Iraq’s Kurdish female entrepreneurs overcome barriers to succeed

A growing wave of female entrepreneurs in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region is happening.

The Kurdish region of northern Iraq has a population of six million people, 1.3 million of them employed by the government.

A new change is opening up new paths for women, and a chance to increase women’s labour force participation rate in the Kurdish region, which is currently one of the lowest in the world.

Government backing, along with internationally-funded programmes to support entrepreneurs and start-ups, is a step in the right direction.

And for women, entrepreneurship has opened up other potential financial avenues, and a route to economic advancement without going abroad, and without relying on men.