… the female ones, anyway, and of course they are in favor. Iraq's Parliament right now is 25.5% female – the US House is 16.8% female, and the Senate 16%. Since the women as a group form a big enough bloc to disrupt the body's work if they make a collective decision to do so, they were able to protest the speaker, Mahmoud al Mashhadani's, comments that women cannot lead because concerns that their husbands will take second wives distract them by boycotting the following days’ legislative session.
I’m someone who finds comparisons helpful, but in this case, I think it's important to recognize the importance of Iraqi women's independent political power without comments about how much more sexist the Middle East is than other parts of the world. Iraq needs individuals of all genders, ages, classes, religions, sects and regions to invest in the political system, and the fact that these women have chosen to do so in this case, despite the fact that the enviroment is clearly inhospitable to them, is commendable.
