BAGHDAD - Amal Kibash, a candidate for the Baghdad provincial council, is running a bold and even feverish campaign by most standards. With elections coming Saturday, she is trolling for every vote she can muster.
"You are going to vote for me, right?" she quizzed passers-by on a stroll through her neighborhood of Sadr City. Posters of her veiled face were draped on several buildings.
In Basra, where until a year ago banners warned women that they would be shot if they wore too much makeup or ventured out of their homes without a veil, another female candidate, Ibtihal Abdul-Rahman, put up posters of herself last month.
Encouraged by security improvements throughout the country, close to 4,000 women are running for council seats in the provincial elections.
For many of them, the elections offer a chance to inject fresh air into councils that are plagued by corruption and dominated by ultraconservative political parties.
Even if they win, they face numerous hurdles, particularly the entrenched attitudes of most Iraqi men, who view women as either sex objects or child bearers. "This is the mentality," said Safia Taleb al-Suhail, a member of parliament . "We have to change it. How can we change it? By fighting."
To that end, she is leading a group of female parliament members who are striving to get a constitutional provision mandating that 25 percent of all seats in parliament go to women applied to the provincial councils as well.
