# How many women were elected in Iraq? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906 "2005-02-13T21:04:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/1 "2005-02-13T21:04:21Z")
Now that the results of Iraq’s election have been released, how many women were elected to the National Assembly? Didn’t women make up a third (quarter?) of the candidates? Also how many Assyrian Christians were elected? ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/2 "2005-02-13T23:12:28Z")
The new Iraqi constitution has a mandated target (which is or isn’t a quota dependent upon who you ask) that [25% of national legislators be women](http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20040309/449_13821.asp). (For comparative purposes, [22.5%](http://www.ncsl.org/programs/wln/2004ElectionInfo.htm) of American legislators are female, however only about 14% at the federal level (higher % in state legislatures.) There are now 275 national seats in Iraq. The basic results of party and coaltion are just announced today; I don’t think you’ll have a breakdown of something like % of women who won individual seats for another day or so, I’d check [here](http://www.rferl.org/specials/iraqelections/) or similar sites in the coming days. According to [this article](http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3683810/): > [@](#): > > Not a single woman was selected by the interim governing council to serve on the post-Saddam 25-member committee dedicated to call a national assembly and draft the new constitution of Iraq. In the 25-member interim council, only three are women. One of them, Akila al-Hashimi, 50, died after being shot by a gunman while she was traveling to her Baghdad office with a driver and three bodyguards in September. Her post went unfilled until this week, when another woman, Salama al-Khufaji Prior to Saddam Hussein being deposed, which would provide a baseline for changes, I’ve had a bit of a hard time finding figures for women in government. (A figure for Iraq for the indicator “Seats in parliament held by women (as % of total)” was unavailable in the UNDP’s 2003 _Human Development Report_.) I can recall reading several years ago that they had been the highest in the region.[This](http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/wrd/iraq-women.htm) Human Rights Watch article gives some good general background on women’s changing status in Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/3 "2005-02-14T00:21:20Z")
No person was elected. Parties were. They will appoint the legislature. ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/4 "2005-02-14T02:06:48Z")
**Reeder** , perhaps you can clarify this for me. I assumed that each of the 150 or more parties on the ballot were unified, distinct parties, each with its own list of candidates (the order of which I thought was predetermined). So if party A won 10 seats, you just took the top 10 off its previously submitted list of 30 candidates. You seem to imply that that the lists are not predetermined. Fair enough, if true. But that still doesn’t explain what I read in the [NY Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/international/middleeast/13chalabi.html): > [@](#): > > Mr. Chalabi’s chances to become prime minister rest on the fragmented nature of the Shiite alliance that is likely to form the government. The group, called the United Iraq Alliance, will likely capture as many as 150 seats in the 275-member assembly. But the alliance has yet to agree on a nominee for prime minister. While Mr. Chalabi by himself has nowhere near enough the allies he needs to secure that nomination, neither so far do either of his main rivals, Ibrahim Al-Jafaari of the Dawa party and Adel Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution… > > That has given an opening to Mr. Chalabi, and one that he appears to be trying to exploit. According to a rough tally of likely election results, Mr. Chalabi’s coalition, called the Shiite Council, will end up with about 13 seats, compared with about 15 for Mr. Jafaari and 18 for Mr. Mahdi. > > To become the Shiite alliance’s candidate for prime minister, one of the candidates would have to secure a majority within the alliance, or about 75 seats. How is it that each of these people, presumably members of the dominant United Iraq Alliance, can have specific seats already assured? Was the UAI not its own separate party on the ballot, but merely an agreement between multiple parties, each with its own separate ballot spot? Or are these candidates somehow members of more than one party on the ballot? Or are the candidates not members, with the UAI looking to outside its ranks for a PM? ---
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/5 "2005-02-14T06:39:04Z")
I came across [this interactive graphic](http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/international/20050130_iraq_ELECTIONS_GRAPHIC) from the New York Times, which profiles the different parties under the heading “Power Brokers”, subheading “Parties that may win 80% of the vote.” Five men are pictured individually representing the United Iraq Alliance, along with relevant information about them which I will cherry-pick: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim Leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq Position on party’s ballot: 1 Ibrahim Jafari Leader of the Dawa Party Position on party’s ballot: 2 Hussein al-Shahristani Position on party’s ballot: 7 Ahmad Chalabi Position on party’s ballot: 10 So it appears to me that 1. There are a few pre-existing parties that simply banded together on the UIA list. 2. The ballot rankings of individual candidates are predetermined, and so the UIA will get the top 140 or so of its total list seated. This list has been known to the election commission for a month or more. 3. There may be minor adjustments to that process to ensure that the required number of women are seated. 4. The candidates for PM were described in the article linked in my last post as having a given number of seats: these are the seats won by members of their pre-existing party (say, the Dawa) within the UIA slate. 5. If the UIA had won 20 seats more or fewer, the numbers for each candidate might be larger or smaller, but the ratio would probably have been the same - I imagine this was all meticulously horse-traded when the list was submitted. Back to the OP, if the lists were public (many were kept secret for the safety of the candidates) we could presumably already name the female winners. But like I said, if the required number of female candidates are not elected to the assembly based on a straightfoward reading of the lists from each party, there are probably some minor adjustments that would take place before the final assembly is named. Meanwhile, we have to wait for 72 hours to see if there are any challenges to the results so far, and then the results of an investigation into those challenges. I read somewhere that final results may not be declared for another week. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-women-were-elected-in-iraq/289906/6 "2005-02-23T23:19:47Z")
Has a list of members (broken down by party, sex, sect, etc) yet? 😕