CRS Book Launch: Poor Dad, Rich Daughter: Gender Regimes, Citizenship, and Women’s Entrepreneurship in Post-ISIS Kurdistan
Tuesday November 24, 2026
1:00pm - 2:30pm (ET/Toronto)
This is a virtual event
Zoom:
Guest speaker: Kaziwa Salih, CRS Visiting Scholar
Poor Dad, Rich Daughter provides a comprehensive analysis of women’s entrepreneurship in post-ISIS Kurdistan, Iraq. It examines the experiences of Kurdish women entrepreneurs from the perspective of the complex matrix, which includes historical oppression, socio-political instability, economic rentierism, and gender regimes. The analysis moves beyond conventional notions of empowerment, viewing women's economic activities as ethical, relational, and political labor conducted amid structural abandonment and systemic neglect.
The book examines Kurdish women’s entrepreneurship through three interconnected dimensions: the historical and structural effects of conflict, political fragmentation, economic dependency, and gender inequality; the different pathways women use to build businesses through NGO support or informal networks that the author conceptualized as the “Three Cs”; and the social, religious, political, and technological barriers limiting their agency. Ultimately, entrepreneurship is presented as resilience, healing, resistance, and a pathway toward dignity, citizenship, and meaningful social change.
Finally, "Poor Dad, Rich Daughter" states that the entrepreneurship of Kurdish women can be considered an act of resistance against patriarchal structures, rentier politics, and the legacy of violence. The authors emphasize the need for transformation, not just empowerment. Namely, there is a need for localized and systemic support, implementation of gender equality laws, a balanced domestic workload, and further research on technology inclusion and post-conflict recovery models.
Bio:
Kaziwa Salih (PhD): Is a Visiting Scholar, Centre for Refugee Studies at 91ɫ; holds a Ph.D. from Queen’s University in Canada. She is the author of several books, and published many scholarly articles. Her latest books: Poor Dad, Rich Daughter: Gender Regimes, Citizenship, and Rising as Entrepreneurs in Post-ISIS Kurdistan (2026, LPP), and “The Palgrave Handbook of Kurdish Genocides (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and: Genocide Culture: Cultural Habits, Ethnic Engineering, and Religious Doxa (2024, Routledge). Dr. Salih’s interdisciplinary research brings together Digital Humanities, Anthropology, and Sociology, Political Science to examine genocide and crime, immigration and refugee studies, ethnicity and conflicts, Kurdish Studies and Middle East politics, Indigenous sovereignty, and ecological politics.
