Setback in full educational gender equalization

At least at the primary level, public education in Iraq was integrated with boys and girls sharing the same classes. After the occupation of the country, the new Iraqi authorities, linked to religious Shiite parties, imposed segregation by gender at all educational levels in the country, so that images like the one above would no longer be seen, the image of pupils of both sexes happily crowding the stairs that lead to Al-Mustansiriya, a beautiful Abbasid complex in the old town of Baghdad.

Dropping out of school to help the family economy was more common among boys than girls. However, increased household chores, more expensive school material, despondency due to the deterioration of the installations and the social devaluation of education inverted the tendency of the 1980s towards gender equality in education to a fall in the numbers of female students, more intensely in rural areas than in the cities.