State Governance and Symbolic Gender Equality: Rethinking Discourses of Women’s Political Participation in Iraq Since 2005

Since the adoption of the gender quota system in 2005, women’s political participation in Iraq has been framed as evidence of democratic renewal and as a key marker of state legitimacy. This framing developed in the context of post-2003 reconstruction policies that positioned Iraq as a state undergoing democratic transition and embracing gender equality as part of its reform narrative. However, women’s substantive agency remains constrained by sectarian alignments and entrenched party patronage. Existing scholarship has largely concentrated on the quantitative dimensions of representation, providing limited analysis of how gender narratives function as mechanisms of legitimacy in post-conflict governance. Against this background, analysing the symbolic dimension of women’s participation calls for a rethinking of state feminism as a mode of governance discourse. State feminism serves both as an institutional mechanism for enhancing representation and as a legitimising logic that strengthens domestic authority and projects a modern image globally (Kantola & Squires, 2012: 383–385). This study applies this analytical framework to Iraq’s post-conflict reconstruction, examining how the state employs women’s representative positions to construct imaginaries of modernity and political rationality. To examine how this legitimising process operates within discourse, the analysis employs van Leeuwen’s (2007: 91–94) model of legitimation, highlighting how moral and rational appeals transform women’s political participation into a marker of democratic progress and civic modernity. Through this integrated perspective, the analysis reveals how Iraq’s post-conflict state mobilises gender governance to sustain authority and reproduce political power. This study conducts a critical discourse analysis of how the Iraqi state frames visibility and participation through gendered narratives in official texts such as the Constitution, the Election Law, and the UN Cooperation Framework. These discursive practices, while affirming state legitimacy, obscure the institutionalised constraints that delimit women’s agency and reproduce unequal power relations. Examining women’s participation through the lens of legitimacy politics shows how gender discourse sustains state authority and structures inequality. This analysis contributes to broader debates on how legitimacy and governance are shaped by gendered power relations in post-conflict settings.