Women's Movement: Where to from here?
CGDS held a small workshop on the AUIS campus with 15 women's rights activists from different professions and backgrounds, including journalists, politicians, and managers. The group was selected from different locations around Kurdistan: Halabja, Kirkuk, Sulaymaniyah, Erbil, Kalar, and the Garmyan area. The aim of this workshop was to discuss the Women’s Movement in Kurdistan. This included the movement’s shortcomings, the obstacles in its way, how to solve them, and where to go from this point on.
Led by Dr. Choman Hardi, Director if CGDS, the attendees discussed issues such as lack of female activists' visibility in Kurdish media. Another highlighted issue was the limited representation in the rural areas and smaller towns and its focus more urban cities, such as Sulaymaniyah and Erbil.
While almost everyone knows that women’s rights organizations exist, the general public does not see itself as a part of the movement, but rather sees it as the job of the organizations to tackle these issues. One suggestion was to make visible the work Women’s Rights activists in public and private education. People from different backgrounds, especially teachers, government, and public sector employees should be made aware of the difficult and sensitive work carried out by activists through workshops, seminars and social media.
A longer, more comprehensive report on this workshop in Kurdish and Arabic is forthcoming.