Gender, Law, and the Normative Judgments of Iraqi Judges

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Procedures and Justice 1

Abstract

While recent scholarship has illuminated how conceptions about gender norms inform the formation of penal and disciplinary practices in the United States, there is little systematic scholarship that examines how gender ideology structures sentencing patterns in transitional societies, such as post-invasion Iraq. Using hypothetical scenarios involving prison guards torturing suspected terrorists, this study examines judicial decision-making among a sample of 82 Iraqi judges. The goal of this research is to explore whether homologous sentencing patterns as in the U.S. emerge in the context of Iraq, and how the concept of intersectionality and considerations of political, historical and cultural contexts inform Iraqi judges’ norms about punishment. The invasion of U.S. Coalition forces brought competing visions of the future of Iraq, growing conservative gender ideologies, and increased sexual violence against women. This study reveals that Iraqi judges sentence selected women defendants more severely suggesting how the control of women’s social roles and legal rights post-invasion may have become a symbol of resistance to the foreign occupation and to the threat of changing gender hierarchy.

Authors

• Gabrielle Ann Ferrales, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• Wenjie Liao, University of Minnesota