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Women of Iran (Part 2)
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(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
Currently Iranian men have sole right to divorce and to child custody. One man's testimony equals that of two women in court. Men can ban their wives from working outside the home. A man’s is worth twice as much as a woman in cases involving murder or bodily injury. A daughter receives half a son’s inheritance. Women in abusive relationships have little to no legal recourse. Though Iran has taken steps to discourage stoning, the practice continues to be utilized as punishment for women who commit adultery.
Women are banned from many employment opportunities based on gender, including the judiciary. Whereas 60% of Iran’s university students are female, women only account for 15% of the workforce. Women left with children after the death or desertion of a husband suffer the most in a society that openly discriminates against women in the workplace.
Christiane Amanpoure did an amazing interview with Lesley Stahl about current events in Iran, including the impact of women:
Christiane Amanpoure: The women have been a very dominant factor in Iran throughout the ages. It sounds counterintuitive because in some instances, in the court of law, no matter what law we’re talking about – criminal, divorce, inheritance, child custody, etc. – women count for only half of a man. But in society women have been very strong, and women have had a much more vibrant, participatory role in Iran than in any other of the countries around that region, including so many of the countries the United States calls friends and allies. And ever since the beginning, 30 years ago during the revolution, women were out on the streets en masse. Because it then became an Islamic society, traditional men could not keep the women out of the public sphere anymore, couldn’t keep their girls from going to school, because now it was an Islamic society and there was no reason to do that. So now 65 percent of university students are women. Women are in all sorts of spheres of professional endeavor. Women drive, they vote, they can hold a public position. Now, 34 million women are in Iran right now, out of a population of 70 million. Zahra Rahnavard, who is the wife of Mousavi, campaigned with her husband – a completely unusual experience. There’s never been such a thing where women campaigned with their husbands. It was a very sort of American, political sort of hand-me-down. And she ran with it. And she and her husband vowed that if they won there would be women in the Cabinet for the first time, they would lobby for reform of the law and the legal process so that women had their rights in a court of law, as well as in the rest of society. Faezeh Rafsanjani, who is the daughter of Hashemi Rafsanjani – I’ve been interviewing her for years. She was the head of the Olympic Committee, she’s been very, very active in women’s affairs and youth affairs in Iran. And she, again, is active right now. You know, she was arrested briefly on Saturday and then released. She’s a very powerful woman and has represented Iran in sports and, as I said, the Olympic Committee often. And go back to 1997 when the first Reformist President, Mohammed Khatami, was elected. It was the women and the young people of Iran that put him over the top. So, yes, the women have a huge, huge role to play and they’re getting more and more demanding because their numbers are growing and they won’t … and their demands are growing as well. And each of the candidates opposing Ahmadinejad, whether it was Mousavi or Karrubi or even Mohsen Rezaee, the Conservative. Each one said that they would pay attention to women’s rights if they were elected. So it is a very important movement.Look, women are very courageous, as you know. In all societies, women are often the strongest in civil wars, in famines, in crises like that. I remember during the siege of Bosnia, it was the women who kept the societies going and kept their families and their societies alive. In Iran, as I say, women have been very active for a long time, despite the fact that they have to wear the hijab and the veil, and despite the fact that in a court of law they’re not equal to men. But right now, if you look at what’s going on in the streets, it’s young people by and large, but it’s women in hijabs and chadors, as well as women in the more fashionable Western makeup and garb.
Iran has the largest Shi’ite population in the world. Revolting against tyranny is part of the Shi'ite tradition. Protest and martyrdom are considered duties to God. The Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, believed it was better to die fighting injustice than to live with injustice under illegitimate rule. In the 7th century, he led an uprising of fewer than 100 people against the Umayyad dynasty knowing they would be massacred. His tomb in Karbala is one of the two holiest Shi’ite shrines.
Shi’ite Muslims mourn their dead on the 3rd, 7th and 40th day after a person dies. The revolutionaries of 1979 exploited the population’s passion for martyrdom, and the mourning cycle, to agitate opposition towards the Shah. The pattern of confrontation between the Shah’s security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles. With the death of so many protestors, the current regime may encounter a similar phenomenon.
When protestors flooded the streets of Tehran after the election, it was a public display of dissent regarding perceived electoral fraud. The protestors were not attempting a coup or launching a revolution. When the Ayatollah decided to ignore public sentiment and establish political authority through oppression and violence, he sent a clear message to Iranian voters that democratic elections are a farce in Iran. Iranian authorities decided to blame the entire matter on international interference rather than acknowledging the protests as a legitimate expression of the voice of the people. In doing so, they may have planted the seeds for a future revolution. Given the role of women in the last several elections and their role in the current protests, I wonder if we are witnessing the first revolution in human history to be initiated by women.
Based on the strategy pursued by the Iranian authorities thus far, it seems probable that the Ayatollah, the hard-line clerics and Ahmadinejad will continue to crackdown on protestors until the uprising is quelled. Many demonstrators have simply vanished, leaving concerned family and friends worried and scared.
Regardless of what transpires in coming weeks, I hope people around the world remember the Iranian protestors when the media decides the story has run its course. It is already beginning to fade from the headlines, replaced by tributes to Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon.
Through these protests, the world has been allowed to hear the opinions of Iranian people. People who don’t agree the regime have effectively utilized social media to get their message out to the rest of the world, despite the government’s attempt to silence them. The outpouring of global support for the women of Iran, and the thousands of other protestors filling the streets, has been inspired by the tenacity and passion that these people have demonstrated in the face of adversity. In the absence of support from their government, they will need the support of the world to succeed in changing the course of Iranian politics and to achieve the democracy they deserve.
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