What happens when you pack the parliament of traditionally male dominated society like Iraq with a high proportion of women? As the New York Times reports, the results are not necessarily as one may predict.

Holding over 30 per cent of the seats, the female representatives clearly see the opportunity to have their say in the issue of the future role of women in Iraqi society. However, not all the women see eye-to-eye on what the nature of that role should be:-

One morning last week, three dozen women in Western-style business suits crowded into the office of the man who would soon be Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Most were members of the newly elected National Assembly, and they had a list of demands.

They wanted women to run at least 10 of Iraq's 30-odd government ministries. They wanted the number of places reserved for women on party slates raised to 40 percent in future elections. Most of all, they wanted a promise of respect for women's rights.

Hours later, another group of women who are assembly members arrived in Dr. Jaafari's office. They wore black abayas, the garments that cover a woman's body from head to foot, and they had another agenda. They wanted to put aspects of Islamic law into Iraq's legal code - including provisions that would allow men as many as four wives and reduce the amount of money allotted to women in inheritances.

To put things into context, more than 90 per cent of the women in the Iraqi parliament wear some kind of head-covering with around half of them wearing the full black abaya. Many of them are devoutly religious and see this as an opportunity for them to participate in creating a regime based more closely on strict Islamic Shariah law than strict equality for women.



And what's wrong with that? Surely the important issue here is that they are in a position to express their opinions and have an influence on democracy. Provided that the integrity of the democratic process is maintained (and I don't get the impression that anyone on any side is arguing for women losing the vote under the proposed constitution) they will stand or fall on how their policies are perceived by the Iraqi electorate, an electorate which after so many years of war has a significant majority of women. My personal preference would be for more freedom and equality for women in Iraq, but my vote quite rightly doesn't count there. Those who think they have a right to influence women's rights in Iraq should perhaps start by looking in their own back yard first.

Figures from the Inter Parliamentary Union show the percentage of women in each of the worlds' parliaments. With 87 women out of 275 seats (31.6%), Iraq has the 14th largest proportion of women in its parliament in the world. The reasons for this high percntage are of course somewhat artificial - the proportion was pre-determined by Iraq's electoral commission under the significant influence of the Coalition.

Given this commitment to ensuring a fair proportion of women in the Iraqi democratic process, is it not somewhat hypocritical to see the USA languishing in 59th place in the table with only 15% representation by women, and even the UK in 49th position (18.1%)? There are, of course, many reasons for this, but I can think of none which should not apply equally to our democracies as they do to Iraq.

Our leaders smugly make excuses, not wishing to tinker with our well established traditional democracy, assuring us that our societal biases will eventually take care of themselves. However, when the oldest and most powerful democracies in the world find themselves mired in scandals while those they look down upon show themselves to be far more representative of their electorate, maybe it's time for a bit of humility, to learn some lessons from other parts of the world, and perhaps to taste some of the medicine we are willing to force feed to other nations but find unpalatable ourselves.