Internet cafe in Baghdad caters only to women
BAGHDAD -- Sara Jaafar is a typical 16-year-old high school student who loves surfing the Internet. But she quickly discovered that women aren't usually welcome in the dirty, smoky Internet cafes that have cropped up around the Iraqi capital in recent years.
Sometimes it's the embarrassing images men have posted on their screens. Mostly it's the rude response from men if she needs help with a computer problem.
"They keep joking, and all I get is laughter at my question. They never answer," Jaafar explains.
So she switched to an Internet cafe that caters only to women, set up in a safe neighborhood near the University of Baghdad.
"The women's cafe is better," says Intisar Abed Ali, 29, who is learning computer skills and studying English at the Ishtar Internet Center.
"You know, in our society, women are embarrassed to ask men any questions. It's better to ask a woman," she says.
The computer craze is relatively new to Iraq, exploding across the country after the 2003 U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein from power. Under Saddam, there were two Internet cafes in Baghdad, both government-owned and closely monitored. Now there are thousands of computer hangouts in Baghdad.
Since it opened last fall, however, the Ishtar center is an anomaly in allowing just women.
Azhar al-Sheikhli, a former Iraqi Cabinet member who established the Ishtar center, says separating the genders goes against her belief that men and women should work together and that more women need to be in positions of power. After talking with many women about how embarrassed or intimidated they were at Internet cafes, though, she decided to do something about it.
She says she wanted to give half the population a safe haven to learn computer skills, broaden their education and eventually land better jobs.
"I noticed that the Internet cafes that we have in Baghdad are inappropriate for girls or women," says al-Sheikhli, who was Iraq's minister of women's affairs in 2005. "I thought that there should be a special place only for women — a place they can visit, surf the Internet or even to have training courses."
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