COUNTRY REPORT: Iraq

Iraqi women's rights advocates, men and women alike, began their struggle for equality at the beginning of the last century. They formed organizations and mounted rallies and demonstrations to demand political, social, and economic rights from the turbulent country's successive regimes. Women managed to secure some of these rights after General Abdel-Karim Qassim seized power in 1958 and passed a new personal status law in 1959.