Iranian women's status and struggles since 1979.

AuthorKeddie, Nikki R.
PositionINTERNAL IRANIAN DYNAMICS

The situation of women in Iran since the revolution of 1978 to 1979 has been a complex and contradictory one and is often oversimplified when looked at from abroad. (1) Many Americans get their view from Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, which at best tells of one group of female students in Iran a decade and a half ago, when restrictions were far greater than they are today. Those who travel to Iran from the United States now are, on the other hand, often amazed at the freedoms of Iranian women as compared to the women in several other Middle Eastern countries.

Reporting on Iranian women is complicated by its foreign policy connotations. Ever since the so-called freeing of Afghanistan's women was used as a rationale for war, some have been wary that negative reporting on Iran's women is being used as one element to justify an attack on Iran. Those who advocate such an attack often say that Iran is so seething with discontent that, if the United States were to help, such an action would result in the overthrow of the clerical regime. They cite the impressive oppositional activities of women and women's groups as one element of this scenario. Yet none of the heroic women cited by proponents of U.S. intervention favors an aggressive U.S. policy, nor do they advocate further U.S. support to those widely seen within Iran as enemies, such as ethnic separatists or the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, the violent cult that fought against Iran in the Iran--Iraq War. More sober analysts from the Right and Left think that any attack on Iran would solidify support for the government.

Some opponents of American aggression go so far as to equate Reading Lolita in Tehran and other memoirs that criticize post-revolution treatment of Iranian women with advocacy of imperialist control of Iran and support for a U.S. right-wing program to overthrow the Iranian government. Such arguments are based on far-fetched postmodern criticisms, especially of Nafisi's book, that even extend to its cover photo of girls with chadors reading. However, this photo, which was not even chosen by the author, seems innocuous to most readers. Surely it is time to attempt a more balanced approach. Such an approach would recognize that fear of major U.S. interference in Iran is reasonable given the experience with the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 and recent threats and hostile activities. It would also recognize that American hostility toward Iran is driven by proponents in high places and politically influential groups rather than by those truly concerned with the issues raised by female memoir writers.

The situation of women in Iran and the Muslim world is sufficiently complex that it can be portrayed in either a positive or negative way. To use an appropriate cliche the choice of facts can make the glass seem half full or half empty. Again, as with other issues, too many people make generalizations about "Islam," or "Iran," while women's status and roles have varied dramatically over time and in relation to such factors as mode of production, ethnicity and class. As a gross generalization, we can note that while the Koran, which pious Muslims see as a divine revelation to the Prophet Mohammad, contained both important reforms and some restrictions on women, the earliest Islamic practice was, on the whole, no more restrictive than other contemporary religious traditions, including Judaism and Christianity. More restrictions were added in the first centuries of Islam, when veiling and seclusion of women came to be the ideal. Some Muslim thinkers held misogynist views, and there was, as in nearly all literate societies, unequal legal treatment of men and women. On the other hand, comparison with the West was not all negative; women held their own property and often went to court to defend their rights.

From the first centuries after the adoption of Islam, women's status varied, but it came to be influenced by pre-Islamic practices among the peoples of greater Syria, Iraq and Iran, including Jews and Christians, and veiling and seclusion of some urban women long pre-dated Islam in those regions. Stoning to death for adultery came into Islam from Judaism and is what Jesus refers to when he speaks to Jews to keep them from throwing the first stone. (2) Even today, many practices regarding women often called "Islamic" are found in Hindu India, non-Muslim Africa and some parts of Europe.

Recent reformist thinkers in Iran and elsewhere have stressed a difference between an ideal Islam, which is unknowable and unalterable, and how it is interpreted and applied in the world, which has varied over time and place. This distinction is similar to one regarding Islamic law, in which the sharia, or path, is the total and ideal of law and behavior, but it appears in the world only as fiqh, or jurisprudence, which has operated according to various interpretations of its ideal sources and has reflected changing historical circumstances. (3) The word "sharia" is, however, commonly used to refer to both.

In some classical periods in Iranian history, interpretations of law and custom placed strict restrictions on women. However, new research, mostly regarding pre-Ottoman Egypt, Muslim Spain and the Ottoman Empire, is revealing that women had far more rights, which they defended in court, than previous scholars imagined. Also, some mystical Sufis and followers of minority religious groups had more equal treatment of women. Unfortunately, the primary legal documents on which such new conclusions regarding women's status are based have not yet been found, organ ized and used for pre-modern Iranian history in significant numbers, but if they are, they are bound to challenge older stereotypical views. What is now known is that the Turko-Mongol groups that conquered and ruled in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East and South Asia, beginning in the 11th century and continuing for centuries thereafter, for a considerable time had a relatively egalitarian role for many women. In several cases, these women even became de facto rulers in Iran, Mamluk Egypt, South Asia and the Ottoman Empire. (4) On the other hand, the rise of stricter clerical influences in Iran and other parts of the Middle East from about the late 17th century onward seems to have brought about more conservative dress and behavior and perhaps stricter patriarchal legal judgments.

What we know about pre-modern Middle Eastern women indicates that, as in most societies from the Mediterranean to East Asia, most first marriages were arranged by parents and relatives, and women married young, partly to avoid threats to their virginity. Young brides were subject to mothers-in-law and gained status through having sons, who could protect them. In some tribal and nomadic areas, especially Turkish-speaking ones, the status of women was more equal and influential, while other tribes were more strictly patriarchal, but everywhere most women were valued especially as mothers who could add to the strength and continuity of the family line.

Some scholars stress the negative features of modernity for women, including modern racism, imperialism and the isolation of women who migrate from rural areas to towns, but the reality is more contradictory. The economic and social changes brought by capitalism and modernity also introduced the conditions for ending slavery, which involved many women, and for expanding education, jobs and public activities for women--usually after great struggle. Overall, Iran and the Middle East developed the economic and cultural elements of modernity, including openings for greater equality for women, later than did Western Europe. In Western Europe, following the 16th and 17th century religious wars between Catholics and Protestants--which bear some similarity to the Sunni-Shia fights of today--many in the West gradually turned to a more secular and less religious approach to government and societal organization. This ultimately, and only after the mid-20th century decline of scientific racism, included a rejection of the idea that some groups of people were innately better than others, an idea that had earlier been supported through selective citation of religious texts. The idea that women are weak and intellectually inferior is still held by some religious and other groups in the United States, and it is not surprising that it is still important, especially among the less educated in the Middle East, including Iran. In addition, as scholars have recently begun to recognize, many popular class women in Iran and elsewhere find certain protections in Muslim and other traditional laws and practices and are wary of modernization, which in some cases has given them more problems than benefits.

In Iran, as in several Middle Eastern nations, the late 19th and early 20th century gave rise to some pioneering women and men who fought for greater rights for women. Many of their early battles were for schools and education, as girls until then had mostly received their education at home, in smaller numbers than boys. (5) Initially, many clerics and their followers opposed girls' schools. Other aspects of women's rights were also advocated by women's organizations, by leftist parties, including socialists and communists, and by some progressive nationalists. One Qajar princess, Taj al-Saltaneh, became a socialist and left an important memoir, and one pioneer fighter for women's rights, Sedeghe Daulatabadi, came from a family of Babis, who had in both their original and Bahai offshoots favored women's rights, though she herself was not a Babi. (6)

Prior to 1925, Iran was far less modernized than those Middle Eastern countries that bordered the Mediterranean. Reza Shah, the strongman who came in with a British-supported coup in 1921 and made himself shah in 1925, began a program of rapid forced modernization from above that included changes in women's status, though there were a few reforms in the...

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