When people ask me what can be done on an individual basis to help Iraqis, I respond, “Help the women.” A key measure of progress in Iraq will be whether women keep or lose their rights.

Iraqi women are among the most advanced in the Arab world, with a long tradition of higher education and professional jobs, even in the Saddam Hussein era.

But during my recent trip to Iraq, middle-class women spoke to me about their fears of moving backward after the U.S. invasion. A temporary code of law drafted by American lawyers guarantees women’s rights in coming months. But an elected Iraqi government could cave to growing religious pressures to curb those rights.

“I think women are left naked after July 1,” when sovereignty had reverted to Iraqis, said Manal Omar of Women for Women International. Her group, based in Washington, helps women in post-conflict societies. “In Afghanistan, you saw a bit of easing (on women’s rights), but in Iraq we’re going backwards. We are fighting for the status quo.”

Yet what is fascinating in Baghdad is that educated women are organizing to hold their ground. I visited Omar in the Mansour Women’s Center, one of nine such centers set up with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In one room, female leaders of fledgling nongovernmental organizations talked about how to organize on issues like violence against women.

Omar also teaches job skills to women in a Baghdad slum, who at first told her it was forbidden to encourage women to work or study. The gutsy Omar went to the office of the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and asked for his opinion.

“He said verbally that it was correct, even required,” for women to study and work, Omar recounted. Her job-training seminar went on.

But new Iraqi government ministries are jealous that women’s groups get foreign funds; they want job training money to go to men. They may try to commandeer buildings used as women’s centers. A bomb was found in the Mansour center’s yard before it exploded, and Omar expects more such attacks.

The fate of women’s rights will rest heavily on the outcome of Iraqi elections. Even under occupation, the former Iraqi interim governing council nearly pushed through Resolution 137. It would have rescinded a 1959 law that banned arbitrary divorce and polygamy and protected women’s interests in child custody and inheritance. “Family status” matters would have been put under restrictive Muslim sharia codes.

Public protests by women’s groups and pressure from U.S. occupation czar Paul Bremer canceled Resolution 137. But the issue of “family status” is sure to reemerge during elections for a constitutional assembly early next year, especially since the strongest political parties are based on religion.

So women’s groups are already discussing how to participate in politics. Twenty-five percent of the seats for the assembly are supposed to be set aside for women, but many of these seats may go to women selected by religious parties.

While in Baghdad, I attended a U.S.-funded conference on women and participation in democracy. The buzz, among clusters of women, some heavily veiled, some in Western dress, was how to get women to vote.

Salma Jabbou, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Minerals, with blond hair uncovered, bemoaned the lack of security, which, she said, made the situation much tougher for women. She said Iraqi women’s rights had taken a quantum leap in the late 1950s. When she attended Baghdad University in the 1970s, she “wore a miniskirt and T-shirt, and everyone wore the same.”

But now, Jabbou says, “Because of the bad economic and security situation, there is a social reaction.” Today, nearly every woman at the university is covered from head to toe. “If the security improves, society will develop more quickly.”

Hassima Abbas Mayan, a mechanical engineer from Hilla (Babylon) said that women like her were forced to cover starting six or seven years ago, when Saddam started encouraging religion as a distraction from sanctions. She and others from the south said women were now being pressured to resign their jobs and stay at home. They fear the extremist religious movements that have grown powerful since Saddam fell.

But there was something inspiring about these women. Clearly, they are willing to take risks to prevent the loss of their rights. They will be able to articulate what they need, and U.S. women’s groups should help them as Iraqi elections get nearer.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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