Dr. Naziha al Dulaimi - was an early pioneer of the Iraqi feminist movement. She was a co-founder and the first president of the Iraqi Women League, and a member of the Iraqi communist party.
In 1952, she wrote the book The Iraqi Woman. It was about women from the peasant class (al-fallahin) who were deprived of all rights both in terms of male suppression and class oppression. She also wrote about women from higher classes who had higher material status but were still property and not considered human.
I'm re-reblogging this to say this: at no point in history were there women who were happy with unequal rights. I have always seen instances where men compare their contemporaries to idealized versions of their mother and grandmother's generations, and talk about "going back to the old ways." Disturbingly, with the rise of trad whatever social media, I see more women making the same claims. There was not a mythical past generation of women who looked around and were totally ok with being treated as lesser. Those women from the past suffered, they chafed under oppression, and they wanted things to change.
And as we're seeing more and more, the trad women who end up in trad relationships aren't happy about it either. There's a reason feminism happened, and it's because being subservient to men does not make for a good life.
