Even though women had become an integral part of the fight for Kurdish autonomy, the patriarchal social structure that pervaded Kurdish society still tried to constrain what women could do. In the early 2000s, as Kurdish women and girls continued to be killed for allegedly denigrating the honour of their families, women took charge to provide—and lead—proper funerals for the victims, who were otherwise denied funerals by the men in their family. Like those fighters who died at the hands of the state, these women who died at the hands of men were remembered with chants for change. Among those chants was “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî”—“Woman, Life, Freedom.”
