Kurdish culture is known for its diversion from its Islamic background in many aspects, typically in terms of women rights and religious commitments. In a regressing Iraq, you can see Kurdish female entrepreneurs who reject financial dependency from male family members.

Additionally, many Kurdish women who live in diaspora have recently visited the Kurdistan Region, supporting projects to promote awareness among women or to resume their business in the region.

This does not mean other ethnic and religious groups lack these features, but the openness of Kurdish cultures and derivation from some Islamic expectations of women have put them in the spotlight.

Kurdish women face obstacles, as well, but some have not bowed; instead, they serve as inspirational role models for some women who feel inferior or suppressed.

Social media has helped some women who have finally established a business there. For example, Huda Sarhang uses Instagram as her main marketing place to sell her hand-made candles. But other women like Kurdish singer Dashni Murad believe “the male dominant media tried to silence me in the most brutal way that almost caused me death. I prevailed.”

Murad advises people that staying silent is never an option, explaining that the challenges she faced made her voice louder: “Today I feel proud to stand tall over all the collective suffering I have faced in my life. It never goes away, but the trick is to grow above it.”

In addition to her career as a singer, she has established an initiative for helping children — Green Kids to “fight for gender equality, against child poverty, and to take Green Kids worldwide to focus on its primary goal of educating children about the environment and climate change.”

Hanna Jaff is philanthropist and politician with a Kurdish father and a Mexican mother. She believes that the most important thing for women is “independence, education, and to have a voice.”

“I used education as a tool, to one day be able to face obstacles life threw at me. Women, who depend on male figures for stability, may someday feel trapped. We have a responsibility to stay strong and be a voice to fight for what we believe in, and be a role model to future generations. It is important to be your own woman, to completely support yourself without depending on anyone.”

She grew up in the United States and has observed the “sad reality” there as well. She thinks that in general women are “always criticized, discredited, defamed, teased, excluded, or bullied by insecure others. The higher she progresses, the more the haters. I have been a victim of all of the above.”

But Jaff also says that women rights have been improved in Kurdistan Region recently despite some ongoing discrimination like equality in wage and job opportunities. “I hope in the next ten years there will be equal pay for equal value. Kurdistan, in the last 10 years, has attracted many women worldwide to fulfill goals, ambitions, and do business.”

Tafan Hamakhan is a social media blogger who has been creating videos to promote social awareness. She heads a digital media advocacy company in the Kurdistan Region. Feeling shy to ask her parents for money, she started depending on herself when she was at college despite the fact that her family could have financially supported her.

“My dad was my idol. He taught me to be self-dependent and gave me the freedom to be the women I am today! … My advice for the other women is to have self-confidence and trust in what they want to do. They should not be satisfied for less than they deserve.”

Currently the Kurdistan Regional Government has one woman minister, Newroz Mawlood Amin who heads the Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism. Thirty-percent of the seats in the Kurdistan Region's parliament are allocated for women.



The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.