On June 26, 2014 IWSAW held a roundtable entitled Gender Research in Iraq: Reality & Expectations, an initiative sponsored by Open Society Institute, International Women’s Program. It built on a recently implemented project Gender Training for Iraqi Academics & Researchers to discuss the current status of gender research in the Arab world with special focus on Iraq, and to shed light on the importance of proposal writing to attract funding as well as the importance of networking with regional and international research centers, universities and NGOs.

The roundtable hosted Dr. Suad Joseph, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis; Dr. Hoda Elsadda, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University and head of the Freedoms and Rights Committee in the Constituent Assembly, Egypt; Dr. Noha Bayoumi, Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Lebanese University; and Dr. Nahla Al-Nadawi, Professor at the college of Education for Women at the University of Baghdad.

In addition to Iraqi and Lebanese researchers and academics, the roundtable also attracted researchers and academics from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and Japan who attended the 3-day international conference (23-25 June, 2014) organized by IWSAW on Arab Countries in Transition: Gender Rights & Constitutional Reforms.