Women's rights

Explanations of human rights compliance have been historically philosophical. Using timeliness of reporting as a measure of minimal compliance, there is an opportunity to examine compliance on a statistical level. This study introduces a theory asserting that compliance to specialized international human rights conventions depends on the representation of the protected group in a state's parliament. While examining the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the study attempts to find a relationship between timely reporting to CEDAW and the level of female participation in parliament. The data fails to provide a statistically significant relationship due in part to the reality that women are far from achieving political equality. To achieve human rights for women, there must remain a push for political equality in national governments. When such equality is attained by one or more states, then doors open for those states to set standards for others.

The effects that Women's political participation in the Middle East has on political parties and regimes have been investigated by the political science community. However, how women's political participation and changing societal roles affect women's lives has not received adequate attention. This is a comparative historical analysis that investigates how women's societal roles and political participation in Iraq changed from 1968 to the present. It examines how factors such as social conservatism, party ideology, war, sanctions, religion, and international pressure during different periods in Iraq's modern history influenced changes in Iraqi women's roles and participation over time. These changes in societal roles and political participation are used to analyze the restrictions and expansions in Iraqi women's civil rights in areas such as family, work and mobility, political and cultural expression, health and sexual control, and education.