the Center for the Revival of Arab Scientific Heritage at the University of Baghdad organized a scientific seminar entitled “The History of Women’s Participation in Civil Society in Iraq.” On Monday, May 4, 2026, The lecture was presented by Assistant instructor Zainab Khalid Muhammad, one of the member at the center, and was attended by a number of professors and researchers. The seminar was held in the Professor Nabila Abdul-Munim Dawood Hall. At the beginning of the lecture, the researcher reviewed the early twentieth century, considering women’s education in the 1920s as the initial spark for their integration into modern institutions. She highlighted the pioneering role of Paulina Hassoun, who laid the foundations for women’s civic awareness through journalism and public activism. She then analyzed the 1930s and 1940s, describing it as a period of “professional consolidation,” citing the example of Sabiha al-Sheikh Dawood, who paved the way for women in the fields of law and medicine, thus moving their presence from the margins to the heart of state institutions. She also noted the maturation of this role in the 1950s through the flourishing of women’s participation in organized organizational and political work.
She emphasized that the path of women’s empowerment reached its peak in 1959 when women officially entered executive power with the appointment of Naziha al-Dulaimi as the first female minister in the history of Iraq and the Arab world, which she considered a declaration of the complete integration of women into the modern state.
In conclusion, the researcher stressed that the participation of Iraqi women was not merely a social activity but a structural part of the process of Iraqi society’s transition from traditional frameworks to a modern institutional system. The seminar included insightful scholarly contributions from the attendees, who praised the researcher’s methodology in linking the historical transformation of women to the comprehensive modernization process in the country.
