Live blog update| Iraq Elections 2021
This is an entry from: Iraq elections 2021: Iraqis await results as voting comes to a close

Women compete for 25 percent of parliament seats

10 October 2021 15:15 BST

“I’m here today to vote, and I have just voted for myself,” Sawsan Jadou, one of four candidates for the United Iraq Turkmen Front running in Kirkuk, told MEE. 

Jadou is one of more than 900 women running in the parliamentary elections, with 25 percent of seats reserved for women as part of a broader quota system based on gender and ethnic or religious affiliation.

Candidate Sawsan Jadou shows ink-stained fingers after voting in Kirkuk on 10 October 2021 (MEE/Tom Westcott)
Candidate Sawsan Jadou shows ink-stained fingers after voting in Kirkuk on 10 October 2021 (MEE/Tom Westcott)

Seven women - three party candidates and four independents - are competing for the one woman's seat in Kirkuk. 

“Kirkuk is like a micro version of Iraq, with all its diverse ethnicities and its rich resources of the ‘black gold’ that is oil,” Jadou said. “Whoever are elected MPs for Kirkuk have a duty to work for the city and its residents, not for themselves and their own pockets.”