In Cynthia Enloe’s “The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire”, Enloe explores the idea of the United States as an empire and what it takes to be an empire in the past and what it means to be an empire today. She also asks an important question: where are the women in these empires? Whether we are discussing an empire of the past or today, feminist historians know that “diplomatic halls, the bloody battlefields and the floors of stock exchanges” are not where we’d find them. We are to look inside brothels, factor windows and parlors for they are the sites where women are and where the foundation to empire-building is found.
An unexpected political forum for most would be found in a beauty salon, where women of different ages, backgrounds and opinions can be found sharing ideas and educating one another in a same environment. That is perhaps why one of the three women of the Governing Council in Iraq is Nimo Din’Kha Skander, a woman who operates a small hair salon in Baghdad. Unfortunately, that low number of represented women still implies a largely male dominance in the council with the females voice often marginalized and amounting to little to no influence. Iraqi women activist oppose the imbalance of sexes on the council and what that imbalance could imply for a new draft of the country’s constitution. This has forced some to reach out to international organizations and alliances to strengthen their voice and it’s these cross-national alliances among women that has widened understanding and knowledge and challenges us all to explore the real impact of empires today and what they’re capable of becoming.
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