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Iran's Women's Revolution
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An underreported part of the Iranian protests is that women are leading the way. Dana Goldstein on why Iran’s feminists decided they’d finally had enough.
Plus, read more insight on Iran's election from other Daily Beast writers.
When Iranian authorities suppressed the results of last Friday’s presidential election, they also suppressed a huge outpouring of feminist political fervor. Contrary to media reports focusing on the outspokenness of Zahra Rahnavard, wife of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, feminist politics are hardly new to Iran. Iranian women have been agitating for political change since the early 20th century, when they participated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. In 1979, women provided key support for the Islamic Revolution. During the intervening years, they have played a key role in subtly subverting Islamic law, in part through pushing restrictions on women’s dress to their breaking point.
View Our Gallery of Revolutionary Iranian Women
But by almost every measure, the Ahmadinejad era has represented a leap backward for Iranian women, leading to a resurgence of feminist organizing. “I wouldn’t say the election was a turning point for women,” says Sanam Anderlini, a Washington-based consultant on international women’s issues. “But I would say women were the turning point for the election.”
Female voters provided key support for Mousavi, who campaigned on a platform of expanding women’s economic and legal rights, yet who was hardly known as a feminist champion during a term as prime minister from 1981 to 1989. The far more salient factor was Ahmadinejad’s dismal record on women’s rights. Working with a conservative parliament, his government spent millions on propaganda telling women their proper place is in the home. Universities capped the number of female students admitted. In 2005, the regime launched a “culture of modesty” campaign aimed at enforcing stricter veiling. It replaced the Center for Women’s Participation, founded under the liberal presidency of Mohammad Khatami, with the Center for Women and Family, whose exclusive goal is to promote “modesty.”
Most shockingly, last summer Ahmadinejad and his supporters attempted to push a “family protection law” through parliament, easing restrictions on polygamy and taxing mehriyeh, the traditional payment a husband gives a wife upon marriage. In a country where 42 percent of young women looking for a job are out of work, Ahmadinejad went so far as to cite polygamy as a solution to female unemployment. And mehriyeh offers women some modicum of financial independence within a legal system that severely limits their rights to divorce, child custody, and inheritance.
Unsurprisingly, these moves were deeply unpopular among women. A coalition of high-profile feminists, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, poet Simin Behbahani, and film director Rakhshan Bani E’temad, successfully lobbied against the legislation. But as Iranian sociologist Fatemeh Sadeghi reports in the latest issue of the Middle East Report, even conservative women activists, those who typically hit the streets enforcing the regime’s hijab (or veiling) laws, were put off by Ahmadinejad’s support for polygamy and sigheh, the religious “temporary marriages” that allow men to engage in consequence-free sex with prostitutes. Widespread disgruntlement with Ahmadinejad’s gender agenda was a harbinger of things to come—namely, reformist and moderate women’s deep commitment to ousting him from office.
That commitment has been on display this week in the streets of Tehran, where women are protesting alongside men. According to some reports, at least one of the student protestors killed at Tehran University was a woman. “Like men, women are being beaten up by the basij [paramilitaries] in the streets,” says U.S.-based Iran historian Shiva Balaghi. Photographs from Tehran depict women clashing with police and on the scene when tear gas was released into crowds.
That makes this political unrest unusual within the regional context of the Middle East, where women are rarely seen on the frontlines of street protests. In Iran, though, there is ample precedent. In June 2006, police violently attacked a women’s rights demonstration in Tehran, leading to the founding of the One Million Signatures Campaign, a feminist endeavor to grant women equality under Iranian law. Since then, hundreds of signature gatherers have fanned out across the country, distributing a pamphlet detailing each and every way the country’s legal code discriminates against women, from family law to the prohibition against women running for president.
“I wouldn’t say the election was a turning point for women,” says Sanam Anderlini, a Washington-based consultant on international women’s issues. “But I would say women were the turning point for the election.”
This effort is diffuse and grassroots, but widely seen as influential. Dozens of the campaign’s leaders have been arrested or jailed, and its Web sites have been shut down by the government. Newspapers have been threatened with closure for reporting on its activities.
If Ahmadinejad remains in power, there are fears that this emerging feminist movement could come under even harsher attack. “I don’t think a reform government would be entirely peachy sweet for women by any stretch of the imagination,” says Anderlini. “But it would open up the space for them to continue to air their demands and have a discussion. Under the conservative government, activism is seen as a threat to national security.”
Dana Goldstein is an associate editor at The American Prospect. Her writing has also appeared in Slate, BusinessWeek, and The New Republic.
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Dana Goldstein is an associate editor and writer at The Daily Beast. Her work on politics, women’s issues, and education has appeared in The American Prospect, Slate, BusinessWeek, The New Republic, and The Nation.
Dana,
There has been a lot of women heroes in the history of Iran.
In the vidoes that have come out of Iran in last couple of day, there is one scene where this younger woman throws a couple of Karate kick at one of the so called security men. She is my hero forever and my whole lifetime.
I don't know whether you know about the most organized Iranian exile opposition group: "National Council of Resistance of Iran" or NCRI. their web site is http://ncr-iran.org/ and their elected president is a woman.
Let us not forget that the women of Iran,and throughout the Middle East, became energized by the right to vote watching reports out of Iraq these past few years. Thank you to U.S. soldiers and thank you to President Bush.
Uhm, women in Iran had the right to vote before Bush came into power. Such a dillusional statement to promote Ahmadinejad's US twin.
Iranian women got the right to vote in 1963. It has not one single thing to do with Bush.
I was no Bush fan, but I am not so blind that I don't accept that Iranians watching millions of Iraqis cast open votes were not inspired by this flow of democracy. The inke on the fingers of Iraq citizens was a very powerful factor in this uprising. If you deny that you are not being honest. You are being as dis-honest as Bush was as a matter of fact.
True sexual freedom means access to Pornography, Sexually enhancing drugs, Prostitutes, and Abortion. Iranian women are wearing a chasity belt and the youngsters want it removed now. The majority of Iranians are under 30 and they want to party. They will riot until their sexual needs are fully satisfied.
Melpol, you do not describe "sexual freedom", but perversion.
Sex inside of a loving, equal marriage is "freedom", and a lot more healthly then what you envision.
Yeah, jpelhamin. It's all about the US and its soldiers and its presidents. Talk about narcissism.
And yes, melpol, it's all about "repressed sexuality." Please take your pseudo-Freudian Orientalist bull**** and shove it right up Raphael Patai's koon. :)
ditto!!!!!! who are these people?
I suppose the West's serial polygamy by divorce and broken long term relationships is better than real polygamy in the eyes of Iranian women.
'sexual needs' that's funny. I don't have a problem with modesty but it does anger me to think that so much time is spent 'instructing' women in modesty and men are pretty much allowed to look however. Whatever happened to males being modest too? Course, we have that same problem here. I'm very proud of the Irania women. I hope they continue.
drmarkklein, love your comment.
Women in the Islamic world have always had enormous power. (Just not in the way we recognize) But it is damn time they have it in the legal and open fashion... Iran is not some back-water middle-eastern state.
The men of Iran need to be very, very careful about accepting the kind of feminism that took over both US parties recently along with the media and the courts. We can only be glad that newspapers and TV in the USA are now dying.
It will be great for Iranian males, at first, to have a sexual revolution and for women to get the kind of equality they got in the USA 40 years ago. Equality will be fanastic.
But, if you give them too much power the way we American men did, they won't stop at equality. Why should they if you don't resist like US men did not resist?
20 years from now at the latest, the current generation of young women will not let same-age Iranian men cheat on them with younger women and - owning the Iranian parliament and courts, the older women can make sure they pass laws like the US IMBRA law which will mostly prevent Iranian men from meeting foreign women online (if the US economy tanks, they will call poor American women mail order brides) and they will preach that men are rapists and domestic abusers and vote themselves hundreds of millions in funds per year like the VAWA law does in the US.
Iranian men will not be able to babysit children nor sit next to a child on an airplane.
That prostitute law above? Feminists will get laws passed making sure it is the male who is charged with such "sex crimes" and they will even go so far as the Swedish and San Francisco police manginas who get gorgeous young women decoys to pretend they are hookers and they charge men with crimes just for agreeing to walk in a given direction with the decoys.
It all starts with a "sexual revolution". You Iranian men will have your fun for about 20 years and then lots of you will betray your fellow men by joining with feminists to facilitate the kind of unequal takeover that has occured in the USA.
Why don't you go take your meds before you post.
Women all over the world who live in mummified slavery and suffer endless physical and emotional degradation, also in Iran, are all part of the same underclass worldwide.
Most American citizens arn't aware that women in the United States did not have the right to vote until 144 years after the delaration of independence.
I fervently hope that equality is an idea whose time has come in Iran, etal.
There is clearly an aporia of education about the Muslim world. Women all over the Muslim world have had all sorts of rights--democratic and sexual--for centuries. It was with the colonial forces that many of these countries were polarized in terms of ethnicity and sex. Don't forget that the veil (hijab) is considered a feminist statement by women in the Arab world, a stark response to our notions of freedoms. It is, like it or not, a countering of our cultural arrogance (and we must own this) that women who can expose their bodies are somehow freer. Why is this? And women do actively choose alternate forms of bodily empowerment. Likewise, polygamy is practiced widely in our culture--we just marry then divorce and then marry again (and divorce again). In the Muslim world, when polygamy is practiced (and it is not that frequently practiced), it is the women who hold the power over the men. Let us not forget that our terrorism in Iraq has left women LESS empowered and poorer than they were under Sadaam Hussein.
In the end, I think more people need to do less cultural relativism without actually reading up on the historical events that had women wearing mini jalabas in the 1950s while African Americans were concommitantly disallowed from most public spaces in much of our country.
Clothing? Nobody is talking about clothing here...EQUAL rights of: parenting, having a woman's testimony mean just as much as a man's in court, being able to inherit money or property from parents, husband or family member, ability to pursue any career that one wants, etc.
Also: "in polygamy women hold the power over the man"? HAH! Show me more than 1 far-left-field example of this. Go talk to a 16-year-old Afghani women about how she likes being some old bastard's wife No. 4. and how she is treated by the other wives (usually like a slave/drudge in most polygamous marriages.)
The one thing I am in agreement with is how some women in western (US) culture equate slutty clothing/being on display as "empowering"...I think it's sad and disgusting how this has become the norm (I am reminded of Matel being sued by parents to not produce "Pussycat Dolls" dolls for young girls...what were they thinking? Oh wait - the company was just following trends set my pop-culture/TV to sexualize young girls, so that selling burlesque/SM-dressed dolls to 7-year-olds seemed like a great idea. Porn culture has infiltrated too far into regular sexuality in the west...why else would everyone be waxing their hoo-hahs and parading around in 1/2 shirts, pushup-bras and platforms? Sounds like a stripclub to me.
It's not that women who expose their bodies are more free, it's that women who can wear whatever they want are free.
Wearing revealing clothes in inappropriate situations is not empowering. Wearing classy, appropriate clothing is empowering, and promotes respect.Wearing revealing clothing makes the statement, "I am sexually available."
I've heard actresses who pose nude for men's magazines say "It was empowering." This was either an excuse they gave to others, or themselves, so they could further their carreers, or make money, or they were duped by whomever got them to take their clothes off.
The point with women in Iran, as all over the world, is CHOICE vs. law. The point is equal rights with men. If women want to wear the hijab to make a feminist statement, they can. If it's a hot day and they prefer to feel a breeze on their arms, they can choose that too. Just like the men.
I get frustrated when people make this issue about their own morality and political issues rather than about equal rights under the law.
I just read a nice tribute to Neda and to her father on Femisex. It was lovely.
"The young girl was with her father, a father who had not locked her at home with a veil and set of instructions to keep out of all things male, a father who was proud to have a daughter brave enough to call for democracy and a voice in that democracy!...."
It is not about what is seen as correct according to the dominant culture of any particular country, it is about women deciding for themselves what they want,
If we want to a wear a veil, be fully covered or wear a mini-skirt and high heels or go to a nudist beach to bathe naked, (which I enjoy doing, in the company of both sexes) we should be able to without others imposing their values on us.
It would be nice to be able to wear a headscarfe, as I often did, without being looked at as some sort of repressed woman and it would be great also if people would stop judging a woman's sexual activity (not that it is anyone's business anyway) by how much skin she shows.
And please, stop assuming that the only way to prevent women being viewed as sexual objects is to make them cover up. I am damn sick of being expected to be the moral police-officer of the world.
Let the men learn to control themselves instead. There us no need to start running around like rutting animals when they see a bit of a woman's body. If they feel desire, which is natural, let them just control themselves like adults.
This is not a debate about what women should wear, or which system is culturally superior, because men anywhere will oppress women given half a chance.
It is about women having the freedom of choice.
And while it is not for me, being in a long term monogomous marriage, I firmly believe how many partners anyone has in whatever form should only be their own business, But if polygomy under the law is allowed it should be allowed for both men and women.
Some women may like to have multiple husbands and considering that in China and India there are many more men than women due to sex selection in pregnancies, the idea might be appealing.
But that is the crux of it; whatever law is passed should apply equally to male and female.
It is not about what is seen as correct according to the dominant culture of any particular country, it is about women deciding for themselves what they want,
If we want to a wear a veil, be fully covered or wear a mini-skirt and high heels or go to a nudist beach to bathe naked, (which I enjoy doing, in the company of both sexes) we should be able to without others imposing their values on us.
It would be nice to be able to wear a headscarfe, as I often did, without being looked at as some sort of repressed woman and it would be great also if people would stop judging a woman's sexual activity (not that it is anyone's business anyway) by how much skin she shows.
And please, stop assuming that the only way to prevent women being viewed as sexual objects is to make them cover up. I am damn sick of being expected to be the moral police-officer of the world.
Let the men learn to control themselves instead. There us no need to start running around like rutting animals when they see a bit of a woman's body. If they feel desire, which is natural, let them just control themselves like adults.
This is not a debate about what women should wear, or which system is culturally superior, because men anywhere will oppress women given half a chance.
It is about women having the freedom of choice.
And while it is not for me, being in a long term monogomous marriage, I firmly believe how many partners anyone has in whatever form should only be their own business, But if polygomy under the law is allowed it should be allowed for both men and women.
Some women may like to have multiple husbands and considering that in China and India there are many more men than women due to sex selection in pregnancies, the idea might be appealing.
But that is the crux of it; whatever law is passed should apply equally to male and female.
Thank you.
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