Baghdad (AFP)
Nour al-Janabi moves around in her workshop among carpentry equipment: saws, nails and pieces of wood, and she is intent on making a sofa that she covers with a pink cloth, confirming her passion for the carpenter’s profession that it made her one of Baghdad’s leading businesswomen who “broke a prevalent barrier” in Iraq’s conservative society.
Nour, 29, says: At the beginning the criticisms were related to the fact that I practiced a different and inappropriate profession, and those close to me confirmed that I wouldn’t make it, but I “prove the opposite”.
Of setting up a new lab, Nour said confidently, “As an Iraqi woman, I am the first to take this step and the first Iraqi to break the barrier of this specialization. No woman has ever entered such a profession.”
