Dr. Choman Hardi Director of Center for Gender Studeis and Development was invited to this podcast to discuss the attempts at preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV).
Funded by the EU, CGDS is producing in Kurdish, Arabic and English to promote understanding of gender issues in the region. The following is one of the podcasts produced for the project.
In 2007, Dw’a’s murder sent a ripple of shock through society and the case is still under investigation. The killing of women is something that remains hidden and the government and shelters fail to decrease the abundance of this issue. 30% of the government’s committees in Kurdistan is made up of women; however women are deliberately placed in roles that are not involved with the military and law-making. Theoretically, having women in 30% of the government’s committees is something to celibrate but in reality, changes almost nothing in regards to GBV. The common belief amongst KRG officials is that women are victims of GBV, therefore they must be the ones who are defending the issue. In reality, equality is everyone’s responsibility, regardless of gender.
Killing of a woman is so normalised by media and language, and more by society that it has become invisible to the eye. Media plays a huge role in this normalisation, since they influence how people think. When a woman is killed, the news headlines are phrased in a passive tone, words like ‘another woman’ are used. The patriarchal system resurfaces itself in different ways through media, like unrealistic representation of women’s sexuality in movies that greatly influences teenagers. Social media allows footages of women to be shot and published with little consequences, more often than not these actions result in the death of the woman. This is not to say that the media is responsible but that the ownership of media is part of the issue surrounding these murders.
To tackle these deep rooted issues, In August 2019, the Ministry of Higher Education decided that Gender Studies should be offered in more universities in the KRI through gender centers, but this decision has not been implemented yet. The ministry has done little to prepare educators; courses and trainings that can be offered to educate an academic staff to lead the gender center; however CGDS has received grants which have been utilised in media monitoring, resource translations, and textbook reviews for primary and secondary education. CGDS has started translating gender related resources and textbooks into Kurdish inorder for them to be used in a curriculum.
Honour killing remains a cultural phenomenon due to the lack of serious consequences like arrests, punishments, and imprisonments. The more women are killed, the easier it becomes to get away with it. There is an evident bias and prejudice amongst officials like police officers, judges, and lawyers in regards to this issue. People who are employed in women’s shelters don’t believe in the equality of genders, and their beliefs are not altered by their jobs. They were brought up in a patriarchal world thus further enhancing the cycle of “that is just how it is”.
This brings us to the question of what makes women voiceless? The main reasons are (1) the detachment of women’s rights organisations to the rest of the women in this society, (2) ineffective interactions between these organisations and the government, and (3) people in power taking advantage of women, sexually. Many cases of prostitution have been dismissed to protect governmental figures who were initially involved in the case. These officials don’t believe in women’s rights generally, and in feminism in particular.
There is a common misconception that feminism is western but in reality feminism is divided into two wings: the activist wing and the theory wing. Activists have always existed within the Kurdish culture, however it is the theory wing, research and resources, that we lack. There needs to be a stronger connection between these two wings in order to move forward with gender related issues.
Summarized and Translated by: Naivan Sartip