In March-April 2019, PAX and its local partner, the Iraqi AlFirdaws Society, conducted the third round of the Human Security Survey (HSS) across Basra governorate to get a sense of the experiences of civilian populations on issues regarding protection, conflict and security dynamics, and how they change over time. (See below for more information about the project, and please visit our website for additional reports in this series.)
This report presents a summary of the findings in which the gendered dynamics of insecurity and conflict become specifically apparent, including the different ways in which women and men in Basra experience and perceive security. The results detailed here are drawn from interviews with 357 women and 459 men. Participation of women has increased since PAX first started in 2017, where only 23% of the respondents were women, and this number increased to 44%. This has been done through getting more female enumerators to administer the surveys since as per cultural considerations, only females have access to female members of the community.
All differences between men and women shown in the report are generally statistically significant at a 95% confidence level unless otherwise stated. However, it is likely that some gendered differences may be understated given the sensitivities around such topics in the country. Conservative gender norms in the southern part of the country can make it difficult to discuss issues pertaining to ‘family honour’; we therefore anticipate some level of underreporting of certain incidents, particularly sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV). PAX is currently testing out new methods to get quantitative data on the incidence of SGBV in a pilot project, the results of which are expected in mid2020.