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The economic embargo imposed on Iraq since 2 August 1990 has had profound effects on Iraqi family life. This paper attempts to explore these effects, concentrating on the ways in which families are coping with the stifling pressures of the embargo. People have been compelled to resort to a variety of channels and strategies in their hard struggle for survival. Economic problems - including the ever-present threat of hunger - are the most prominent features in the embargo panorama. This paper also describes the decline of collective sentiments, a decline which the embargo has laid the ground for. The enormous difficulties of living have sapped peoples emotional reserves and have thereby weakened their social ties. Families either use whatever money they make to buy the bare necessities of life or stockpile it; they no longer devote any economic resources to the maintenance of social ties. The decline in sociability since the beginning of the embargo has affected and is affected by individual morale. Sometimes people have responded to the embargo as if it were a challenge, while at other times they vacillate between hope and despair. A third point covered by the paper is the effect of the embargo on socio-economic stratification. The withdrawal of wealth from the kinds of social activities which formerly required large expenditures - and which continually reconstructed social relations - has been accompanied by an increasing economic polarization between the poor and the wealthy. Old, respected urban families with centuries of prestige and family traditions have become impoverished and must devote all of their resources to the struggle for survival. At the same time, a few uneducated rural families enjoy unprecedented prosperity.. This coupling of elite family decline with the rapid rise of certain rural families is a phenomenal paradox that has been brought on by the embargo. The distorted and lopsided social mobility is perceived by many Iraqis as chaotic and disorienting.

This paper proposes to focus on the area of domestic decision-making which is believed to reveal some of the salient shifts encountered in the Iraqi rural family. Notwithstanding the vast array of problems to be anticipated here, I suggest to confine my inquiry to the contextual processes and trends re-defining and re-organizing feminist autonomy. In particular, my endeavour will be guided by three main considerations involving: 1. Iraqi women’s rising influence on structural checks and balances. 2. The normative implications associated with feminist expanding roles. 3. The communicative and behavioural adjustments discernible in male-female interaction. We may correctly assume that the processes affecting women’s social life entail definite equilibrium of old and new forces. Moreover, the consequent compromise between spouses has been facilitated by mutual cognizance of the new realities. In many cases, women are expected to contribute to their family welfare through their gainful jobs. This trend is gaining momentum in view of the rapidly increasing costs of living. Urbanization in this specific context has cancelled many of the conditions exempting women from the task of family support. The emerging situation is largely dominated by spouses’ growing sense of realism. Viewed in this perspective, decision-making seems quite promising to unravel some of the vague complexities confroned in Iraqi urbanization.

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