The Iraqi Women's League was an Iraqi women's organization, founded as League for Defending Iraqi Woman's Rights in 1952, which changed the name of Iraqi Women's League in 1958.[1] [2]
Saddam Hussein's 1979 rise to power resulted in a crackdown on members of the League, which was forced underground. The novelist Iqbal al-Qazwini, in East Berlin as the League's delegate to the Women's International Democratic Federation in 1978, remained in exile there.[3]
After Saddam's removal, league membership rose again: by August 2003 it had risen to five hundred women, though many of the younger members lacked organizational experience.[3]