Drawing from current scholarship in English, French, and Arabic, as well as archival material, periodicals, and private papers, Noga Efrati examines the ways in which Iraqi women's social and political rights suffered under British occupation during the first half of the twentieth century. Efrati focuses on how oppressive British laws, particularly the Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation, undermined women's positions in the realms of family law and politics, and relegated them to the status of second-class citizens. However, through the development of a robust civil society, Iraqi women did attempt to gain social and political equality during the British occupation and after its downfall. Efrati concludes by exploring how the struggles of Iraqi women to gain greater social equality constituted a significant step toward Iraq's modernization. Nevertheless, as Efrati discusses in the epilogue, progress toward women's rights suffered significant setbacks as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq of 2003.