Foundation A number of women's organization was founded in the 1940s and 1950s that campaigned for women's rights including suffrage, notably the Iraqi Union for Women's Rights (1952). The Iraqi Women's League gathered 42,000 members, campaigned for gender equality, organized educational programs, provided social services, established 78 literacy centers.
Suffrage campaign Naziha al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Women's League organized a campaign for women's suffrage in the 1950s. During the discussion to change the electoral law to include women's suffrage in March–April 1951, the MP Abd al-Abbas of Diwaniyya opposed suffrage as this would contradict Islamic sex segregation, as elected women MP would then sit among male MPs in the Chamber of Deputies: "Is this not forbidden? Are we not all of Islam?" The
Baathist Party supported women's rights by principle, though it initially focused in expanding women's educational and professional rights rather than their political rights. The Iraqi Women's League drafted the 1959 Personal Status Law, which was accepted and introduced by the Government.
Post Saddam After Saddam's removal, league membership rose again: by August 2003 it had risen to five hundred women, though many of the younger members lacked organizational experience. ==References==