is enough capital to do a lot, but we need more businesswomen to fill the different vacuums in the market,” Abdulrahman added.

One such female entrepreneur is Fatin Haji Rashid, an architect in the lucrative residential sector with a net worth of a staggering $300 million.

“It’s not business as usual because of the economic crisis in the past few years,” said Fatin, who owns two companies in the construction sector. “It is as a risky business as any, but there should be larger female participation.”

She added that many women are dissuaded from entering the construction industry by their families because of the risks.

“But no pain no gain,” she said. “With the profit also comes some risks.”

Rudaw