FLUX: International Relations Review status in Kurd-controlled Syria. Iraqi Kurdistan demonstrates how a different set of institutions and infrastructure has influenced women's status in a region. On paper, Iraqi Kurdistan's official ruling body is the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Still, the KRG is subject to overarching Iraqi legislation, and other Kurdish organizations continue to challenge democratic authority (Joly and Bakawan 2016, 961). The KRG is not entirely free to legislate as they please; the government is still subject to several Iraqi laws, many of which linger from Ba'athist era governance that are detrimental to women. For example, honour killings are still considered somewhat legitimate under the 1969 Iraqi Penal Code, which categorizes honour killings to benefit these murderers with lighter sentences than other murder cases (963). The existing norms and power relations that characterized rural Kurdish society in Iraq have been defined by the rivalry between the Kurdish Barzani clan and the Kurdish Talabani rather than progressive politics for Kurds as a larger population (963). In this way, the maintenance of Kurdish self-preservation in Iraqi Kurdistan left no room for feminist ideals. This example demonstrates the significance of the political and social context in determining the path a stateless population will take regarding feminist ideals. The autonomous spaces and free leaders of stateless populations can only serve to advance the status of women if feminist ideals are predisposed and convenient in the political and social context of the given population and state. Although the women of Iraqi Kurdistan have made concerted efforts to develop women's rights and agency in the region, instability resulting from international intervention and entrenched patriarchal infighting have undercut their efforts significantly. For example, in 1991, US President Bush, European leaders, and the United Nations agreed to create Kurdish' safe havens' in Northern Iraq to quell fighting between Kurdish guerrillas and Iraqi government troops stoked by the power vacuum left after the Gulf War. This case provides a fascinating study of autonomous spaces for a stateless population (Tyler 1991). The Bush administration intended to avoid problems 14 with international law and regional sensitivities regarding the future of that region (Tyler 1991). This unconventional method of de-facto, unstable state-building is uniquely possible with a stateless population. The safe havens provided relative protection from outside military conflict and political interference. They facilitated the formation of new political organizations, the return of previously exiled women, and the establishment of international non-governmental organizations, creating new spaces and opportunities for Kurdish women to promote a women's rights agenda (Joly and Bakawan 2016, 970). However, safe havens did not have a uniformly positive impact on women's status. Initiatives for women's rights were actively opposed and regarded suspiciously by conservative Kurdish political figures and groups. Additionally, the safe havens were not immune to the phenomena of gendered 'honour' crimes and other forms of violent discrimination (Szekely, Henshaw, and Darden 2019, 45). While the safe havens did give way to some positive effects on women's status in the region, the entrenched instability from within the autonomous space, characterized by tribal-feudal male power, triggered resistance from Kurdish women's rights activists. This resistance marked a point of friction between statelessness and the advancement of the feminist cause. In this way, the unstable and divided nature of Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomous space as a stateless population gave way to 'double oppression' rather than "double revolution." In Syrian Kurdistan, feminist ideas were both predisposed and convenient for the population at hand because of radical leftist ideological roots. The fact that the region was relatively stable in terms of political, military, and social power. Conversely, in Iraqi Kurdistan, feminist ideas were neither predisposed nor convenient to implement, reflecting deeply rooted social divisions and unstable autonomous spaces subject to outside intervention from Iraqi forces. Even in a stable, autonomous space, stateless populations, in particular, must prioritize self-preservation as a result of their stateless status. As a result, a feminist agenda will only come to fruition if its emergence is the 'path of least resistance for the benefit of a stable government. In this way, statelessness uniquely positions women to experience 'double oppression' should their space be unstable and predisposed to neglect feminist causes. Violent Conflict Since the 2010s, the term ‘Kurdish Spring’ has been used to describe the wave of upgrading of Kurdish women’s status in their societies simultaneously as the Arab Spring (Bengio 2016, 31). While the Arab Spring served to entrench, not improve, the status of women, many ordinary Kurdish women have managed to assume leadership roles and control over their own lives and wellbeing. At the same time, violent conflict has historically plagued stateless populations. Whether stateless or not, women typically bear the brunt of the impact of violent conflict due to deeply entrenched patriarchy, women’s traditional role as caretakers, and gendered violence against women (Peterson 2009, 57). Stateless populations are typically unprotected by citizenship rights and are often subject to neglectful or harmful treatment by the state in which they reside. Reactionary coping behaviours in the face of conflict reinforce women’s traditional positions in a patriarchal system as populations must prioritize safety above all, relying on the status quo for survival. Population displacement resulting from violent conflict further reinforces traditional gender roles and entrench discriminatory systems of power because unexpected adjustments to new and often hostile environments reinforce traditional roles and ethnic belonging. Consequently, women are not only more vulnerable to the physical horrors of war, but they also disproportionately bear the economic burdens and financial responsibilities of wartime and war recovery (Peterson 2009, 45). During periods of violent conflict, reinforcement of women’s subordination acts as a coping behaviour in the face of uncertainty (Gökalp 2010, 562). This dynamic may manifest itself through direct violence and the secondary trauma received through the violence experienced by their children and husbands (Nilsson 2018, 641). Violence and reinforcement of oppressive, patriarchal norms diminish women’s status in the region significantly. Thus, being both stateless and a woman likely puts them at the bottom of a ‘privilege pyramid’ (Brennan 2019, 178). For example, the violent struggle against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and beyond impacted Kurdish women in a gendered manner. This impact was made possible because ISIS specifically targeted the Kurds to be treated with no mercy. Furhermore, Furthermore, ISIS relies on rigid patriarchal violence to subordinate women as second-class citizens, subjected to violence and repression. Even women who are combatants become the ‘flag-bearer of patriarchy.’ This reality, combined with ISIS’ belief in violently treating women as subordinates and as property, exemplifies a state of ‘double oppression’ (Joly and Bakawan 2016, 963). Additionally, as previously discussed, in instances when institutions appear to be changing in favour of women's rights, there has been evidence of insubstantial, surface-level change for the sake of public image. This illusion of change may damage stateless women experiencing violent conflict as it serves to erase the actual reality of violence and subverts sincere efforts to protect women. For example, in an extreme case, Iraqi Kurdish nationalists have been accused of manipulating the emotional horror of Kurdish women being raped and abducted by Arab men to benefit the Kurdish nationalist cause. Hence, Kurdish women's suffering was put on a perverse pedestal to advance an ulterior cause rather than out of genuine solidarity and rage regarding the violence against women. Thus, the vulnerability and characteristic displacement that the vast majority of stateless Kurdish women experience due to their statelessness have exacerbated the oppressive experience of violent conflict, producing a case of "double oppression." Although stateless women, including Kurdish women, have suffered greatly at the hands of violent conflict made more harmful by their stateless status, there remains evidence that violent conflict in the context of statelessness has the potential to foster feminist developments. In 2011 and the US-backed battle against ISIS into 15