Nationalism and Gender: Jewish Girls in the Zionist Movement in Iraq, 1942-1951

This paper seeks to shed light on the role played by Jewish girls in the underground Zionist organization that operated in Iraq in the 1940s, the difficulties they faced, their achievements, and the implications these changes had for their relations with their families, and especially with the head of the family. These issues will be examined in view of the divergence and clash between the values of the local society and those that guided the Zionist Labor movement whose emissaries established branches across Iraq. The status quo was characterized by the inferior status of the Iraqi woman and gender segregation and discrimination, which were enshrined in local customs and traditions, as well as state law. In contrast was a secular Jewish national movement, which educated its followers to the principles of freedom and equality, insisted on eliminating gender segregation in its regular activities, and called for rebellion against parental authority, society, and tradition. This paper will examine the factors that enabled the Zionist activity and helped it survive while offering a broader, more in-depth, and complex view of the transformations in Jewish society and the status of Jewish women in Iraq in the 1940s, and of how issues on the public agenda were addressed by Iraqi Jewry.









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