Women in the new Iraq presented an ambitious list of demands to the country's US-led occupation, their first stab at shattering the boundaries that have hemmed them in for more than a decade.

Female Iraqi delegates are addressed during Iraq's first national women's conference at Baghdad's convention centre Wednesday July 9, 2003. [AP]

Their resolve to seek equality in a relatively liberal but largely male-dominated Iraqi society was immediately put to the test in a news conference Wednesday after a meeting of 80 women academics, political and human rights activists from across Iraq.

The group, Voice of the Women of Iraq, demanded 30 percent representation in future governments and local city councils. They also called for a ban on women traveling abroad without male chaperons to be lifted, according to participant Maysoun Adamalougi.

A male Iraqi reporter told Adamalougi that Islam, the faith of Iraq's overwhelming majority, prohibits women from going abroad alone. Other men nodded in agreement.

Fawzia al-Atia, another woman participant, adjusted her glasses, stared down at the reporter from the podium and lectured him just as she would any of her sociology students at Baghdad University.

"We know that Islam is one of the most accommodating religions in the world that defends the rights of women, and we know historically that women have fought alongside men, they traveled, they traded, but now we see that certain segments of society are using the name of Islam as a screen to create discrimination," she said sternly.

The men bristled at her response.

Voice of the Women of Iraq includes women who have been at the forefront of the battle for changing women's status in Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime in April.

British soldiers stand guard as Iraqi women enter the newly renovated Iraqi Central Bank to receive their retirement salaries in the southern city of Basra[AFP]

The group formed its list of demands after weeks of consultations with women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in Iraq. It says it will later pass them to an Iraqi constitutional council that is to be formed in coming months.

The demand cover wide areas ranging from better education, access to health care and human rights.

Women's status in Iraqi society was the envy of their counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world in the 1970s and 1980s. Their role in public life, however, steadily diminished as Saddam sought to accommodate a rising tide of religious fundamentalism in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

Still, Saddam kept a handful of women in senior Baath party and government positions and allowed women to serve in the army and pro-government militias.

Now, radical Muslim groups want to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic laws on Iraqis. They admonish women who don't adhere to Islam's strict dress code in some areas in Baghdad, and threaten violence against the owners of liquor stores and cinemas showing films that include explicit sex scenes.

Women who addressed Wednesday's news conference said they want to counter the influence of radical clerics by emphasizing women's positive role in Iraqi society.

"I want to remind everyone that women make up 55 percent of Iraq's population," said Narmeen Othman, of the Kurdish education ministry.

"We must not mix religion with politics," warned Othman. "We are religious people, we are Muslims, but we must go forward."

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