Byline : Robert Collier

Reem Abu Shawarb looks and acts the picture of the modern Iraqi woman, typical of those who have long made the country stand apart from its Arab neighbors in the area of gender equality.

Outgoing, fluent in English, dressed stylishly in form-fitting pantsuits, the 23-year-old Baghdad University graduate works in an international aid agency where she fields foreign visitors, male and female, with the smooth assurance of a Western sophisticate.

All very modern -- until she speaks her mind. Polygamy is "a good thing," she says, women's rights are "simply wrong," and the most pressing issue for Iraqi women is the lack of marriageable rich men.

Shawarb's statements illustrate how Iraqi women have become transformed by the country's shift in recent years toward religious and social conservatism -- a trend partly orchestrated by Saddam Hussein's government. "People have gone back to their traditions," said Shawarb, who works for the Islamic Relief Agency, a moderate interfaith group based in London that works with Iraqi Christian aid groups. "Society has been changed from the first Gulf War (in 1991) to now."

Now, as Iraq waits for a possible U.S.-led invasion, many women are wondering whether a "regime change" would bring a revived push for women's rights or a further deterioration in their status.

"Without doubt, Iraqi women have lost many of the achievements gained in the previous decades," said Nadje Al-Ali, an Iraqi who is a professor at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in Britain and who has extensively studied the status of women in her country.

NOT ENOUGH MEN

For Shawarb, who is single, the biggest problem facing Iraqi women is the shortage of eligible men. "Because of the economic crisis, there are very few men who have money," she said. "Many girls who are well educated and beautiful are not married. This is not normal. This is not good."

The solution, she says, is polygamy. "Many Muslim teachers are saying that the solution is for wealthy men to take several wives. This is a good thing. It is the only real solution."

Asked if she would become some man's second or third or fourth wife, she shrugged and said, "Yes, of course."

MINISKIRTS GONE

It's a far cry from the 1970s and 1980s, the heyday of women's rights in Iraq, when women advanced rapidly in the professions and could walk down the street in miniskirts. Al-Ali blames Iraq's economic crisis, caused by war and U.N. sanctions, for the change. Previously available public services such as free transportation to work, school and child-care facilities have disappeared, forcing women to return to the home.

"Iraq has done what governments all over the world have done whenever there's an economic crisis -- they turn socially conservative," Al-Ali said. "Now the message is that the real and only role of women is to be mother and housewife, and they shouldn't be outside."

The change has been dramatically accelerated by Hussein's turn toward Islam since 1994, a move that many observers view as a calculated attempt to shore up his domestic power base. He has been appeasing powerful rural tribes and religious leaders while trying to rehabilitate himself in the broader Islamic world after launching ruinous wars against Iran and Kuwait.

Polygamy was legalized for Muslims (it remains illegal for Christians, who constitute about 4 percent of the population). High schools were ordered to be segregated by sex. Women are barred from traveling abroad unless they are accompanied by a male first of kin or are aged over 45.

In addition, a 1990 law removed most penalties for so-called honor killings, in which women who are suspected of sexual misconduct are killed by their husbands, brothers or fathers to save the "honor" of the family. The traditional practice has since become more common.

Even Manal Younes, the president of the Federation of Iraqi Women, the official women's branch of the ruling Baath Party, now wears the hijab, or veiled black cloak.

FAR FROM WORST

But for all the regressive steps, a recent study of Arab nations by the U.N. Development Program found that Iraq actually scores highest in gender equality. Reasons include the following:

-- Iraqi law still mandates equal rights for women in many areas, such as employment and education.

-- Women get six months' paid maternity leave and can opt for six more months in unpaid leave.

-- Iraq's divorce law, while still favoring the husband's interests, is the most balanced in the Arab world and requires the husband to repay his wife's dowry.

-- There are 19 women in the 250-seat National Assembly -- a proportion exceeded in the Arab world only by Tunisia, Morocco and Syria.

Sajidah Al-Musawi, the senior female member of Iraq's National Assembly and one of the country's best-known poets, points with disdain to Iraq's neighbors: "Women are trusted and considered first-class humans here, not like in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for example."

In Kuwait, the all-male parliament last year voted down a government proposal to give women the right to vote, and Saudi Arabia's women can neither vote nor drive and have few legal rights.

But exiles affiliated with the U.S.-backed opposition tell a different story. They say Hussein's regime has been an overall disaster for Iraqi women.

"Thousands and thousands of Kurdish and Shiite women have been raped while in prison, and many have been sexually harassed because their husbands or fathers or brothers are in the opposition," said Katrin Michael, a Kurdish exile who is a political researcher with the Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit group in Washington.

"Iraqi women's rights are violated all the time," she said. Michael has permanent lung damage from an Iraqi army chemical weapons attack in the northern town of Galli Zewa in 1987, when she was a political adviser to the Kurdish guerrillas.

OPPOSITION NO BETTER

But she warns that the anti-Hussein opposition is no better than the regime in terms of gender equality.

There are few women among leaders of the exile groups or the two Kurdish groups, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The main opposition group representing the nation's Shiite Muslim majority, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, holds attitudes similar to those of the arch-conservative mullahs in neighboring Iran and is openly hostile to Western notions of women's rights.

"There are many men in the opposition who have a controlling, Eastern mentality," Michael said.

She points out that during the planning for a post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Bush administration and European governments made sure that two female ministers were included in the new ruling Cabinet.

"Unfortunately, we have not seen the United States make any pressure of this type on the Iraqi opposition," Michael said, citing a State Department-sponsored meeting of opposition leaders last month at which only three of the 65 Iraqi delegates were women.

Across the Arab world, feminists have managed some small victories recently.

Both Jordan and Egypt have passed laws giving women the right to file for divorce -- but not the right to reclaim their dowries. Jordan has raised the penalties for "honor crimes," and a government committee recently proposed adding eight women's seats to the 104-member, all-male lower house of parliament. In Morocco, a new election quota system last year resulted in a parliament that is 10 percent female.

Michael says Iraq must rejoin this trend.

"Whatever happens, if there is war, we are very worried that the situation of Iraqi women may not improve and may even get worse," she said.

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