Men Talk, Women Work

Today we visited a small rural village of about 2,000 people about 10 km from Al Kut. The 30 families that live there farm around 400 acres of land, mostly wheat, barley, corn, and vegetables (eggplant, cucumber, watermelon). We were greeted by the village leaders and taken to a large carpeted meeting room where we sat cross-legged and talked with the village sheiks and others about agriculture and their needs. The original settlers of this land came from Maysan Province to the south in the 1960s. Maysan, also known as Amarah, is known as the poorest province in Iraq. (It is also where the team will go next month.) Many people from Amarah moved to the northeast corner of Baghdad, the sprawling slum of Sadr City. The people from this village, and apparently others from Amarah, have been passed by even when times were good. The village was a rough place, although they have electricity when it is supplied (abour 4-6 hours daily). The lack of electricity also limits the capacity to pump water from the nearby Tigris River. The lack of diesel fuel (we have seen LONG lines at gas stations) means that auxiliary diesel-powered water pumps are not operating as well.

Anway, I digress a little bit. The main point of this entry, as suggested in the title, is the obvious sexual division of labor. Of course, this is not unique to Iraq. I have just taken notice of it recently. We meet with men, mostly older but also some younger men and boys, and never women. When we meet, we talk, we take notes, we nod our head in understanding. But in the background, out working in the fields, invariably we see women and young girls working, doing the actual farming. We see them transplanting vegetable seedlings, weeding fields, tending sheep, cutting and carrying bulging sacks of alfalfa as fodder for cows and sheep, gathering fallen dates, building cookstoves, and making dung patties. Of course, women are also doing domestic work such as hauling water, cleaning house, doing laundry, and taking care of children. Sadly their voice is not heard in our conversations but we know that they are there. We have taken note of extension programs directed toward women (mostly "sewing" programs) and especially those directed toward war widows. It's really a shame that we can't talk with them. Men are very protective of their women and do not allow us to talk with them. Having said that, we do encounter women in professional roles and we have engaged them when and where the opportunity presents itself. We just have to keep in mind that the people in Iraq would not be able to feed themselves if it were not for women's work, not just men's talk.