gender equality in iran essay

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Middle East

Struggle for gender equality in iran began generations before the latest protests.

Rund Abdelfatah

Ramtin Arablouei

In light of the ongoing protests in Iran, NPR history podcast Throughline explores Iranian women's long history of political activism.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

For nearly two months, Iranians have been protesting following the death of a woman in the custody of Iran's morality police. She was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab inappropriately. And her name was Mahsa Amini. She's also known by her Kurdish name, Jina Amini. She's from Iran's Kurdish minority, which has historically faced state repression. Now, the symbol of the protests following her death has often been the hijab, but the story goes much deeper than that. Today Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei from NPR's history podcast Throughline explore how women's long history of political activism in Iran is also part of the Iranian people's fight for self-determination.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RUND ABDELFATAH, BYLINE: Women have been at the center of politics in Iran for more than a hundred years. By the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, they'd won freedoms, including the right to vote and initiate divorce.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The end of Iran's monarchy came early today when Khomeini's followers took control of the palace of the shah.

ABDELFATAH: But within weeks of toppling the shah, Iran's new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, began restricting women's activities and dress, starting with an order that they cover their heads in government offices. This kicked off years of battles between the clerics and leaders running the country and women who were pushing back, looking for ways to gain autonomy, even under restrictive laws.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).

RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, BYLINE: In 1997, nearly 20 years after the revolution, there was a historic presidential election in Iran, where nearly 80% of eligible voters turned out. And the winner was a cleric named Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami. Western media portrayed him as a moderate.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The smiling face of moderation, or at least what's considered moderate in Iran.

ARZOO OSANLOO: Some social freedoms with Khatami were starting to emerge. Young people could walk together, you know, boyfriends and girlfriends hold hands in public.

ARABLOUEI: This is Arzoo Osanloo, an Iranian American legal anthropologist who's studied Iran's legal system for decades.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: He has promised more rights, more freedom and a better life within the Islamic system.

ABDELFATAH: During the Khatami presidency, women began pushing more and more against the dress code, too, and more women were elected to Parliament than any time since the revolution, proposing laws that would further strengthen the rights of women. Many of Iran's conservatives didn't like it.

OSANLOO: This is around when we started to see a lot of pushback to women's ability to employ and make use of the actual existing Iranian constitution and the set of civil codes, enhance them and get rights and concessions.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).

ARABLOUEI: In 2005, Mohammad Khatami left office after serving two terms as president. So Iranian voters went to the polls and elected a new president, a man who'd never held national office.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

OSANLOO: When Ahmadinejad becomes president, he actually campaigns on this platform that really speaks to a greater emphasis on so-called traditional roles, what some people might call conservative roles of women as nurturers, raising the children and guiding the family.

ARABLOUEI: Ahmadinejad took a much more conservative line than Khatami.

OSANLOO: There is an uptake, again, of women's bodily comportment, their clothing, how they express themselves in public and a kind of surveillance of women.

ABDELFATAH: To be clear, this surveillance also included violence. Iran's morality police force was established in the 1990s to enforce social rules, like proper hijab for women. Under the Ahmadinejad administration, they became more aggressive in their enforcement, which included arrests, alleged beatings and sometimes lashings. So in 2009, when Ahmadinejad won his second term, protests erupted in what became known as the Green Movement.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #5: The incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was announced as the overwhelming winner. But many Iranians refuse to believe it.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).

ARABLOUEI: Government forces cracked down hard, killing people in the street and arresting thousands. The regime was willing to go to great lengths to scale back the reforms many people, including women, had fought hard to win.

OSANLOO: Iran is a country that is still in a revolution. If you look at the constitution, it's the constitution of the Revolutionary Islamic Republic. And so the way that the women are dressed comes to stand in for this timelessness of the revolutionary struggle. And so the idea of women sort of not wearing this, what does that mean for our incomplete revolutionary struggle that we're fighting?

ABDELFATAH: And so after the Green Movement was squashed by government repression, the work of the morality police went on, including the surveillance.

OSANLOO: The better term for this is guidance police. And I think we can also see how this is an echo of the (non-English language spoken), the guardianship of the jurisprudence, because one of the big debates was - what does it mean to be a guide, a moral guide or a guardian of jurisprudence? Are you just somebody who's there to, like, suggest I change my practices? Or are you there with veto power? And I think we know the answer to the (non-English language spoken) today. We know very well.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Say her name.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Mahsa.

ABDELFATAH: It is a brutal cycle. Iranian women carve out more space and more rights, and the regime tightens its grip in response.

OSANLOO: It's not just about Islam. It's not just about the state. It's about something greater. And it's about what women - not men - what women signify for the state beyond Iran, not just in Iran. It's a message about the revolutionary values that have guided and led Iran's Islamic Republic since 1979.

FADEL: That was Arzoo Osanloo speaking with Throughline hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei. You can hear the whole episode by finding Throughline wherever you get your podcasts.

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The role of women in building Iran’s future

Fariba Parsa

For more than a century, Iranian women have worked for change and fought for their freedom. Under the system in place in the Islamic Republic, however, they continue to face systematic, widespread legal discrimination. The law does not treat them as equal citizens in matters of crime and punishment, individual freedom such as travel and work, and personal status, like marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Despite the hurdles they currently face, with organization, unity, and common purpose, Iranian women are capable of changing history and building a new future for their country.

More than a century of history 

Iran has a long history of women’s activism. The women’s social movement began in early 1905 during the constitutional revolution, when a broad-based popular movement demanded checks on the absolute power of the Qajar monarchy. In 1910, the first women's journal was published. During the Pahlavi monarchy from 1920 to 1979, women made major progress in education, employment, and political participation. In 1935 the first group of women enrolled at Tehran University; in 1963 women obtained the right to vote; and in 1968 Iran appointed its first female minister of education. 

Since the revolution in 1979, Iranian women have experienced the Islamization of their country through laws regulating their attire (such as that requiring the hejab ), enforcing certain Islamic traditions (such as the legal age of marriage), and expanding men’s authority over women, a move justified by reference to “family values.” During these same years of Islamization, however, the level of education, literacy rates, and the percentage of women attending university all increased dramatically. In Iran, 97 percent of women  are literate, and more than 60  percent of university students are now female. Never before have so many women been educated as journalists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and artists. However, this is not reflected in equal representation in the workforce. In fact, only 15.2 percent  of Iranian women are employed, compared to 64 percent of men, and their representation in political life is even less: There are currently only 17 female members — a total of just 6 percent of MPs — in the Iranian Parliament ( Majlis ), elected in 2016. In the 1980 election only 4 women — 1 percent — were elected to the Islamic Republic’s first Majlis.

Legal discrimination 

No other demographic in Iran is so united, organized, and committed to making changes in the pursuit of freedom and democracy as women are. This determination is often borne out of experience as discriminatory laws have forced thousands of women to become change makers and leaders. Indeed, all women in Iran, irrespective of their education, social status, ethnicity, age, religious, or political beliefs, face discrimination  under the law, which does not treat them as citizens with equal rights. As a result, regardless of their political beliefs, women across Iran feel a sense of solidarity, empathy, and compassion toward other women and girls who face legal hurdles regarding marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance, and criminal cases. 

Iranian law treats citizens differently depending on their gender: If a car hits a pedestrian, the punishment for the driver and compensation to the victim are halved if the latter is a woman. A married woman may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without the written permission of her husband. This law has come under massive criticism in the last several years, especially since the Islamic Republic got its first female vice president in 2017, Masoumeh Ebtekar — according to the law, even she needs to obtain written permission to get a passport or travel. 

There have been other high-prolife cases regarding limitations on women’s ability to obtain passports and travel aboard in recent years as well. One such controversial case involved Niloufar Ardalan, an Iranian female football star known as “Lady Goal,” who was unable to play in an international tournament in 2015 because her husband refused to give her permission to travel abroad.  Under the civil code , a husband enjoys the right to choose the family’s place of residence and can prevent his wife from practicing certain professions if he deems them against “family values.” 

Getting organized 

But Iranian society has changed and the majority of men and women, who are young and highly educated, reject these discriminatory laws. From 2005 to 2009 Iranian women from a variety of different religious and political backgrounds started a movement , known as the “One Million Signatures Campaign.” Active in most major cities in the country, it mobilized several thousand women to collect signatures against legal discrimination in Iran. As photos and videos on social media make clear, young men were active in the movement too and participated in collecting signatures. The government identified the group as a threat against the regime and hundreds of activists were arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for several years. While the campaign did not reach its goal of one million signatures, the activists succeeded in creating awareness about legal discrimination by organizing hundreds of seminars and protests in front of government buildings, courts, and public spaces. 

Women in Iran were active in the Green Movement that arose in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections, and they have continued to fight for gender equality in the years since through different actions. One such effort is the  “My Stealthy Freedom”  campaign, led by Masih Alinejad since 2014, in which Iranian women post photos of themselves without headscarves. More recently, women were present on the street during protests in 2018 and 2019 as well.  

What’s next?

Women could play a significant role in building something new, but only if they can become more organized and united around their common interests. To effect lasting, transformational change, Iranian women will need to come together to organize politically. Leveraging deeply ingrained cultural attitudes toward maternity, the women of Iran could form their own political party, “the Mothers of Iran,” to push for change, freedom, and democracy. In Iran, the image of a mother is one of a wise, kind, generous person who sacrifices herself for the well-being of others. These are also the qualities of great leaders. If properly organized, such a political party could elect its members to Parliament and become powerful enough that the regime could not ignore its demands. Drawing support from women regardless of ethnicity, religious belief, education, and social status, such a party could leverage the special status of mothers in Iranian society to bring about political change.

Establishing a women’s or feminist political party is not a new idea. There are examples from a number of other countries that could serve as a guide, such as the  Women's Equality Party , a British political party set up in 2015, or the Feminist Party , a Finnish political party registered in 2016 that has elected a member to the City Council of Helsinki. 

In the same vein, it is time for the women of Iran to take on a greater role in the country’s political life to drive change and use their leadership skills to benefit all of Iran’s people. 

Fariba Parsa is the founder and president of Women’s E-Learning in leadership, WELL and an affiliated faculty at George Mason University, Center for Women and Gender Studies. The views expressed in this article are her own. 

Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click her e .

UN Women statement on women’s rights in Iran

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In recent days Iran has seen deep public unrest, with demonstrations and protests taking place in some 80 cities, triggered by the tragic death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained by authorities in Tehran on 13 September and died, while in custody, three days later.

UN Women stands with the women of Iran in their rightful demands to protest injustice without reprisal, and to be free to exercise their bodily autonomy, including their choice of dress and also supports them in seeking accountability, and the upholding of their basic human rights as stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations.

We call on relevant authorities to support and enable the expression of their full human rights in a safe environment without fear of violence, prosecution, or persecution. We align with the remarks by the  High Commissioner for Human Rights  on the need to ensure the rights to due process and release for all women who have been arbitrarily detained and with the  Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council , in the call for the Iranian authorities to hold an independent, impartial, and prompt investigation into Ms Amini’s death, to make the findings of the investigation public and to hold all perpetrators accountable.

We reiterate our expression of condolences to the family of Mahsa Amini. We remain steadfast in upholding the rights of women and girls in every part of the world.

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It Is All in Their Positioning: Academic Women’s Silence in Iran

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From a gender perspective, Iran is an unequal country, ranking 150 out of 156 in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Survey. We examine women’s silence in an academic setting in Iran using positioning theory to understand discursive practices that contribute to women’s silence. We argue that women’s silence in Iran is regularly reinforced with storylines that impact upon, and constrain, women’s sense of self on an interpersonal and individual level. These storylines emanate from the macro, meso and organizational environments. We provide recommendations to local and international organizations operating in Iran that are conducive for creating new storylines to reduce women’s silence.

Introduction

Women face inequality throughout the world (Mezias , Newbury , & Budde-Sung , 2019) , but especially in Iran. The World Economic Forum 's (2021) Global Gender Gap survey reveals that Iran ranks 150 out of 156 countries in terms of gender equality, suggesting inequality for women is high. There are a multitude of factors contributing to this inequality stemming from the context of Iran, including unjust and discriminatory laws, the strong influence of the patriarchal interpretation of the Islamic religion, and cultural values that strongly position women as being the caretaker of the family. This virtuous burden creates the storyline [1] that women are less suited for professional, managerial or leadership roles. This contributes to women facing inequality in the workplace including a lack of participation in managerial or leadership positions, disrespect for women in the workforce, and a raft of injustices at the micro, meso and macro levels. As a result of the multiple storylines positioning women in disempowered positions, women are regularly silenced or become silent.

In this paper we consider academic women’s silence in a university in Iran using positioning theory (Davies & Harré , 1990) . Firstly, we provide the context for women in Iran in relation to other Middle Eastern countries. Then we explain positioning theory, which we use to understand how women are positioned to be silent or become silenced by others. Finally, we provide recommendations for organizations, both local and international, that are operating in Iran on how they can contribute to creating new storylines for reducing women’s silence.

The Context of Iran in Relation to Other Middle Eastern Countries

According to the Global Gender Gap survey women face a lack of equality in the Middle Eastern region generally including Iran. Table 1 indicates Middle Eastern countries share the same religion, that being Islam, and most countries have a similar score for gender parity ranging from Yemen being 0.492, to Jordan being 0.638. The outlier country in the Middle East is the United Arab Emirates, known for its ‘western orientations’ with it being ranked 72 out of 156 countries and having a gender parity of 0.716, which is greater than all other Middle Eastern countries. Middle Eastern countries have close to parity in terms of education, meaning that men and women equally access education. Unfortunately, this parity does not translate into economic or political participation. Murray & Zhang-Zhang (2018) specify that whilst women in Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) are encouraged to get educated, factors including cultural stereotypes, unfavourable laws and discrimination in the workplace, prevent women from being employed resulting in a lack of economic parity. Iran the focus of our paper is one of least gender equal countries in the Middle East scoring 0.582 in overall parity. Iran follows the trend of the other Middle Eastern countries in respect to parity in educational attainment, but a lack of parity in economic participation. This similarity in context amongst most Middle Eastern countries, suggests that our findings presented below may be relevant to these countries.

1. Sourced from the globaledge.msu.edu/global-insights/country . 2. Sourced from the World Economic Forum 2021 Global Gender Gap Survey

Country context can have a profound effect on the role of gender in business (Franzke & Froese , 2019) . Women in Iran face inequity due to a patriarchal culture, society and interpretation of Islam dominant in the country along with unequal laws pertaining to women’s rights and agency. Previous research indicates that 20% of the workforce are female, including in the university sector, and women’s salary is only 18% of men’s (Beyerle, 2008), suggesting bias and discrimination against women influencing their participation in the workforce.

Iran is a Muslim country which is governed by Sharia law informed by Islam. Whilst the laws are not explicitly anti-women, there are instances where women’s freedom and agency to make decisions about their lives is taken away. For example, a husband must give permission to a woman to get a passport or to travel overseas or to work in a particular profession, and a man has the right to divorce his wife, but a woman has no such right. These behaviors put women at a disadvantage in society as well as in the workforce (Javidan & Dastmalchian , 2003; Rezai-Rashti , 2015) . Iran follows a very traditional culture which places a strong importance on the family and distinct roles of men and women in a family; women’s primary role is designated as being a mother, wife and caretaker of the family. This conflicts with the role of being a worker, professional, academic, manager or leader. There is a deep rooted tradition of authoritarianism in Iran which is demonstrated by a high score on power distance in the GLOBE study (5.43) (Javidan & Dastmalchian , 2003) . This, coupled with a low score on gender egalitarianism of 2.99, suggests a male-dominated and patriarchal society (GLOBE , 2004) . Iranians avoid direct communication and conflict preferring to use vague and indirect language (Javidan & Dastmalchian , 2003) , which promotes confirmatory thinking and may further hinder expression of progressive ideas, exacerbating women’s silence. These macro factors cumulatively position women to refrain from speaking up.

Positioning Theory and Women’s Silence

To provide insights into women’s silence we utilise positioning theory (Davies & Harré , 1990) , which is about rights and duties that different people have according to their position in life and social settings; not everyone has the same rights and duties, especially women, who tend to have less rights, and more duties. A position determines the communication modes that people can use. An individual’s understanding of their social identity, their world and place within it is discursively created, and this discourse emanates from political, cultural and social contexts. A person’s position is based on (a) their first-order positioning, which is how people initially position themselves without any influence from the external environment (Harré & Van Langenhove , 1991) , (b) second-order positioning which is what a person is forbidden or permitted to do by others (Harré , 2016) , and (c) positions that determine people’s behaviour informed by how they perceive their beliefs, rights, duties and obligations (Van Langenhove , 2020) . As a result, (c) is the interaction between (a) and (b). Therefore, a person’s behavioural positioning is influenced by their first-order and second-order positioning. We represent this in Figure 1 .

Women’s Silence in Iran

Based on 20 semi-structured interviews with women (15) and men (5) conducted at an Iranian university by the first author, we provide insights into how women are being silenced. The women interviewed had mainly more junior level or less powerful positions academically (i.e., lecturer, assistant professor) and managerially (i.e., office manager). The men interviewed held more senior and powerful positions such as heads of departments or senior managers at the University. The women interviewed for the study were on average 50 years old, whilst the men were on average 45 years old. Interviews were conducted in Farsi, and then translated to English by the first author, and then checked by the fourth author. The University has an international orientation, as it encourages staff to publish in international journals, collaborate with international academics, including having sabbaticals in foreign countries, and it has international students. The international orientation of the university makes the findings relevant for international organizations that are operating within, or from Iran. Ghorbani and Tung (2007) make similar arguments in their study around the applicability of their findings to multinationals operating in Iran.

First-Order Positioning

For women’s first-order positioning, women reported their fear of speaking, and how they lacked confidence and self-esteem to speak. Ghorbani and Tung (2007) also report that women in Iran lacked self-confidence. Their internal voices also indicated that they preferred to avoid conflict and arguments as reflected in the following quote by a female participant: “A woman does not dare to comment, and she cannot say ‘I disagree’. She is ashamed to speak. Women are shy or dare not argue, because it is not in their nature to do so.”

Women reported that they were socialised to behave this way, deferring to the authority of males, including men in the family. This developed in them and acceptance of their subordinate position in the society. Women reported they internally silenced themselves, because they feared retribution from male colleagues, and that speaking up could have ‘consequences’, for their performance appraisal or survival at the University. A similar finding was reported by Aiston & Fo (2021) that women in Hong Kong universities use self-silencing as a strategy to get ahead in their careers. These findings indicate the women’s first-order positioning influences them to be silent (Davies & Harré , 1990) .

Second-Order Positioning: What Others Permit Women to Do

For second-order positioning it is apparent that the external context, occurring at the macro, organizational and interpersonal level had potent effects on silencing women. From a macro perspective we found that religion, laws and culture had a cumulative effect on silencing women. Several participants noted that the patriarchal interpretation of Islam (Murray & Zhang-Zhang , 2018) expected women to keep silent. For example, a female participant reported that she felt uncomfortable speaking to a man “because under Islam looking at a man could be seen as sinful”. Another woman participant reflected on how laws in Iran do not outrightly support women, as there is no equal opportunity or sexual harassment law in place. Even if there were laws in place, participants noted that “culturally laws weren’t implemented.” The strong impact of culture in Iran, positioned women as caregivers first, wife second, and worker third, which is similar to other GCCs (Murray & Zhang-Zhang , 2018) . We found evidence of women being positioned as inferior to men, for example, “women’s testimony in a court of law is worth half or a third of men’s”, thus devaluing women’s voices.

The organizational environment of the university was male dominated where men were in positions of power and decision making and women were subordinated to lower-level management or academic positions. Women were seldom given any senior management positions which can be explained by Acker 's (1990) gendered theory of organizations. This status quo was further legitimized by a male participant who explained, “there is a cultural reason for why universities in Iran have never had a female president”. We found that women were silenced due to the power and control men had in the organization, and the strong bureaucratic rules that existed in the organization (Acker , 1990) .

At an interpersonal level, it was found that women were often excluded from male decision-making, informal communication and discussion. This finding is consistent with Ghorbani and Tung’s (2007) reporting of the existence of the ‘old boys’ network’ in Iran. A woman reported that she found it pointless to contribute to organizational decision making because in her mind, decisions were already made informally before a formal meeting occurred. In addition to exclusion, women experienced harassment, and ridicule from male colleagues, and there were descriptions of the organization being a “violent system which is not suitable for women.” The cumulative influence of these exclusive and abusive discursive practices, put women in a subordinate position where they feel excluded and threatened, limiting their ability to speak.

Silent Positioning of Women

With women’s own internal views of themselves inhibiting them from speaking, along with the discursive practices emanating from the external environment further hindering them from speaking out, women regularly position themselves and are positioned to remain silent. Some indicative quotations of women’s silent position include:

Women who are introverted have two things in common. One is the status of women as well as the supportive environment. If the two collide, that is, a woman is completely introverted and the environment does not support her, the two can lead to silence.

Given women’s background, they have either learned to be silent, or the environment does not allow them to speak.

Future Prospects and Policy Implications for Local and Multinational Organizations in Iran: Changing Women’s Positioning

The gap between the goals of seeking gender equality and reality is still distant (Budde-Sung , Bullough , Kalafatogulu , & Moore , 2019) . Nonetheless, in our study, we did find new, promising storylines emerging from the observations made by female and male participants for example a male participant observed that “ the traditions of the past have faded ” which was the result of increased education of females in Iran. A similar observation was made by Ghorbani and Tung (2007) who concluded that the values towards women in the workforce in Iran were changing and becoming supportive. To move women’s position from being silent to voiced, we argue that both internal and external discursive practices need to change. Informed by optimistic storylines emanating from the participants of our study (that is from the interviewees), the following is suggested to change women’s position from silent to voiced within organizations in Iran, both locally and internationally:

Develop empowerment training for women to improve confidence.

Form and develop women’s groups/unions to support each other to build confidence and progress women’s equality.

Second-Order Positioning

Interpersonal:

Create training for men to change their attitudes towards women in the workplace.

Incentivize men to contribute to care-giving responsibilities at home.

Organizational:

Implement affirmative action to increase the number of women in the organization and in management.

Implement Work-Life Balance policies so women can balance home and work responsibilities.

Whilst these recommendations maybe a tall order, especially in a patriarchal country such as Iran, having more women participating in the workforce and leadership roles, will allow the economy to be more productive by untapping underutilized human resources (Murray & Zhang-Zhang , 2018) . In addition, this gives women in Iran better human rights, including the human right to work and have a family, free of harassment, discrimination and inequality.

About the Authors

Leila Lotfi Dehkharghani ( [email protected] ) is a PhD student at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran and the University of Warsaw, in Poland, her research interests are in organisational silence for employees, women’s silence in academia in Iran and Poland. Leila is also interested in qualitative research methods and grounded theory. Leila has taught courses in field of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management at Azad University. Jane Menzies , PhD ( [email protected] ) is a Senior lecturer of International Business, and the Director for the Master of Business Administration (International) at Deakin University. Her research interests are in internationalization of firms, gender issues in international business and transitional issues of international students. Jane has published in International Journal of Consumer Studies, International Journal of Conflict Management, Management International Review, Human Resource Management Review, International Trade Journal, Australian Journal of Career Development, and a range of education journals. Jane enjoys supervising PhD students; bringing 6 to completion in the past few years. Jane is the secretary for the Australia and New Zealand International Business Academy (ANZIBA). Harsh Suri , PhD ( [email protected] ) is an Associate Professor in Learning Futures at Deakin University. In addition to publishing in top-tier journals, like the Review of Educational Research, she has published a monograph included in the Routledge Research in Education Series. Her research is fostering inclusive approaches to evidence informed policy and practice across a wide range of disciplines. In education, her research spans across digital education, inclusive education and cross-sector partnerships for promoting graduate employability, social justice and environmental sustainability. Yaghoob Maharati , PhD ( [email protected] ) is an Associate Professor at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. His field of study is management and organization. He has recently published in International Journal of Tourism Research, and Innovation Management Journal. He is also a supervisor of PhD and master students of management study.

A storyline is a term used by Davies & Harré (1990) to explain a person’s position in life. I.e. when one takes up a position, for instance, a female, or male, they will use storylines to explain their position in life.

Submitted : October 14, 2021 EDT

Accepted : March 31, 2022 EDT

• Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Gender Equality and Empowerment in Iran: A Comparison between Ahmadinejad's and Rouhani's Governments

• Jalil Roshandel , Fatemeh Sadeghi , Shima Tadrisi
• Villanova University
• Volume 42, Number 3, Spring 2019
• 10.1353/jsa.2019.0014
• View Citation

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• v.6(4); 2014 Jul

Women’s Empowerment in Iran: A Review Based on the Related Legislations

Roksana janghorban.

1 Student Research Committee, Department of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Ali Taghipour

2 Health Sciences Research Center, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Health, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Robab Latifnejad Roudsari

3 Evidence-Based Care Research Centre, Department of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Mahmoud Abbasi

4 Medical Ethics and Law Research Center, Shahid Behshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Women’s empowerment can be defined as a change in the circumstances of a woman’s life, which enables her to raise her capacity to manage more enriched and rewarding life. Improvement in women’s empowerment is a salient issue to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. National laws are influential factors in promoting women’s empowerment. Lack of awareness of legal and constitutional provisions and failure to recognize it, is a factor that hinders the process of empowerment. This paper provides a review based on Iranian legislations which have considered various aspects of women’s empowerment. Although this work has specifically dealt with women’s needs, it encompasses a right–based approach to women’s empowerment suggested by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. However, there is still a great need for further inquiries in the area of legislations concerning women’s empowerment around the world in general and Iran in particular.

1. Introduction

Empowerment is an active and multidimensional process which enables women to realize their full identity and powers in all spheres of life ( Pillai, 1995 ). There are five issues relating to women’s empowerment: a woman’s sense of self-value and respect; the right to have choices and decision making power; access to various opportunities, prospects and means; the right to have the power to control their own lives; and the ability to influence trends in social change to create more social and economic orders, both nationally and internationally ( Secretariat of the United Nations, 2001 ). The Program of Action, International Conference on Population and Development (PoA, ICPD) stresses that the empowerment of women and the expansion of their political, social, economic, and health status are not only significantly important issues for themselves, but are vital for the achievement of sustainable human development ( United Nations Population Information Network, 1994c ). The most impressive element for the development is human talent of a country. Women make up one-half of the potential talents in the world. Therefore, national development greatly depends on how the society provides opportunities to flourish its females’ talents and then, gets advantage of their skills and productivity ( Jager & Rohwer, 2009 ). In recent years, the empowerment of women has been recognized as the most fundamental concern in determining women’s status and position. Therefore, the women’s empowerment is a critical aspect of promoting gender equality ( United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], 2011 ). It is fulfilled when the individuals’ rights, responsibilities, and opportunities are not influenced by the gender- based judgment of being born male or female ( Jager & Rohwer, 2009 ).

In the Iranian Constitution like many other countries, the principles of women’s empowerment and gender equality have been preserved. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (The rights of the people), Article 20 states that under Iranian law, all citizens of the country, both men and women, are equally protected against the law and have all the political, economic, social, and cultural rights in accordance with Islamic rules ( Article 20, 1928 ). It is notable that apart from the fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran for all citizens in 1928, women’s rights have clearly been spelt out in the nation’s constitution. In the preamble of the Iranian constitution, in the section of ‘Woman in the Constitution’, it has been indicated that:

Through the creation of Islamic social infrastructures, all the elements of humanity that served the multifaceted foreign exploitation shall regain their true identity and human rights. As part of this process, it is only natural that women should benefit from a particularly large augmentation of their rights because of the greater oppression from which they suffered under the old regime ( Woman in the Constitution, 1979 ).

The constitution Article 21 clearly states that the government must ensure the rights of women in all spheres and is responsible for creating favorable contexts for the growth of women’s personalities and the revitalization of their material and moral rights ( Article 21, 1928 ). The Iranian Constitution has also drawn special attention to the role of women in the family. In this regard it states that: ‘The family is the fundamental unit of society, and the main center for the growth and edification of human beings…’. This view of the family unit safeguard women from being considered as an object or instrument in the service of promoting consumerism and exploitation. Not only does a woman recover, thereby, she also assumes a pioneering social role, becoming a fellow partner alongside a man in all crucial aspects of life. As a result of the great responsibilities that a woman takes upon herself, she is accorded great value and nobility in Islam ( ‘Woman in the Constitution’, 1979 ). The primary object of these legislative principles is to bring about the advancement, development, and empowerment of women in Iranian society. The present paper attempts to provide a review based on Iranian legislations which have considered various aspects of women’s empowerment including access to education, financial autonomy, sexual and reproductive rights, and political participation.

2. Educational Empowerment

Education, which means having the minimum ability to read and write, provides skills which enable people to earn a living, as well as the circumstances in which the ability to think for one’s self, communicate and experience life more completely is valued ( Gallaway & Bernasek, 2004 ). United Nations Population Information Network has emphasized: ‘Education is one of the most important means of empowering women with the knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to participate fully in the development process’ ( United Nations Population Information Network, 1994b ). One of the 2000 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is also to achieve primary education for every child by 2015. Another MDGs Goal, i.e., ‘To promote gender equality and empowering women’, centers on eliminating inequality between genders in primary and secondary education (United Nations [UN], 2000). Policies focusing on primary education for girls are certainly the best way to increase literacy among females. A complement to this policy is the provision of literacy training in women in order to improve their labor market outcomes in the short run and to contribute to their empowerment and the empowerment of their daughters in the long term. These targets have been considered in existing laws in Iran as well.

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (general principles) Article 3, has a special focus on free education and training for everyone at all levels as well as facilitation and expansion of higher education ( Article 3, 1928 ). The law on the Socio-cultural Council of Women, Article 1, has focused on elevating the level of public knowledge and literacy and also on adopting the appropriate policies in the fields of women’s K-12 and Higher Education ( Article 1, 1997 ). In order to cancel the restrictions of girls admission in certain university courses, it is usually permissible for female volunteers to study in any field they choose unless they are faced with practical prohibition ( Decree on Cancellation, 1989 ). Policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Women’s Employment, Article 7 have emphasized the provision of facilities required for utilizing the capabilities of educated women as well as expert and specialist women ( Article 7, 1992 ). Article 11 of the same document emphasizes that technical and vocational education and appropriate occupational opportunities shall be facilitated for women who are the breadwinners of their families ( Article 11, 1992 ).

3. Economic Empowerment

Economic empowerment implies that women are able to take on productive activities that confer some degree of financial independence, however, small and burdensome they may be initially ( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 1993 ). ICPD, PoA, 1994, has highlighted: ‘As women are generally the poorest of the poor … eliminating social, cultural, political and economic discrimination against women is a prerequisite of eradicating poverty … in the context of sustainable development’ ( United Nations Population Information Network, 1994a ). In many societies around the world, women never entirely belong to themselves; they own less than one percent of the world’s property while they compose 66 percent of the global workforce and produce half of the food ( UN Women, 2009 ; United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2011 ). In the circumstances where women have no control over money, they are unlikely to provide health care for themselves or their children ( CARE, 2005 ).

To foster women’s economic empowerment, the government of Iran has worked to set laws to support their livelihoods, financial provisions in divorce cases, and women’s access to labor opportunities ( Article 1107, 1928 ; Article 1082, 1928 ; Article 1092, 1928 ; Article 7, 1998 ; Article 1118, 1928 ; Article 1106, 1928 ; Article 1111, 1928 ). As soon as the marriage is contracted, the wife becomes the possessor of the marriage portion ( Mahriyya ) Note 1 and can do anything with it, as she wishes ( Article 1082, 1928 ), and if the husband divorces his wife before intercourse, the wife will be entitled to receive half of the marriage portion ( Article 1092, 1928 ). If the marriage portion was in Rial (the Iranian currency) at the time of marriage, it is calculated and paid, whenever the wife requests it, based on changes in the annual price index, announced by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran ( Article 1082, 1928 ). If the husband appeals to the court to divorce his wife, the court is responsible to determine how the marriage portion will be paid ( Article 7, 1998 ). The wife can independently possess and do anything with her own property ( Article 1118, 1928 ). In a permanent marriage the wife’s alimony (Nafaqa) must be paid by the husband ( Article 1106, 1928 ). Alimony is the money which covers all ordinary requirements of the wife including housing, clothing, food, house furniture, and appliances appropriate to the wife’s social status; and also money for employing a domestic servant if she is accustomed to having one or needs one due to being ill or disabled ( Article 1107, 1928 ). In the case of the husband’s refusal to pay alimony, the wife can appeal to a court of law in which the judge will determine the amount of the alimony and order the husband to pay it ( Article 1111, 1928 ). In addition, various laws have been legislated for the economic empowerment of women in the social framework ( Article 2, 1992 ; Article 3, 1992 ; Article 4, 1992 ; Article 9, 1992 ). Since women’s employment in cultural, social, economic and administrative occupations is a prerequisite for the achievement of social justice and the advancement of a society, special attention must be paid to this issue ( Article 2, 1992 ). For better management of all household affairs and fulfillment of social responsibilities, cooperation of all family members with each other is of special significance ( Article 3, 1992 ). The circumstances of the women’s workplace in society must be prepared in a manner in which the grounds for women’s spiritual, scientific, and professional development are provided. Furthermore, women’s faith, personality, dignity as well as mental, spiritual, and physical health should not be damaged in any way ( Article 4, 1992 ). Also, in an equal condition the work of men and women should be valued equally and equal salary and benefits must be regarded as well ( Article 9, 1992 ). Considering the central role that the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran gives to the stability of the family as well as women in training and procreation inside the home, the required regulations and facilities proportionate to ‘motherly occupation’ including: paid maternity leave, reduction in working hours, retirement benefits with less length of service, job security, and social security during unemployment period, sickness, or inability to work have been ratified ( Article 10, 1992 ).

4. Political Empowerment

According to UNESCO, ‘political empowerment would encompass the ability to organize and mobilize for a change. Consequently, an empowerment process must involve not only individual awareness but collective awareness and collective action. The notion of collective action is fundamental to the aim of attaining social transformation’ ( UNESCO, 1993 ). Women’s political participation is an important issue in the context of empowerment. Desai and Thakkar (2001) have discussed women’s political participation, legal rights, and education as mechanisms for their empowerment ( Desai & Thakkar, 2001 ). Based on conventional analysis, women’s political participation means activities related to electoral politics like voting, campaigning, holding party office, and competing in an election. But in a broader sense it encompasses all voluntary actions intended to influence the making of public policies, the administration of public affairs, and the choice of political leaders at all levels of government ( Nayak & Mahanta, 2009 ).

Legislation in Iran has created a new political atmosphere in which women’s voices can be heard and a consensus can be forged. It has also endeavored to empower women by training them to negotiate on a global basis, particularly since the end of the Iraq war, which shaped a resurgence in women’s activity. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has remarked that numerous government organizations are functioning primarily in areas such as legislation and research as regards the legal and socio-economic status of women (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 1993). According to Iranian women’s employment policies, government is committed to encourage educated and experienced specialist women to occupy managerial and staff positions, in order to utilize women’s effectiveness at high executive levels ( Article 6, 1992 ). Currently, in Iran eight women are working as Members of Parliament, which is promising in terms of taking into account the issue of political empowerment of women in Iran. This demonstrates the potential of Iranian women in participating in decision making processes at the highest policy level.

5. Reproductive and Sexual Empowerment

Women’s empowerment is an essential requirement for sound reproductive health ( Secretariat of the United Nations, 2001 ). The concept of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) was first declared as a human right at ICPD, 1994. The definition of reproductive health that was adopted also embodied sexual health ( World Health Organization [WHO], 2004 ).

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), sexual health has been defined as: ‘a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being related to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity’. Sexual health requires ‘a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence’. To achieve and sustain sexual health, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected, and fulfilled. Sexual rights are defined by WHO as: ‘human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human right documents, and other consensus documents’. These include the right of all persons, without bias, inequity, and violent behavior, to the highest possible standard of health with respect to sexuality, including access to sexual and reproductive health care services; to request, receive and pass on information as regards sexuality; sexual education; respect for bodily integrity; choice of partner; to elect whether or not to be sexually active; to engage in sexual relations by mutual consent; marriage by consent; to choose whether or not to have children in addition to deciding the proper time and situation in which to do; and engage in a satisfying, secure, and gratifying sexual life ( WHO, 2002 ).

In Iran, reproductive and sexual rights are well provided and laws and penalties are clearly spelt out for offenders. For instance, the following defects in a man are grounds for the right of marriage termination for the wife: 1) Impotence that continues within one year after the wife’s application to the judge, 2) If the husband’s genital organ is cut off, and 3) Castration ( Article 1122, 1928 ). Also, madness and impotency of the man is a basis for the right of marriage cancellation for the wife, even if it happens after the marriage contract ( Article 1125, 1928 ). If the husband is afflicted with a venereal disease after the marriage contract, the wife is entitled to refuse sexual intercourse with him and this refusal will not terminate her right to alimony ( Article 1127, 1928 ). Additionally, according to the Iranian Family Protection law, no man is allowed to remarry without the permission of the court or his first wife. The courts only grant permission under specific circumstances such as serious and incurable illness of the first wife ( Article 16, 1974 ).

Apart from the Iranian constitution, there are other laws that protect women against violence in Iran. Iranian Civil Law and Related Regulations (Physical Capacity for Marriage), Article 1041 affirms that girls marriage is forbidden before puberty without permission of a guardian ( Article 1041, 1928 ). This means that if a man marries a pre-pubertal girl, against the regulations of Article 1041 of the Civil Code, he shall be sentenced to correctional imprisonment from six months to two years, and in a case where the girl has not yet completed 13 years of age, the person concerned shall be sentenced to correctional imprisonment of at least 2-3 years. If sexual activity causes permanent morbidity for the wife, the husband shall be sentenced to prison for 5-10 years with physical labor ( Article 3, 1931 ). Iranian Civil Law and Related Regulations (The Mutual Rights and Duties of the Married Couple towards Each Other), Article 1115 declares that if the wife’s living with her husband in the same house is associated with fear of physical harm, financial loss or prestige damage for the wife, she can then choose a separate habitat, and in the case where suspicion of harm is proven, the court will not permit the wife to return to the husband’s house and as long as she is excused from returning, the husband is obliged to pay the alimony ( Article 1115, 1928 ).

In addition, Iranian women are protected by law from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the harmful procedure that violates women’s human rights. Article 479 of the Islamic penal code declares: ‘if a woman’s genitalia is totally severed, she shall be entitled to her full blood money (Ghesas) Note 2 and if only half of her genitalia is severed, half of her blood money is due to her’ ( Article 479, 1996 ).

There are also specific laws against trafficking of women and girls in Iran. Anti-trafficking law, Article 2 emphasizes that women’s trafficking, even with their consent, results in imprisonment from two to ten years and being sentenced to pay fines equal to double covered or alternatively property resulting from a felony ( Article 2, 2004 ). Pornography is also illegal in the Islamic Republic of Iran. For this reason, the new law of the computer crime legislation has been approved in Iranian parliament on 19 th November 2008, which came into force on 29 th June 2009. According to this law, producing, publishing, and distributing of any real or unreal images, audio recordings or writings that show full nudity of women or men, their genitals or their engagement in a sexual act are crimes against public morality and chastity. The person involved in this offence may be punished by imprisonment of 91 days to two years or a fine of 5,000,000 to 40,000,000 Rial or both ( Article 14, 2008 ).

One of the most debated themes in reproductive rights is abortion. Currently, Iranian law permits therapeutic abortion after a definite diagnosis by three experts and its confirmation is done by the Forensic Medicine Organization (FMO). This decision might be based on fetal diseases leading to suffering or illness for the mother due to disability such as fetus malformation or retardation, or based upon life-threatening maternal diseases. In the Therapeutic Abortion Act, The Islamic Republic of Iran Parliament declares that abortion may be performed before acquiring a human soul (ensoulment ) Note 3 with the consent of the woman. In this case neither accountability, legal or otherwise, nor chastisement would be directed towards the physician ( The Therapeutic Abortion Act., 2005 ). Offenders practicing contrary to the provisions of the Act will be punished by imprisonment from two to five years and the compensatory payment ( diyyeh ) Note 4 according to the penalties of Islamic law. The amount of payment is calculated according to the fetus stage of growth ( Article 624, 1996 ).

Taking into consideration the substantial requests of infertile couples, the Iranian parliament approved a law entitled Embryo Donation to Infertile Spouses Act in 2003. Under the new law, the donation of an embryo is allowed under specified conditions ( The Embryo Donation, 2003 ). The act has been quite effective in preventing the break-up of many marriages in recent years, though no data has as yet been published. The cost of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) is high in general, although the costs in the Islamic Republic of Iran are, by far, much lower than many other countries. Due to this, the Supreme Council of Insurance has considered covering the cost of one cycle of ART treatment’ ( Zahedi & Larijani, 2008 ), so it would be free of charge for infertile couples. In addition, Iranian legal system has accepted surrogacy as a method which could provide the possibility of parenthood for some infertile couples. Article 10 of the Iranian Civil Act about a surrogacy contract between a surrogate woman and intended parents declares: ‘Private contracts will be effective to those who conclude them if they are not in contrast with the law’ ( Samavati Pirouz & Mehra, 2011 ; Article 10, 1928 ).

6. Discussion

Regardless of the many international agreements formally confirming women’s human rights, women are still much more likely than men to suffer from poverty and illiteracy, as well as having less access to medical care, property rights, credit, education, and employment. They are far less likely than men to be politically active and, to a greater extent, victims of domestic violence. One vital aspect of promoting equal opportunity between the sexes is the empowerment of women. It is vital to sustainable development and the realization of human rights for all (UNFPA, 2008; UNDP, 2007).

United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) is committed to actions that attack poverty, illiteracy, and powerlessness; especially among women. ‘About half of the UNFPA program countries have developed strategies to provide women with economic opportunities. The Fund has established partnerships with parliamentarians in developing countries for political and legislative support for population and development challenges, of which the empowerment of women is central’ ( UN Women, 2010 ).

In Iran, the trend of incorporating women’s affairs in economic, social, cultural, and political development plans shows an upward trend from the first development plan after the victory of the Islamic Revolution to the present time. The article 158 of the Third Development plan was the first initiative for the streamlining of women’s empowerment approaches in the major plans. The most important points of the Article 158 of the Third Development plan are: 1) Identification of the educational and sport needs of women on the basis of Islamic principles and promoting their role in the future development of the country, 2) Promoting women’s job opportunities, 3) Facilitating women’s access to legal and juridical affairs, and 4) Supporting, launching, and establishment of women’s non-governmental organizations with emphasis on support for the women who are heads of family as well as women who are lacking legal protection in the less developed regions of the country. Attempts have also been made to streamline and institutionalize women’s empowerment approaches throughout the Fourth Development plan (2005 – 2009), which is binding on all governmental organizations, and with the earnestness of the civil society institutions, are followed seriously ( World Bank, 2009 ).

It is crucial that attention be paid to the goal of eliminating illiteracy among women in developing efforts. Equal access to education for women and girls has been guaranteed in the Iranian laws as a right for all its citizens ( Article 3, 1928 ). Literacy rate for both sexes had an increasing trend over the years from 1991 to 2010 in Iran. According to the World Bank report, female adults’ literacy rate (ages 15 and older) in the country was 77 percent compared with 87 percent in the case of males in 2008 ( World Bank, 2010, 2012 ). According to the global gender gap report 2012, educational attainment score of Iran was 0.953. In this score, the gender gap in current access to education has been captured through female-to-male ratio in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Iran has showed no gap in primary and tertiary level ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ). Progress has been made in pursuit of educating girls, yet more progress is needed to obtain said objective. However, in terms of enhancing life for women and children in the developing world, a better understanding of how women could have access to literacy training that creates significant benefits for them is vital. There are two-stages in this process. The first stage entails focusing on the link between literacy and prospective labor market outcomes relating to women, while the second requires research into successful programs and schemes and understanding how they can be applied in different situations ( Gallaway & Bernasek, 2004 ).

Women’s wage is important for economic growth and the well-being of families. But women are often hindered by obstacles such as limited availability ‘to education and vocational training, heavy workloads at home, unpaid domestic and market activities, and labor market discrimination’. These obstacles hinder women, forcing them to limit their participation in paid economic activities, and even when women work, cause them to be less productive and accept lower pay. When women are in paid employment, they tend to be concentrated in the nonagricultural sector (World Bank, 2010, 2012; Chen et al., 2005 ). In Iran, 16 percent of women work in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector. However, in many developing countries women make up a large proportion of agricultural employees, often as unpaid family workers. Female employment in the country in the agricultural sector is 33 percent versus 21 percent of males. Among people who work without wages, it is more likely that women rather than men end up as unpaid family workers, while men are more likely to be self-employed or employers in comparison to women. This pattern exists in Iran because 29.7 percent of women and 4.8 percent of men are unpaid family workers ( World Bank, 2010, 2012 ). There are several reasons for this issue. Firstly, few women have access to credit markets, capital, and land, which may be required to start a business. Secondly, cultural norms may discourage women from having the confidence or possibility of working for themselves or supervising other workers. Also, women may also be hindered by time constraints as a result of their traditional family responsibilities ( World Bank, 2010, 2012 ; Saigol, 2011 ). On the economic participation and opportunity, Iran has closed nearly 41 percent of its economic gender gap. In 2012, World Economic Forum reported the sub index scores of Iranian women’s economic participation as such: labour force participation: 0.44, wage equality for similar work: 0.63, women’s share of legislators, senior officials, and managers: 0.15, and professional and technical workers: 0.50 ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ).

In relation to political empowerment, the proportion of parliamentary seats held by women has increased steadily since the 1990s. The most impressive gains have come in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia, where women’s representation rose 30–50 percent over 1990–2009. Although countries in the Middle East and North Africa have made considerable improvements and advances in the political sector, women continue to hold less than 10 percent of parliamentary seats, the lowest among all regions ( World Bank, 2010, 2012 ). Presently, approximately 31 women have become heads of state or government in the world ( Worldwide guide, 2013 ). It seems that many factors are responsible and decisive in the election of women candidates such as literacy, financial status, liberal family atmosphere, support of other members of the family, and strong personality. Since most of the women lack access to the aforementioned issues, few women are able to get on tickets, and even fewer get elected from this handful of women candidates. In Iran, women gained right to vote in January 1963 ( Shahidian, 2002 ). The Iranian women’s political participation has increased since the 8 th parliament. The trend shows the political presence of women as the Ministry of Health, Vice president of the Islamic Republic of Iran for Legal Affairs and Science and Technology, Head of the Environment Protection Organization, and Head of the Center for Women’s Participation (CWP) ( Shojaei, Samsu & Asayeseh, 2010 ). Women hold three percent of parliamentary seats in the 10 th Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis) . Nevertheless, no Iranian women have ever held an elected executive office (prime minister or president) for the last 50 years ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ).

In terms of sexual and reproductive empowerment, the global burden of ill-health due to reproductive and sexual problems amounts to almost 20 percent in women and 14 percent in men. This data, indicative of the high proportion of ill-health, illustrates the gravity of sexual and reproductive health as a serious public health problem ( Ekdahl, 2009 ). Sex ratio at birth and female-to-male healthy life expectancy ratio are two significant variables that display gender gap in health and survival ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ). The unusually high sex ratio (number of males divided by the number of females) could show the prevalence of “missing women” in countries where sex-selection approach is a serious issue ( Klasen and Wink, 2003 ). In 2012, the overall population sex ratio (female/male) was 0.95 in Iran. In the same year, the ratio of female-to-male healthy life expectancy was reported 1.03 ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ). It provided an estimation of years that Iranian women could expect to live in ‘full health’, excluding the years lived at less than full health due to disease, violence, and malnutrition ( Salomon, Mathers & Murray, 2001 ). In 2012, the World Bank reported some Iranian reproductive health indicators as such: Total fertility rate: 1.7 births per woman; contraceptive prevalence rate: 79 percent; births attended by skilled health staff: 97 percent; maternal mortality ratio: 30 per 100000 live births (World Bank, 2010, 2012); mean age at marriage for women: 24 years; early marriage (aged 15-19): 17 percent, adolescent fertility rate: 31 births per 1000 girls aged 15-19, and female HIV prevalence (aged 15-49): 0.10 percent ( World Economic Forum, 2012 ). Iran has tried to implement some programs towards ICPD targets for promoting women’s sexual and reproductive health ( Roudi-Fahimi, 2002 ; Simbar, 2012 ).

7. Conclusion

In conclusion, law is a powerful instrument to advance the purpose of women’s empowerment; one strategy for formulating laws on women’s empowerment is to conceptualize issues into a separate national law. There are a number of national laws on women’s empowerment matters in Iranian jurisdictions, and many commentators believe that this approach can better clarify women’s empowerment issues within the legal framework of the State. Despite the enactment of numerous laws, women’s empowerment in some fields such as elected politicians needs more attention. With advancing conditions of equity between the sexes promoted by the national constitution, some planning and executive processes affecting women’s empowerment require review in order to assess their particular impact on women. Therefore, a realistic assessment of how the laws operate in practice will need to determine obstacles in women’s empowerment. Although good steps have been taken towards preserving empowerment in the spheres of education, economics, policy and reproductive and sexual rights issues in Iran since the Islamic Revolution.

Acknowledgments

This article is part of a PhD thesis in Reproductive Health focused on Iranian women’s sexual and reproductive health rights which was funded by Vice Chancellor for Research, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran coded 910141. Authors acknowledge university financial support.

Note 1. Under Islamic c Law (shari‘a– Jurisprudence), at the time that marriage is performed, an amount of money/gold or property is specified and reflected on the marriage certificate as Mahriyya . This is usually a substantive amount, which serves as a financial backing/support for the woman particularly in case of divorce.

Note 2. Ghesas is a retaliated punishment in Islamic law in some crimes like murder penalty or body damage.

Note 3. Ensoulment is an Islamic concept, occuring at four months of pregnancy, when the spirit causes the emergence of potentiality for rational thought.

Note 4. According to Islamic penal code, diyyeh is the financial compensation a person must pay when he or she inadvertently causes physical injury to another.

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Title: Iran’s Educational System and the Institutionalization of Gender Inequality

Laws and regulations encourage institutionalized gender discrimination and inequality in Iran, ranging from differences in teaching boys and girls to extreme cases such as honor killings. This piece discusses how this discrimination is institutionalized in the Iranian education system. Substantial education reform is needed to address both this vicious cycle as well as for the state to fulfill its international human rights obligations.

In 2020, instead of attending school, a fourteen-year-old girl named Romina Ashrafi was killed at the hands of her father because she had eloped with a twenty-nine-year-old man. This heinous crime took place because Romina’s father felt his daughter had “damaged” the family’s honor. Romina’s case is not uncommon , but the outrage sparked by her killing forced Iran to consider amending Article 301 of the Penal Code. According to Navi Pillay , the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, this article reduces punitive measures for fathers involved in so-called honor killings. Although an “ urgent bill ” to increase protections against violence for women was passed by the former president, Hassan Rouhani, it has languished for the past two years under the current president, Ebrahim Ra’isi.

The Iranian state has no motivation to tackle discrimination against women. In fact, Iran has institutionalized sexism through laws and regulations that create intentional inequalities between men and women, all justified using Islam. These rules have given male perpetrators free reign to proudly take the law into their own hands as divine executioners. Although honor killings are extreme cases, they stem from fundamental inequalities and discrimination, which begin before birth, are institutionalized in the education system, and then supported by law. Iran must fulfill its international obligation to ensure education is available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable to all children, which would naturally address discrimination and inequalities in the educational system.

Iran’s institutionalized sexism impacts a child’s life before they are even born. For the year 2021-2022, Iran’s judiciary set the rate of blood money ( diyyeh ) at 480 million tumans [~US$113,738]. This amount only applies if the fetus is a boy. If the fetus is a girl, the amount is halved. Blood money is based on Article 17 of the Islamic Penal Code and is a form of punitive and restorative justice. Article 448 defines it as a “punishment to compensate for physical harm inflicted on individuals.” In this case, this would mean anyone who intentionally batters or abuses a pregnant women and causes an abortion would have to pay blood money ( Article 622 ). Women’s lives are, therefore, decided by the state to be worth half of a man’s even before birth.

According to a framework based on the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Iran is fully bound , education must be available, accessible , acceptable, and adaptable ( 4-A Right to Education Framework ). Due to numerous discriminatory laws, Iran fails to fulfill its obligations in all four areas. For example, the age of maturity for girls is set at nine and for boys at fifteen. This violates Article 1 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that sets the age of maturity for all children at eighteen years of age. Iran has entered reservations to this convention, and, by setting the ages of maturity at nine and fifteen, is undermining the need for children to stay in school. Children may be pulled out of school after Iran’s age of maturity based on financial incentives, boys mainly for labor and girls mainly for marriage. Kinship interests and old traditions are other reasons why girls are married off early. The state encourages this culture to push its own ideological interests, which is to marginalize women for the maintenance of a patriarchal society and governance model.

Iran has one of the shortest compulsory education requirements in the world. Children are only obliged to attend school for five years . Even this short period of compulsory education is not entirely enforced by the state, particularly for girls. In instances when girls are married off or boys are forced into labor instead of attending school, the state fails to intervene . The difference is that girls are allowed by the state to be married as young as the age of nine, creating a legal path to deprive them of education.

For education to be acceptable, the subject matter and teaching methods must be non-discriminatory. In Iran, schools are segregated by gender, which makes discrimination against genders easily implementable. Girls are taught only arts and humanities to reinforce the belief that they are physically and cognitively weaker than boys. Boys, in turn, are taught science, technology, math, and sports to bolster the sense that they are stronger, smarter, and the natural heads of their families (Art. 1105) . This schooling divide fuels the patriarchal belief that women are weak creatures that must be protected by strong and competent men. Men are given legal tools to exercise this power in the form of civil codes that force families into an unequal hierarchy. The law of Tamkin (submission), for instance, dictates that when a wife refuses to fulfill her marital duties, sexual or otherwise, the husband can withhold her maintenance payments (Article 1108) . The husband controls the woman’s movement (Article 1114) and can easily prevent her from having a profession if he feels it is “incompatible with the family interests or the dignity of himself or his wife” (Art. 1117) .

Textbooks are an integral part of education as they are the primary avenue through which societal knowledge and expectations are standardized and disseminated. In Iran, textbooks are visually and textually designed to discriminate against girls and enforce inequality in favor of men. A study shows that “discriminatory attitudes” against women and religious and ethnic minorities present in textbooks are not “accidental or sporadic” – the books are a platform for the state to extend its ideological campaign to children. One such ideology is that women’s sole role in society is to get married and to bear offspring, the earlier the better. Recently, pro-child marriage images were added to textbooks, campaigning that “ marriage has no age limit, it just has conditions !”

Legally, girls as young as thirteen and boys as young as fifteen can be married off with the permission of their male guardians, and younger than that with the authorization of a judge. Based on official state reports , 217 girls under the age of ten, 35,000 girls ages ten to fourteen, and 170,926 girls ages fifteen to nineteen were married off in 2017-2018. However, this data is far from complete. Many early marriages are either registered much later than the actual date of marriage or not officially registered at all due to some legal restrictions. In rural areas, secret child marriages are still common.

While images of girls are included in textbooks discussing family and marriage, they are deleted when girls are depicted focusing on their education. For instance, in 2020, images of girls on the cover of third-grade mathematics books were removed . The only official reason given by the Organization for Educational Research and Planning, affiliated with the Ministry of Education, was to make the cover “less crowded.”

Discrimination against girls in Iranian schools is present in segregation, teaching methods, curricula, and stereotypes, all to ensure the state’s version of sharia stays legitimate and relevant. Even though this discrimination seemingly favors men, the state also robs them of all that can be achieved through equality between the genders. By not providing quality, equal education to all, the state enforces a gender hierarchy that trickles down to all layers of society and manifests in toxic relationships such as that of Romina and her father.

For traditional social attitudes to be challenged and discrimination to be eliminated in Iran, the state must provide quality education irrespective of gender. The Iranian state must withdraw its reservations to the CRC and ensure its principles are incorporated into domestic laws and regulations. This means that the age of maturity for both girls and boys should be raised to eighteen and measures should be taken to ensure children stay in school. Based on its obligations to ICESCR and the 4-A Framework , Iran should increase the number of years of free compulsory primary education, make it available to dispersed rural communities, and make progressive free secondary education accessible to all. The state must foster an acceptable human rights culture by integrating it into everyday teaching and school life. The state must ensure that all students are taught all subject areas and must avoid using the educational systems as part of its propaganda machinery. This means that private matters such as marriage and stereotypical roles for men and women must not be advertised in schools.

Dr. Shabnam Moinipour teaches social science methods in researching human rights at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is also a project manager at the Centre for Supporters of Human Rights, which focuses on the rights of landmine victims, women’s and children’s rights, and the rights of minorities in Iran. Dr. Moinipour has a PhD in human rights and media communications and an MA in theory and practice of human rights. Her recent publications include two articles on children’s right to education in Iran and a book entitled Human Rights, Iranian Migrants, and State Media: From Media Portrayal to Civil Reality.

Image Credit: ILO Asia-Pacific, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Download entire report as .pdf

Download sections of report as .pdf, iran (islamic republic of).

Globally, some progress on women’s rights has been achieved. In Iran (Islamic Republic of), 16.7% of women aged 20–24 years old who were married or in a union before age 18. The adolescent birth rate is 31.1 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 as of 2018, down from 33.2 per 1,000 in 2017. In 2011, 68.6% of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods.

However, work still needs to be done in Iran (Islamic Republic of) to achieve gender equality. As of February 2021, only 5.6% of seats in parliament were held by women. In 2018, 17.6% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months. Also, women and girls aged 15+ spend 21% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to 5.2% spent by men.

As of december 2020, only 43.4% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap. In addition, many areas – such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women’s access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment – lack comparable methodologies for reguar monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Iran (Islamic Republic of).

Gender data gaps and country performance

For this score, we use the 72 gender-specific SDG indicators in the Women Count Data Hub’s SDG Dashboard for the 193 UN Member States. For each indicator, we calculate the 33rd and 66th percentiles of the distribution and, based on those two values, countries are classified as belonging to high performance, medium performance and low performance categories. For more details, see the methodological note and the article “We now have more gender-related SDG data than ever, but is it enough?”

• Low performance
• Medium performance
• High performance
• Missing data

Country score - Iran (Islamic Republic of)

Average region score - asia, inclusive development, shared prosperity and decent work, 1.1.1 employed population below international poverty line. age 15+., 1.3.1 proportion of population above statutory pensionable age receiving a pension., 8.5.2 unemployment rate. age 15+., social protection, poverty and freedom from violence, stigma & stereotypes, 1.3.1 proportion of mothers with newborns receiving maternity cash benefit., 2.1.2 prevalence of severe food insecurity in the adult population (%)., 3.1.1 maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births)., 3.7.2 adolescent birth rate (per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years)., literacy rate, age 15+., rate of out of school children. primary and lower secondary education., 5.2.1 proportion of ever-partnered women and girls subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months. age 15-49., 5.3.1 proportion of women aged 20-24 years who were married or in a union before age 18 (%), before age 15. before age 18., 5.4.1 proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic chores and care work. all locations., political participation, accountability and gender-responsive institutions, 5.1.1 legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality (percentage of achievement, 0 - 100), area 1: overarching legal frameworks and public life, area 2: violence against women, area 3: employment and economic benefits, area 4: marriage and family, proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (% of total number of seats), proportion of elected seats held by women in deliberative bodies of local government, proportion of women in managerial positions, proportion of women in senior and middle management positions, 5.c.1 proportion of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women's empowerment., environmental, environmental conservation, protection and rehabilitation, 3.9.1 age-standardized mortality rate attributed to household air pollution (deaths per 100,000 population)., 6.1.1 proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services, by urban/rural., 7.1.2 proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology., gender-specific indicators.

Lessons from the Suffrage Movement in Iran

abstract. The suffrage movement in Iran achieved its goal of formally enfranchising women in 1963, through a referendum in which women voted. This Essay explores the movement for Iranian women’s suffrage in three phases. First, it examines ’the mid-nineteenth-century pre-suffrage political climate that created the conditions for some to call for women’s enfranchisement and the founding of a women’s movement during a period of modernization in the mid-twentieth century alongside debates about Iranian women’s roles. Second, this Essay considers the success of the women’s suffrage movement as part of a broader package of reforms that transferred power from the aristocracy and clerical leaders to the monarchy, despite political resistance. Third, it explores the challenges to Iranian women’s rights after the 1979 revolution, which maintained women’s right to vote, but initially suspended other hard-fought rights in the domain of family law, as part of an effort by the new Islamic republic to redefine women’s roles as a technique of branding the new state.

The lessons from the Iranian women’s suffrage movement show that voting alone is not a cure for women’s equal enfranchisement in all sectors of society. Women’s entry into the political sphere, however, raises and maintains demands for women’s rights in society as a key legitimating factor for the state. The Iranian women’s movement was a multi-dimensional effort with different factions sometimes sparring over the goals of the mission. Debates about women’s rights in Iran and elsewhere reveal that women’s societal roles still serve as important cultural tropes whose meaning powerful actors fight to define and control.

Introduction

A scene in the popular Iranian series Amorously ( Asheghaneh ) portrays a dialogue between a recently divorced secretary, Gissou , and her boss, Soheil, a partner in a failing start-up, who had just announced the end of his eight-year marriage. 1 His wealthy wife threw him out of her house, having lost respect for him, due in large part to his failure to earn a good living. The wife had filed a motion to claim her dower ( mahrieh ) and Soheil lamented his inability to submit the payment, which could result in his imprisonment. 2

Soheil (boss): I don’t understand why you women are like this. I don’t know any woman who did not obtain her mahrieh .

Gissou (secretary): You are mistaken. Not all women are alike. There are women, who, for a lifetime endure beatings, hear insults, and bear infidelity—but they stay. They stand by their families because they are in love.

S: Yes, I accept that. I accept it. You did not obtain your mahrieh ?

G: I did because it was my right.

S: It was what?

G: It was my right.

S: Your right. Yes, I don’t know why, everywhere there’s talk of equality between the rights of women and men, but when it’s the men’s turn, it becomes [talk of] “right” and “ mahrieh ” and such. Excuse me for asking.

G: Don’t you know that when a woman and man separate, the one who is harassed more is the woman because everyone looks at her differently. She can’t find a job, can’t find a place to live. It’s intensely difficult for her. Do you know why? Because they do not have equal rights.

S: You’re right. I get it, since right now, I am in a similar situation. I need to find a place to live. 3

Iranian women’s struggles to achieve equal rights and end gender-based discrimination did not begin with the 1979 revolution that established an Islamic republic. As with women in the United States and other countries around the world, Iranian women’s struggles for equal rights long preceded their participation in the political process. While Iranian women gained the right to vote in 1963, their public activism for enfranchisement and equality can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. Activism on behalf of Iranian women has had to adjust to changing concerns about the role of women in society and the politicization of women’s rights over a period of at least 150 years.

The women’s movement in Iran, moreover, cannot be defined through a singular narrative, nor can class be neglected as a significant factor in activists’ mobilization. 4 While activist groups may have agreed about the importance of women’s status to the overall betterment of the nation, women’s exact roles in society and their activities toward that end have long been the subject of debate.

The 1979 revolution and its aftermath changed the conditions through which the women’s movement for equality was fought. After the revolution, the question of women’s rights was not just a political, legal, and moral question; it became a question bearing on the new state’s very legitimacy. It is this latter question that has amplified women’s social and political power to challenge discriminatory laws across broad platforms, including politics, law, and, as the above example shows, society and culture as well.

In this Essay, I highlight the social and political context through which an Iranian movement for women’s rights and enfranchisement took place. Part I briefly traces the impetus of the movement in the mid-nineteenth century and women’s involvement in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). Then I examine the period in the mid-twentieth century in which a suffrage movement took shape, highlighting an evident tension between two groups of women’s-rights proponents. One group argued that women’s rights should be granted in the service of women’s roles within the family as caregivers; another group argued that women’s enfranchisement should provide them access to full political participation. Part II examines the political upheaval caused by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and its impact on women’s rights, even if their enfranchisement remained intact. Finally, I explore the retrenchment of women’s rights and the unwitting consequence of the state’s formation as an Islamic Republic on women’s agency and their ability to use the post-revolutionary state’s social promises about women’s progress and hybrid legal institutions to win back rights in the name of Islamic social justice and equity.

I. development of iran’s suffrage movement

A. pre-suffrage political changes.

As early as the mid-nineteenth century, Iranian women’s calls for equal rights and emancipation presaged a movement for political participation and enfranchisement. 5 Additionally, as Iranian intellectuals traveled to European capitals, they brought home ideas about liberty and individual autonomy. These ideas, however, were tempered by images of the “moral laxity” of such societies. 6 Having witnessed ongoing debates on women’s suffrage abroad, Iranian intellectuals raised similar points of advocacy and concern about the roles of Iranian women. They addressed these points through diverse political ideologies and engaged in thoughtful, and at times contentious, public debates. 7 With respect to women’s rights and roles, the singular achievement of this period was that intellectuals linked social progress with women’s emancipation. 8

In response to this Western influence, some intellectuals sought to revive Iran’s pre-Islamic past, which they saw as an imagined utopia where women and men held equal social and political status. Others sought to bring Western liberal values to bear on indigenous ones, both Islamic and secular, and drew on the language of modernity with its analog of progress. Iranians critical of Western influence suggested that the liberal autonomy so prized in Western societies was in fact a regressive turn that disdained the vaunted foundation of society, as they saw it: the family. Some conservative leaders even saw women’s emancipation as a challenge to male honor. 9 While these nineteenth-century debates were concentrated in urban, educated, and intellectual circles, the question of women’s roles and rights entered Iranian society and became a question with which the state needed to grapple. 10

The Constitutional Revolution in Iran (then known as Persia) from 1905 to 1911 led to the establishment of a parliament whose members wrote the country’s first constitution. The intensity of women’s participation in the revolution led American businessman Morgan Shuster, appointed by Iran’s parliament to be the treasurer-general in the latter half of 1911, to dub Iranian women “the most progressive, not to say radical, in the world.” 11 Despite women’s participation in the Constitutional Revolution, women’s status and their demands for enfranchisement were not a direct concern of the political and intellectual reformists during the constitutional period. 12 Their primary aim was to establish a national constitution that would reduce the monarchy’s power. However, the broader calls for social and political reform included debates on women’s roles in society, which formed the beginnings of a women’s movement through the creation of women’s councils and organizations. 13 These appeals were further amplified by a thriving “women’s press, which had emerged by the early nineteen twenties.” 14

B. The Iranian Women’s Movement

By the mid-twentieth century, a full-fledged Iranian women’s movement for suffrage and equal rights was underway. This movement emerged not only in the form of intellectual debates, but also with the establishment of women’s organizations. These women’s organizations initially focused on health and education, but by 1942 grew into a political party, the Iranian Women’s Party. By 1944, the Iranian Women’s Party developed a platform that demanded women’s enfranchisement, and its activists went on to lobby members of Iran’s parliament. 15

Critics (and even some supporters) of women’s political participation attempted to stem the tide of this growing movement by suggesting that as women gained rights, they should not forget their duties. 16 Hossein Taqizadeh , the editor of a reformist newspaper published from exile in West Germany, likened the Iranian nation to a complex piece of machinery, with every part serving a specific and essential purpose. He stated that women’s essential duties were to focus on the family and to raise children. 17 Taqizadeh , like many of his contemporaries, including other men such as historian Ahmad Kasravi , supported women’s rights insofar as their greater education could strengthen the nation by allowing them to better fulfill their roles in raising future generations. 18

Emphatically rejecting the view that women’s primary duties were to support the family, the Women’s Party secretary, Fatemeh Sayyah , famously announced, “Where there are no rights there are no duties.” 19 Sayyah also noted that even if women’s primary roles were as mothers, without equality in marriage and divorce, they could not tend to their children, especially if husbands could divorce their wives at will, take the children with them, and leave the upbringing of children to someone else. 20

While women’s groups appealed to moderate forces, opposition groups, including the clergy, used women’s rights as a wedge issue to gain supporters for their side. This was particularly true of the pro-American Prime Minister, Ali Amini , whose opposition to women’s rights served as a sign of appeasement to his many nationalist and Islamic opponents as he sought to push through a controversial land-reform policy that would disrupt the historical power of landowning families, many of which included members of the ‘ ulama (Islamic scholarly community). 21

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, moved slowly in favor of women’s suffrage, particularly as his government faced strong opposition from nationalists and religious groups. He reluctantly liberalized elections when the Kennedy Administration mandated it in exchange for increased aid. The Shah, like his father, Reza Pahlavi, likened the nation to a family of which he was the patriarch. 22 His view of granting women the right to vote came from his understanding of his role as a beneficent father rewarding deserving children with certain privileges. His view softened after he gave his twin sister, Ashraf Pahlavi, the leadership of Iranian women’s groups under the banner of the High Council of Women’s Organizations of Iran. 23 This replaced a previous coordinating body of some fourteen women’s organizations, the Federation of Women’s Organizations. Iranian women’s groups were no less active with the Shah’s sister in charge; they persisted in their lobbying, demonstrations, and boycotts. 24 With the Shah’s sister as the leader, women’s suffrage and attendant issues were brought under the monarchy’s control, allowing the Shah to support them as a protective patriarch.

II. iranian women’s suffrage and the family protection law

On January 9, 1963, the Shah introduced a six-point reform program, known as the White Revolution. 25 It was primarily aimed at land reform, but also included a provision for extending suffrage to women. Critics of the economic reform plan, later expanded to eighteen points, saw it as a power move that extracted resources from the Iranian nobility and ‘ ulama and moved them to the monarchy. 26 Ayatollah Khomeini, a respected cleric, wrote that the referendum was unconstitutional, irrelevant, and failed to be an alternative to the shari‘a (Islamic principles). 27 Previously, in October 1962, he had voiced his strong opposition to women’s suffrage as being in violation of the shari‘a . 28

Instead of sending the program to parliament for debate, the Shah called a referendum on the six-point program on January 26, 1963 and allowed women to vote on it. Iranian women voting for their own suffrage strengthened the legitimacy of the referendum; it also helped to send a message to the clerical opposition, both about women’s desires and their agency. The referendum passed by a large majority, despite strong objections from the ‘ ulama and landowners. On March 3, 1963, the government made women’s suffrage official by decree and nullified provisions of the constitution that barred women from voting. On September 17, 1963, Iranian women voted for the first time in parliamentary elections. 29

The monarchy’s attention to women’s enfranchisement did not stop with the right to vote. Next came the passage of the 1967 Family Protection Law (FPL), later revised in 1975. The FPL sought to correct women’s inequality before the law, particularly in the context of divorce and child custody. 30

III. revolution and retrenchment of women’s rights

While the mid-twentieth-century debates around women’s rights focused on political participation after nineteenth-century encounters with Western suffrage movements, Iran’s revolutionary forces in the late 1970s and the transitional government of the early 1980s employed tropes of Western women’s commoditization and sexual objectification as foils to Iranian women’s purity and chastity. 31 Theorists of the new state, which was an innovative blend of a republic with the principles of Shi‘ite Islam, drew on these critiques to challenge the very idea of freedom in liberal societies and to advance the notion that women in the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran would see greater freedom if they were disabused of liberalism’s suffocating objectification of women.

At the time, this appraisal, which borrowed from class-based materialist critiques of capitalism, secular and Muslim alike, garnered the attention and support of some of Iran’s secular leftist feminists as well. 32 As they would later come to find, however, Iran’s new clerical leadership only supported a version of Iranian women’s newfound freedom that hewed closely to the leaders’ views on gender, which involved specific social roles for women and men, modeled after their image of the ideal society—that of the Prophet Mohammad during the seventh century AD.

Although it is tempting to frame these debates along neat secular and religious lines, this was hardly the case in Iran, where reformist Muslims valued autonomy and argued for women’s emancipation alongside Western-educated secular liberals. A similar cross-cutting collaboration was visible in the opposition to women’s rights. While secular nationalists held the question of women in abeyance and conservative Islamists denied women a role in politics, together they resisted an indigenous women’s movement that called for enfranchisement and equality.

Following the revolution and the fall of the monarchy, the provisional government had to maintain a delicate balance between supporting women’s issues and appeasing the revolution’s spiritual and political leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. For many secular nationalists, leftists, and moderate Muslims, looking back on their experiences of the 1953 U.S.-U.K.-sponsored coup, the greater national interests that concerned them were the likelihood of a pro-Shah military coup or an intervention by Western forces. Thus, as moderate groups sought to appease Khomeini, they became subservient to his demands. As a result, women’s rights were again subordinated to pragmatic politics as competing groups fought to form a national unity government.

While moderate forces were willing to concede on women’s rights, Khomeini and other Islamists appealed to women to fight the monarchy and promised them enticing rewards in the name of freedom—not just political, but also material, social, and spiritual. Khomeini’s speeches, while in exile and upon his return to Iran immediately after the Shah’s fall, spoke of an elevated status of women in society, which would be achieved through the establishment of an Islamic society. 33 He praised women’s strength, courage, and independence. 34 Khomeini’s words resonated with the post-colonial-inspired works of Jalal Al-e Ahmad 35 and Ali Shari‘ati 36 as he spoke of the grievous effects of capitalist Western societies that objectified women physically and sexually. 37 Drawing on the writings of Shari‘ati , Khomeini referenced Fatima Zahra, daughter of the Prophet and wife of the Shi‘i Imam ‘Ali, as the inspiration for Iranian women.

From Khomeini’s speeches at the time, few could have predicted that—in less than two years—the government would retreat from a number of liberties women had achieved only a decade earlier. Iranian women soon became subject to laws requiring compulsory head-covering, dismissing them from certain sectors of employment, and divesting them of the rights in marriage and divorce that they had gained with the FPL. 38 But Khomeini’s stance on women would prove to be more complicated. His insistence on mandatory covering ironically shed light on the significance of the trope of the pious Muslim woman for the revolution and the establishment of the new state. Women’s bodies, covered from head to toe in black, would serve a political purpose, too, as outward symbols that Iran had changed. 39

Although at first the government’s attention to women grew out of political pragmatism, it unintentionally afforded women political agency as well. For starters, the post-revolutionary state retained universal suffrage. In a referendum held in March 1979 to determine the nature of the new state, the transitional government allowed voting by all Iranians starting at age sixteen, thus revising the ‘ ulama ’s century-old resistance to women’s public participation and temporarily lowering the voting age. After the vote in favor of the Islamic republic,Ayatollah Khomeini continued to encourage women’s direct political participation and promised to elevate their position in society.

The Islamic republic’s first constitution, passed by referendum in December 1979, signaled the importance of women in forming an Islamic nation. First, an introductory section entitled “Women in the Constitution” framed the post-revolutionary constitution as an attempt to rehabilitate “women’s rights”: “that women, who up until this point have endured a greater degree of oppression under the despotic regime, should be granted more rights.” In the same section and later, under Article 10, the constitution frames women’s significance to the state as a function of their role in the family, which is the fundamental component of an ethical and stable Islamic nation.

The family is the primal unit of society and the essential center for the growth and grandeur of men. Compatibility in respect to beliefs and ideals is the fundamental principle in establishing a family that is the essential ground for the course of humanity’s growth and development. It is among the responsibilities of the Islamic Republic to provide the conditions for attaining this goal. 40

This section further elaborates how the Islamic Republic defines women’s emancipation in terms of independence from commodification and sexual objectification. It emphasizes women’s duties as mothers, while also promoting their public engagement. The ultimate goal of this emphasis is the rehabilitation of women’s status in Islamic society:

In accordance with this view of the family unit, women are emancipated from the state of being an “object” or a “tool” in the service of disseminating consumerism and exploitation, while reclaiming the crucial and revered responsibility of motherhood and raising ideological vanguards. Women shall walk alongside men in the active arenas of existence. As a result, women will be the recipients of a more critical responsibility and enjoy a more exalted and prized estimation in view of Islam. 41

While the constitution is a hyperbolic aspiration, it nonetheless signifies the important position women would occupy in the Islamic Republic, at the very least ideologically. The result of elevating women’s status through such prose and other official speeches that continue through today is to tether the state’s very legitimacy to this more “exalted” status of Iranian women. 42

The hybrid state form, an Islamic Republic, the result of the referendum of March 1979, was drawn from Twelver Shi‘i principles that demand individual thinking, critique, and reasoning. 43 Its institutions, designed to serve the people and provide checks on government, also gave women political agency. Their agency became further entrenched and refracted through the discourse of rights, with the establishment of legal codes and procedures, once rebuked by Khomeini as “Western” and unnecessary. 44 These codes and procedures required women to file complaints and argue in court, producing the conditions in which women came to see themselves as autonomous individuals endowed with rights.

Together, these four elements—political pragmatism, dual emphasis on the family as the fundamental unit of society and rehabilitating women’s social status, Shi‘i rationalism, and the hybrid state form—are all critical to the formation of the new Islamic Republic. Each gave women a heightened position within society. These elements shaped that position by framing women as individuals endowed with rights and as mothers and nurturers. If the social identity of women as mothers was the state’s ultimate form of exaltation, it nonetheless administered rights to women as individuals and tied women’s concerns to legitimate state interests.

In the forty years that Iran has been an Islamic Republic, the women’s movement has continued. Despite compulsory headscarf laws, which half of Iranians now openly oppose, the women’s movement exists in manifold layers of politics and society. 45 At the same time, however, the discourse of rights has become deeply politicized in the past decade as government factions compete for control and power. References to “women’s rights” and “human rights” are criticized by some as suggesting support for “Western values”—even as reformist lawmakers and politicians make use of such terms.

Additionally, the desire and search for improvements in women’s status in Iran has had the curious effect of producing legally savvy women with rights-bearing subjectivities. The reason for this, I have argued, is because the family laws, as they were reintroduced after the revolution, gave men a unilateral right to divorce without cause but required women, if they wished to divorce, to produce an actionable claim before a judge. 46 The effect of this legal distinction, said to be based in Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh ), was to make women not only experts in the laws, but also knowledgeable practitioners of legal process. 47

Since the revolution, activists’ struggles against discriminatory laws have yielded rollbacks of Iran’s post-revolutionary family laws and revisions to severe criminal laws. 48 Over the years, women have regained rights in divorce and child custody. 49 They have also organized, fought against, and ultimately defeated proposed modifications that would have undermined those gains, particularly in divorce. Iran’s economic woes and the realities of the need for a two-earner household have prompted greater public support for working women, even if legal reforms are slow to follow. 50

Legislation has expanded women’s legal redress by fining and jailing men who fail to fulfill their duties in marriage, most of which are financial. Courts have increasingly enforced the claims available to women, while restricting men’s ability to seek unilateral divorce without cause. Women have also won the right to seek no-fault divorces and divorces for cause, the latter allowing them to claim their mahrieh from ex-husbands. Men are susceptible to wage garnishing and even prison for failing to pay the bride price. 51

IV. conclusion: lessons from the women’s rights movement in iran after forty iears of islamic republic

This brief exploration of the women’s movement for emancipation in Iran underscores several core challenges that women’s rights activists must navigate: a persistent tension between legal measures said to be aimed at protecting them and antidiscrimination laws that seek equality, state institutions that unwittingly position women as autonomous actors endowed with rights, and non-legal avenues that endeavor to shift societal perceptions about women’s status.

A. Navigating the Tension Between Protective Measures and Antidiscrimination

As the Amorously dialogue that began this Essay suggests, the debates around women’s rights in Iran today focus on precisely the question of whether to call for strengthening paternalistic laws that support women’s roles inside the home or for ending gender-based discrimination to make the government recognize women’s autonomy. For some, the former is a corrective until the latter is in place.

As in the previous century, the Iranian women’s movement still calls for increased political participation. 52 More broadly, however, today’s struggles center on calls for autonomy and equality in every sector of society. Women challenge the very foundation of a gendered political economy that calls on them to stay in the home, even while seeking legal support for their roles as mothers and wives. The latter efforts include subsidized maternity leave, access to the pensions of male guardians, and shorter work weeks. In these areas, the state’s focus on women’s roles as mothers and wives has unwittingly elevated their social, political, and economic concerns to actionable claims.

B. Women as Legal Actors and Rights-Based Discourse

Another important lesson from the women’s movement in Iran is that women have proven to be astute actors in every public domain, be it legal, economic, social, or political. At various historical moments, discrimination against women and barriers to equality and justice have forced Iranian women and their supporters to cultivate their knowledge in three areas of law—substantive law, jurisprudence, and legal procedure. This has led women to make their own claims for rights.

C. Legal Versus Cultural Transformation

Current critique of rights-talk is a backlash to women’s legal know-how, not just the “Western-inspired” rule of law. Such backlash signals the need for attendant transformations in cultural attitudes toward gender equality. That is, movements for social justice cannot rely solely on law and legal reform. To achieve social change, Iranian women are also active in intellectual, scientific, political, and cultural spheres of life. At the same time, actors in the women’s movement cultivate a sensibility of partnership, dialogue, and collaboration with diverse groups around issues of common cause.

The Iranian women’s movement, while not linear or singular in any way, offers some interesting lessons that may have relevance for women’s movements elsewhere in the world. Once we look beyond reductionist cultural explanations, we find a common thread in patriarchal politics. In Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary periods, patriarchal leaders (secular or religious) tended to sideline or even trade on women’s issues for those they deemed more important to the political cause or movement. Going forward, such patriarchal politics should be resisted and women’s concerns must be elevated to core issues in any movement for social progress, without disregarding the intersectional concerns of race and class.

Upon final reflection, the fight for Iranian women’s full enfranchisement reveals that such movements are never quite finished. Women’s, minorities’, and others’ full political participation remains vulnerable to political, social, and even religious attacks that could undermine or reverse tenuous gains. Such efforts highlight the need for the continued exercise and vigilance of those rights.

Arzoo Osanloo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice and the Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is a legal anthropologist and a former immigration and asylum/refugee attorney. She is the author of The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran (2009), which analyzes the politicization of women’s “rights talk” in Iran. Her forthcoming book, Forgiveness Work: Islam, Mercy, and Victims’ Rights in Iran (Princeton University Press, June 2020), examines the Muslim mandates of forgiveness, compassion, and mercy as they take shape in Iran’s criminal justice system. The author expresses her thanks to the editors of the Yale Law Journal , especially Megan Mumford, for their superb editorial work and innovative suggestion for a Forum topic.

Announcing the YLJ Academic Summer Grants Program

Announcing the editors of volume 134, announcing the first-year editors of volume 133, this essay is part of a collection, the nineteenth amendment at 100.

The Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification in 1920 granted women the right to vote, but fell short of broader gender-equity goals. This Collection explores the suffrage movement’s goals, intersectional voices, and differences from other movements in the United States and abroad. This rich history provides important lessons on the Amendment’s Centennial.

The Nineteenth Amendment and the Democratization of the Family

After suffrage: the unfinished business of feminist legal advocacy.

Amorously (Home Show Network 2017) is a seventeen-part series written by Alireza Kazemipour and Saeed Jalali and directed by Manouchehr Hadi . Initially, the Iranian authorities did not approve the series for release, but viewers were able to watch the first eight episodes unofficially through DVD and streaming services. After viewers protested, authorities approved the series for release and the Home Show Network, a semi-private channel, distributed it as a weekly featured series.

The mahrieh (or mahr ) is a sum contractually agreed upon by the parties prior to marriage and can be requested by the wife at any time afterward. In many cases, women who seek to leave a marriage without cause may convince their husbands to agree to a divorce by making a demand for the mahrieh and then forgoing it in exchange for their husband’s consent to divorce. In a divorce brought for cause, however, a woman may demand her mahrieh and have every expectation that it be paid. Since the early 1990s, men who fail to pay the mahrieh have had their earnings garnished (if they are government employees) or gone to prison. As a gesture of love during courtship and when the marriage contract is being negotiated, couples frequently list the amount of the mahrieh in a specific number of gold coins, often coinciding with the bride’s year of birth. As the rate of gold fluctuates, so, too, will the amount due to a wife. In such cases, men who owe mahrieh find themselves in debt for an amount well beyond what they thought they had agreed to and, often, their means. See Mahr , Encyclopaedia of Islam ( 2d ed. 2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_4806 [https://perma .cc/Q2ZU-XJA3].

Amorously : Episode 8 (Home Show Network 2017).

Mana Kia, Negotiating Women’s Rights: Activism, Class, and Modernization in Pahlavi Iran , 25 Comp. Stud. South Asia, Afr. & Middle E. 227, 227 (2005).

One important woman in this incipient movement was Tahirih Qurratul‘Ayn (1817-1852), an orator, thinker, writer, and poet, who was executed for her conversion to the Bábí faith. See Farzaneh Milani, Words Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement 105-27 (2011).

Camron Michael Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman 48 (2002) .

Parvin Paidar , Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran 44 (1995).

Amin, supra note 6 , at 16-47; see also Paidar , supra note 7, at 48.

Paidar , supra note 7, at 67.

The expansion of the periodical press in the mid-nineteenth century moved this question from an elite intellectual inquiry into a concern for the broader public. Amin, supra note 6, at 49.

William Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia 191 (1912).

Hamideh Sedghi , Women and Politics in Iran 46-47 (2007).

Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism 177 (1996).

Farzin Vejdani , Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture 100 (2014).

By the mid-1940s, the Iranian Women’s Party transformed into the National Council for Women with the goal of establishing equality for women. Paidar , supra note 7 , at 126-27.

Id. at 98-99.

See Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet , Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran 168-169 (2011); see also Paidar , supra note 7, at 98-99 (noting Taqizadeh’s support for the education of both sexes and his belief that women could “exert enormous influence in the education of a new generation”).

Paidar , supra note 7, at 127.

Id. at 139, 141.

Id. at 142 (“The two Pahlavi Shahs saw themselves in the same light: as father of the nation who had to have total control over the women of the nation.”); see also Afsaneh Najmabadi , Hazards of Modernity and Morality: Women, State and Ideology in Contemporary Iran , in Women, Islam and the State 48 (Deniz Kandiyoti ed., 1991).

Paidar , supra note 7, at 142.

Sedghi , supra note 12, at 155.

Critiques of the White Revolution are vast and mostly center around the land-reform program, which dispossessed the land of wealthy farm families, including the clergy, while preserving the land of the monarchy and delegating to it new ministries in the name of controlling natural resources. While the stated goal of providing land to peasants was praiseworthy, the manner in which it was carried out seemed to advantage the already-prosperous farmers and left many laborers without means, forcing them to urban centers to seek employment.

Azar Tabari, The Role of the Clergy in Modern Iranian Politics , in Religion and Politics in Iran: Shi’ism from Quietism to Revolution 47, 69 (Nikki R. Keddie ed., 1983).

Willem M. Floor, The Revolutionary Character of the Ulama: Wishful Thinking or Reality? , in Religion and Politics in Iran, supra note 27, at 73, 85.

While these elections marked the first time women voted, they were otherwise determined not to be free and fair, as the government banned opposition parties from voting and arrested activists from the National Front and the Freedom Movement parties.

The FPL provided women with the right to seek a judicial divorce for cause, while also circumscribing men’s unilateral right to divorce without cause. A couple could make their own arrangements regarding child custody, but a court could also intervene in these decisions, thus dissolving the automatic custody granted to fathers. The law also limited men’s right to seek a second wife, giving the first wife cause for seeking judicial divorce should her husband take a second wife. For a comparison between pre- and post-revolutionary family laws, see Arzoo Osanloo, Framing Rights: Women and Family Law in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Iran , 5 New Middle E. Stud. 1 (2015).

Arzoo Osanloo, The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran 82-83 (2009).

See Nahid Yeganeh, Women’s Struggles in the Islamic Republic of Iran , in In the Shadow of Islam: The Women’s Movement in Iran 26, 59 (Azar Tabari & Nahid Yeganeh eds., 1982).

For instance, in a speech to a group of women in Qum on March 6, 1979, Khomeini stated:

Islam has particular regard for women. Islam appeared in the Arabian Peninsula at a time when women had lost their dignity, and it raised them up and gave them back their pride. Islam made women equal with men; in fact, it shows a concern for women that it does not show for men. In our revolutionary movement, women have likewise earned more credit than men, for it was the women who not only displayed courage themselves, but also reared men of courage. Like the Noble Qur’an itself, women have the function of rearing and training true human beings. If nations were deprived of courageous women to rear true human beings, they would decline and collapse. It is the women who strengthen the nations, who make them brave.

Ruhollah Khomeini , 5 Sahifa-yi Nur 153, reprinted in The Position of Women from the Viewpoint of Imam Khomeini 57 ( Juliana Shaw & Behrooz Arezoo trans., 2013). The passage quoted from this text retains the original English translation as published by its authors.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969) was an Iranian writer and sociologist who used the term gharb - ‌ zadegi ( westoxification ) in his 1966 book of the same name, which critiqued the influence of western technology and civilization. Al-e Ahmad argued that the increased dependence on western industries and ideas stifled indigenous Iranian industries, thought, and innovation. Drawing from themes in the works of Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx, Al-e Ahmad offered a potent post-colonial critique of the excess of Western influence as a form of cultural and economic imperialism. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Gharbzadeghi ( Westoxification ): A Plague from the West ( John Green trans., Madza Publishers 1982) (1962) .

Ali Shari ‘ ati (1933-1977), a sociologist partly educated in France, was an inspiration to both religious and secular revolutionaries. Shari ‘ ati worried that Western cultural imperialism threatened local values. His writings, which used the discourse of oppression, were significant in bringing leftist nationalist and religious groups together. One of the key themes in this discourse was the role of women. In his important book, which grew out of a series of lectures, Fatima Fatima Ast (Fatima is Fatima), Shari ‘ ati employed the image of Fatima to emphasize the transcendent qualities of Muslim women, citing her as a model for Iranian women. Ali Shari ‘ ati , Fatima is Fatima ( Laleh Bakhtiar trans., Shari ‘ ati Foundation 1981) (1971).

One symbol of this westoxification came to be represented by the “modern” Iranian woman who embodied all of the social ills related to excessive Western influence: a woman who “wore ‘too much’ make-up, ‘too short’ a skirt, ‘too tight’ a pair of pants, ‘too low-cut’ a shirt, who was ‘too loose’ in her relations with men, who laughed ‘too loudly,’ who smoked in public.” Najmabadi , supra note 22, at 65.

Family Protection Law of 1967, amended 1975; see also Eliz Sanasarian , The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini 94-97 (1982).

Ayatollah Taleghani , On Hejab , in In the Shadow of Islam, supra note 32, at 103-07 ; see also Mahmoud Taleghani , Dar mored -e Hejab , Ejbar Dar Kar Neest ( On the Subject of Hejab , It is Not Compulsory at Work ), Ettelaa’at (Information) (Mar. 11, 1979).

Firoozeh Papan-Matin , The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1989 Edition) , 47 Iranian Stud. 159, 164 (2014) .

Arzoo Osanloo, Khomeini’s Legacy on Women’s Rights and Roles in the Islamic Republic of Iran , in A Critical Introduction to Khomeini 239-55 ( Arshin Adib -Moghaddam ed., 2014).

Osanloo , supra note 31.

Id. at 120.

In 2018, the Iranian Center for Strategic Studies, within the Office of the President, released a study published four years earlier on the public’s viewpoints on compulsory headscarves. The seventeen-page report found that forty-nine percent of respondents believed that the headscarf should be a private matter. Hejab : The Pathology of Past Politics, A Look to the Future , Ctr. for Strategic Stud. (July 2014), http://www.css.ir/Media/PDF/1396/11/14 /636532375414083535.pdf [https://perma.cc/U5LG-6PPZ] .

Osanloo , supra note 31, at 120.

Osanloo , supra note 30; see also Arzoo Osanloo , Women and Criminal Law in Post-Khomeini Iran , in Social Change in Post-Khomeini Iran 91 (M. Monshipouri ed., 2016).

Osanloo , supra note 30.

Valentine M. Moghadam, Iranian Women, Work, and the Gender Regime , Cairo Rev. Global Aff . (Spring 2018), https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/iranian-women-work-and-the-gender-regime [https://perma.cc/XMN7-2V8N].

The family laws now require that men appear before a judge and that the parties meet with arbiters beforehand. While women increasingly obtain their mahrieh , the state has placed a limit on the required sum that a husband must pay, regardless of the stated amount in the marriage contract. The state has also administered a tax on the mahrieh when it is paid. In October 2018, Iranian legislators began working to annul the law imprisoning men for failure to pay the dower. Instead, they would impose wage-garnishing, property division, and payment installment plans. Editorial, Iran to Annul Imprisonment Penalty over Failure to Pay Mahr , Iran Front Page (Oct. 14, 2018, 1:20 PM), https://ifpnews.com/iran-to-annul -imprisonment-penalty-over-failure-to-pay- mahr [https://perma.cc/5KRN-QUYB].

Currently, there are seventeen women in Iran’s 290-member parliament. Although representing only six percent of seats, the total nonetheless reflects the most women ever in Iran’s post-revolutionary parliament and suggests an overall trend. Of course, the presence of women in parliament does not unqualifiedly yield more rights and services to women. However, in the most recent parliamentary elections, in 2016, most of the women elected came from the progressive parties. Susanna Capelouto , Experts: More Women in Iran’s Parliament Signals Shift in Society , CNN (May 2, 2016, 7:01 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/middleeast/iran -women-parliament/index.html [https://perma.cc/9SGU-BSLX].

Iran: Poverty and Inequality Since the Revolution

Subscribe to global connection, djavad salehi isfahani djavad salehi isfahani professor of economics - virginia tech.

January 29, 2009

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in the Middle East Institute’s Viewpoints Special Edition: The Iranian Revolution at 30 (January 2009).

Thirty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed equity and social justice as the Revolution’s main objective. His successor, Ayatollah Khamene’i, continues to refer to social justice as the Revolution’s defining theme. Similarly, Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad, though they are from very different political persuasions, placed heavy emphasis on social justice in their political rhetoric. Yet the very fact that 30 years after the Revolution social justice continues to occupy the highest place in Iran’s political discourse implies that this goal of the Revolution remains as elusive as ever.

Inside Iran the facts regarding the evolution of equality are hotly debated. However, data from the Statistical Center of Iran offer evidence of how inequality has changed in terms of household expenditures, education attainment, and access to health and basic services. The picture that emerges is a mixed one: success in improving the standard of living and the quality of life for the poor, and failure in improving the overall distribution of income.

The most obvious, if not quantitatively most important, source of inequality in Iran is the rural-urban differential.  Figure 1 shows that during the great economic downturn of 1984-88, average expenditures in rural and urban areas fell by 20% and 33%, respectively, narrowing the rural-urban gap in expenditures. Rural incomes continued to grow faster than urban, raising the rural-urban ratio to a historic high of 69% in 1990, before falling back to 53% in 2006. The widening rural-urban gap in the last 15 years has contributed significantly to the resilience of measured inequality in the country as a whole.

Immediately following the Revolution, overall inequality fell substantially, by about 10 Gini points, from 0.56 to 0.46, [1] but has since remained fairly stable at levels well above those observed in countries such as Egypt ( see Figure 2 ). It is nonetheless much lower than in Latin America. Rural inequality, which was much lower than urban inequality during the war years (1980-88), increased sharply after the war, reaching the urban level, most likely because of government policies such as ending the rationing (that had protected the poor from inflation during the war) and permitting a greater role for markets in setting prices.

Significantly, during the first two years of the Ahmadinejad Administration (2005-06) inequality worsened in both rural and urban areas, possibly because higher inflation hurt those below the median income level more than those above it. This is not so much an indication that Ahmadinejad was insincere in promising redistribution but how difficult it is to redistribute income without fundamental changes in the country’s distribution of earning power (wealth and human capital) and political power, which determines access to government transfers from oil rent.

Despite a lack of improvement in inequality, poverty has declined steadily in the last ten years.  Figure 3 shows the proportion of individuals who were poor (the Headcount ratio) during 1984-2006 using separate rural and urban poverty lines. [2] Poverty rates increased sharply during 1984-88 but, contrary to popular belief, fell during the economic reconstruction and market reforms. Poverty rose again briefly when the economy had to adjust to the balance of payments crisis of 1994-95. Since then, poverty has declined steadily to an enviable level for middle-income developing countries. [3] Despite claims to the contrary, during the eight years of the Khatami Administration, poverty fell by more than 2 percentage points each year. Significantly, in the first two years of the Ahmadinejad government, urban poverty appears to have increased by 1.5 percentage points, or about 680,000 individuals (rural poverty remained unchanged). Given the huge inflow of resources into the economy in 2006 and the Ahmadinejad government’s active redistributive efforts, the increase in urban poverty is quite striking. The data for 2007 and 2008 are not available to reach a definitive conclusion on the current administration’s efforts at redistribution and poverty reduction, but the available evidence on inequality and urban poverty does not bode well for his re-election.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Revolution during its 30-year history is the expansion of educational opportunities, especially for women and rural families.  Figure 4 shows the impressive gain in education by the least educated group — rural women. Their average years of schooling increased from about 40% of their male counterparts for women born in the 1960s (who started school during the Shah’s White Revolution) to about 90% for those born in the late 1980s (who started school after the war with Iraq). Urban women have now surpassed urban men in average years of schooling, a phenomenon that led Iran’s Parliament to seriously consider and partially implement affirmative action for men in entering university! [4]

Increased access to free education from primary to university has equalized educational attainment between individuals. The Gini index of inequality of years of schooling for adults born in the 1950s was in excess of 0.60, compared to 0.35 for cohorts born 20 years later, which is a substantial decrease in education inequality in just one generation. However, there is evidence that educational attainment still depends greatly on family resources. [5] Education inequality is likely to worsen as private education, both at the university and high school levels, continues to expand.

Health and basic services

Another major equalizing achievement of the country in the last 30 years is reduced fertility, especially in rural areas, thanks mainly to increased education and improved access to health and other basic services (electricity and piped water). Together with women’s gains in education, family planning has substantially advanced gender equality in Iran, bringing social pressure to improve women’s status in law. In rural areas the average number of births per woman fell from about eight in the mid-1980s to about two in 2006. The poor’s access to basic services has substantially increased: during 1984-2004 access to electricity by the poorest quintile (bottom 25%) in rural areas increased from 37% to 94% and to piped water from 31% to 79%. [6] Remarkably, as a result of the extension of these services, by 2004, 80% of these households owned a refrigerator, 77% a television, and 76% a gas stove.

Populist politics

There are very few countries (e.g., South Korea) that have combined economic growth with increased equity. Iran is not one of them. Nevertheless, much has been achieved in terms of improving the lot of the poorest section of the population. Even so, many Iranians seem disappointed with the material improvements of the last 30 years. There are good reasons why. In the last ten years, a huge inflow of oil revenues has taken place without any improvement in income inequality. Added to this is a lack of government transparency, which has fueled suspicion about how the oil riches are being spent. Ahmadinejad’s populist rhetoric has intensified fears of corruption and distrust of the rich in a country where wealth accumulation is held in low esteem, no matter its sources. Indeed, the proper purpose of politics and governance in Iran is considered to be redistribution much more so than promoting economic growth. As the Revolution enters its fourth decade, with oil prices down for the foreseeable future and the disappointing results of the latest experience with populist politics already evident, it would be interesting to speculate if this narrow view of politics is likely to change. The June 2009 presidential election is a good time to find out.

[1] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty, Inequality, and Populist Politics in Iran,” Journal of Economic Inequality, published online February 21, 2008, http://www.springerlink.com/content/67k71t441vk54ml3/fulltext.pdf

[2] In 2005 Purchasing Power Parity dollars these lines were $2.7 per person per day for rural and $3.8 for urban individuals. See Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Poverty, Inequality, and Populist Politics in Iran.”

[3] Based on the international two-dollars-per-day poverty line ($3 in 2006), Iran’s poverty rate in 2006 was only 6%, which is very low by the standards of developing regions. See Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, “The Developing World is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty,” The World Bank Development Research Group, Policy Research Working Paper 4703 (2008), http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2008/08/26/000158349_20080826113239/Rendered/PDF/WPS4703.pdf

[4] See Djavad Saleh-Isfahani, “Are Iranian Women Overeducated?” The Brookings Institution (2008), https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0305_education_salehi_isfahani.aspx .

[5] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Daniel Egel, “Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation,” Working Paper, The Brookings Institution (2007), https://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/09_youth_exclusion_salehi_isfahani.aspx .

[6] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, “Revolution and redistribution in Iran: poverty and inequality 25 years later,” Department of Economics Working Paper, Virginia Tech University (2006), http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/salehi/Iran_poverty_trend.pdf .

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Essay on Women Rights in Iran

Introduction

The fight for gender equality and women’s rights has been an ongoing movement for years. With the exception of elements such as the still existing glass ceiling, sexual violence, and domestic abuse, women in the West have made significant progress in their quest for gender equality. In contemporary Iran, women have had a higher share in joining colleges and excelling even to graduation. They have secured professional positions, gained places of authority, and exercised their rights to vote. While being fundamentally seen as equal to the opposite sex and having access to all these rights, the feminist movement still exists. The fight for total equality is not over for women in Western society. Consider a society where women are seen less than men and restrictions imposed on fundamental human rights based on employment, expression, marriage, and citizenship. This is the society that exists within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although the severity of gender inequality in Western society is far less than in Iran, civilians have the right to create a movement and join several protests for this cause. In contrast, this experience is nearly impossible in Iran as the right to freedom of assembly and association and freedom of speech are not protected. In this essay, I will be discussing the plight and revolutions of women’s rights in Iran, gender inequality and human rights violations from pre-Islamic times to the present, and the consequences of protesting and fighting for one’s rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Women in Iran undergo abuse and discrimination at the hands of authorities and even in families. Although the international community has endeavored to exercise international law on Iran with regard to women’s treatment, their efforts have been met with failure (Greenblatt, 2020). This is attributed to the argument that the Iranian government is not bound by international law. The social, cultural, and religious systems in Iran allow them to treat women as they wish. It’s an aspect of cultural relativism. Generally, in the Middle East, women have shared common discriminations. However, over recent years protests have revolutionized the system towards universalism. Nevertheless, the protests have resulted in arrests and more torture to women, but the fight for equality remains.

The violation of women’s rights has been evident following the country’s political, cultural, and religious aspects. A patriarchal system has been in place since the old days where women and children are controlled by husbands, fathers, or other male relatives. For instance, during the subsequent wars experienced in Iran, such as the Iran-Iraq war, many women were arrested and imprisoned. As a result of the war, women were tortured and raped (Abueish, 2020). Over the years, women in the Middle East have suffered following civil wars and attacks in Iran. Following the social and cultural settings in Iran, women are controlled by the masculine gender, and as a result, they are subject to men’s decisions. Such decisions could be engaged in war, and since they lack the voice to stop conflicts and attacks, they always remain victims. From the old days, the war resulted from any conflicts, and countries helping other countries fight formed a basis for chaos and mistreatment of women. During such wars, women’s rights, such as free from mistreatment, free from slavery, and free from violence, were violated. However, with reduced wars in the contemporary era, women have.

Even in this 21 st  century, women’s violence in the middle east countries is rampant. It is mostly due to domestic violence is not considered a crime (Saffari et al., 2017). In this region, wife battering can be debated to instill discipline in the female partners. It does not surprise then that even murder committed under domestic violence is treated lightly relative to other forms of murder in Iranian law. The issue of honor killings is also a nightmare haunting Iranian women even during the COVID-19 pandemic (Pirnia, 2020). This violence against women is an indigenous tradition that is still carried in the current century. Women are killed if, for example, they try to refrain from a forced marriage, opt for divorce, caught committing adultery, or being a victim of rape. All these killings are made as a punishment for bringing disgrace to the family. The Iranian legislature is not equipped to deliver the deserved justice to this violence. For example, a father convicted of murdering his daughter might argue his case based on honorable killing. And since the matter is considered domestic violence and hence viewed as a private family matter, the father can receive as low as three years for murdering his daughter.

Sexual harassment is another form of violence experienced by women in Iran. Ranging from forced marriages, marrying off girls at a young age, and wife battering are some of the harassment the Iranian women go through despite the worldwide civilization and evolution (Shishehgar et al., 2015). Women do not have a say on who they are going to be married to; their fathers or grandfathers do all the decision-making. As young as 13 years, daughters are married off to older men, who can legally perform any sexual activities. According to Iranian law, it is legal for girls to be married at 13 years. Despite numerous attempts to raise the legal age for girls to be married, it has proved futile. Besides, they are forced to wear a hijab (BBC News, 2019).

Forced migration is mainly due to political factors and the unending war in Iran. Families are forced to move from their homes and relocate to different places (Shishehgar, 2015). Although forced migration affects both women and men, it takes a toll on women. As a consequence of forced migration, Iranian women are prone to several challenges. Social marginalization is one of the challenges encountered when these women move to say their neighboring countries to seek a better future; this is due to their social networks’ loss and takes them to fit in and create another social circle.

Iranian women face health issues under forced migration—adverse health consequences including depression and anxiety. The migration process and the events that forced them to migrate from their homes, mainly war, can lead to depression, more so if they lost their loved ones in moving. Therefore, apart from Iranian women facing the challenge of adapting to the new country, they also face mental health issues (Golestaneh, 2015). Generally, it can be difficult for them to access health care. To survive, Iranian women are forced to do odd jobs such as prostitution (Irandoost, 2020). Life in the new country of relocation can turn out to be very difficult. Therefore, forced migration has a larger effect on these women.

Furthermore, in Iran, women have suffered from displacements, thereby being hither and thither (Noor, 2014). Such displacements could be due to banishing, women fleeing to other countries, and political upheavals. Based on the view that Iranian women lack control of their welfare and major decisions of their life, they are faced with tough rules and failure to adhere; they are punished, banished, and even displaced. The displaced women have been denied employment and education, adding to their suffering. However, displacements occur in countries, but women are a minority, especially in the Middle East, suffer more being dragged along with their children. In addition, displaced Iranian women face racism in the diaspora, and the desire to cling to old traditions increases. This depicts how dependent Iranian women have lived to be with limited freedom.

Before and after the Islamic Revolution, women have undergone discrimination and violent experiences. The physical and sexual violence, predefined dress code, i.e., hijab, the lack of freedom of speech, freedom to contest places of authority, have denied women the right to fair treatment, right to overall health, and the right to earn wages and vote. In the contemporary era in the Middle East, revolutions have risen and pushed for a percentage if not full share of the freedom to choose of lifestyle. Many women have chosen to flee their countries and embrace a western culture where they feel free. However, even such escapes, the Middle East, tracked such women and tried to return them to their social and cultural settings. This depicts how women’s rights have been violated over the years, even today. For instance, in Tehran, protests against the enforced hijab wear have impacted, and women manipulated the dress code to wear a scarf. Also, women are prohibited from bathing in public, but nowadays, women have embraced that although in hideouts. Such rebellious acts are giving women the strength to push for a just world in the Middle East. Moreover, in the old days, women suffered unemployment, forced marriages, and prohibition from watching sports. In this regard, women have remained under the control of men, with some even denied the freedom to drive in the Middle East. Consequently, such denials, violence, forced migration, and displacements have rendered women a weak gender, easily controlled and unproductive in Iran. However, Iran has begun to appreciate women of war, started to allow women to vote, to work, acquire education, and so much more towards a revolutionized Iran.

Abueish, T. (2020).  Women reveal suffering torture, rape in Iran’s prisons in new Al Arabiya documentary . english.alarabiya.net. Retrieved 24 February 2021, from  https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2020/08/15/Women-reveal-suffering-torture-rape-in-Iran-s-prisons-in-new-Al-Arabiya-documentary .

BBC News. (2019).  Iranian women – before and after the Islamic Revolution . BBC News. Retrieved 24 February 2021, from  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829 .

Golestaneh, H. (2015).  The Emotional Impact of Forced Migration on Iranian-Americans  (Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University).

Greenblatt, M. (2020).  Women in Iran: Political representation without rights . Middle East Institute. Retrieved 24 February 2021, from  https://www.mei.edu/publications/women-iran-political-representation-without-rights .

Irandoost, S. F., Ziapour, A., Gharehghani, M. A. M., Azar, F. E. F., Soofizad, G., Khosravi, B., & Solhi, M. (2020). Experiences and challenges of Prostitute Women in Iran: A phenomenological qualitative study.  Heliyon ,  6 (12), e05649.

Noor, A. N. I. L. A. (2014). Iranian Women in the Diaspora:‘Being Here and Being There.’.  International Institute of Social Studies .

Pirnia, B., Pirnia, F., & Pirnia, K. (2020). Honour killings and violence against women in Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Lancet Psychiatry ,  7 (10), e60.

Saffari, M., Arslan, S. A., Yekaninejad, M. S., Pakpour, A. H., Zaben, F. A., & Koenig, H. G. (2017). Factors associated with domestic violence against women in Iran: An exploratory multicenter community-based study.  Journal of interpersonal violence , 0886260517713224.

Shishehgar, S., Gholizadeh, L., DiGiacomo, M., & Davidson, P. M. (2015). The impact of migration on the health status of Iranians: an integrative literature review.  BMC international health and human rights ,  15 (1), 1-11.

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This essay intends to analyze how Ethiopianism (Synthesis) is impossible without the ideological, philosophical, and practical struggle between Amhara (thesis) and anti-Amhara (anti-thesis). 

Concerning this, by borrowing the ideas of dialectical idealism from George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and dialectical materialism from Karl Marx (1818–1833) , this essay argues that the dialectical struggle for the march to Ethiopianism has been getting ethnic rather than spiritual and economic base. 

Ethiopia has been operating under an ethnic federalist political system since 1991. Article 39 of the 1995 FDRE constitution  grants ethnic groups the right to self-determination, including the ability to secede. After this, there are doubts about Ethiopia’s stability as an integrated state. Ethnicity turns into a battleground for Ethiopia’s integration or disintegration.  

Relating to that, Ethiopian ethnic groups and ethnic elites have been in condemnation and quarrel. Ethnic groups and any ethnic elites who have been condemning ethnic federalism , anti-ethnic narration, and the continuity of the Ethiopian state can be enunciated under the Amhara thesis. 

Ethnic groups and any ethnic elites who portray Amhara as dominant in politics, economy, or culture and wish the disintegration of the old, civilized state Ethiopia   and wait for the political landscape to open up in order to form their sovereign states are stated under anti-Amhara anti-thesis. 

Thus, the Ethiopian movement is unyielding on its own and requires Amhara as a thesis and anti-Amhara as an antithesis for realization. However, if the Amhara thesis has been growing weaker to prevail over the anti-Amhara thesis, the conflict between thesis and antithesis may fail to bring Ethiopianism back and would result in long-lasting material and humanitarian losses. 

This essay contends that in the current situation, the march to reach Ethiopiansim has been facing barriers since there have been more than a century of conspiracy and ahistorical narration against the North Ethiopian ethnic groups (Tigray and Amhara-Agaw), more specifically Amhara, which take charge of crafting a civilized Ethiopia. 

Thereby, the anti-Amhara thesis has been defusing in the minds of Ethiopian peoples for an extended period of time, and this has caused a number of Ethiopian peoples to be reluctant and cowardly to defend Ethiopia from European colonial thinking . 

Concerning this, since the 1960s , most Ethiopian elites have been starting to accept colonial thinking and developing anti-Amhara theories. Sharing of the advanced living style, culture, literature, and arts from the North Ethiopian ethnic groups was taken as oppressive and assimilation, although ruling elites had the opportunity to manipulate the Northern culture for their political gain. 

Anyway, such a phenomenon can be supported by Althusser’s idea. As Louis Althusser (1918–1990) , a French Marxist philosopher, argued in his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes towards an Investigation,” capitalists use education as ideological state apparatuses to generate Marxist ideology-oriented generations. 

This Althusser’s statement can be applied to the Ethiopian case. During the end of the monarchy political system and after the fall of the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie, Western educated Ethiopian elites with the left-wing military of the emperor have been starting to implement anti-Amhara thesis as ideology in the education sector and political apparatus to dismantle Ethiopia through process by taking the state craft of Ethiopia as architected by Northern and Southern-exclusive. 

Ethiopia has been on the verge of fragility. Existing anti-Amhara and fake historical narratives will inevitably lead Ethiopia to collapse and the halt of Ethiopianism. There is no time to fix the current political crisis through national reconciliation and education. National reconciliation and education take a long time, although the country has had time to survive. 

To save the country, the following short-range plan must be practical. Power balance is in need. For the anti-thesis of Amhara, the country needs to adopt the thesis of Amhara as a defense mechanism. For the purpose of this writing, the Amhara thesis or thesis of Amhara refers to thinking and ideology that lead to the continuity of the Ethiopian state  with ethnic equality, equal and equitable distribution of resources, and political position for all ethnic groups rather than the hegemony or domination of Amhara ethnic groups and Amhara elites in the political and economic arena of Ethiopia. 

Ethiopians who value their country must embrace the Amhara thesis and participate in all political, social, and intellectual battles in order to remake Ethiopia’s history—that is, to reconstruct Ethiopia for all. However, achieving the ideological superiority of “all to one Ethiopia” is necessary to ensure thesis hegemony over antithesis since it enables the transition to Ethiopiansm (synthesis). 

For this, a good reference is Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) , who was a leader of the Italian Communist Party, stated that to be a hegemon, ideological superiority must prevail. Accordingly, the ideology of “all to one Ethiopia” should be described on earth. 

The Amhara elites and other ethnic group elites who need Ethiopia to survive must work together with an inclusive, democratic, and humanitarian political base . Ethnic groups who have been affected and victimized by political groups that have been under the category of antithesis and disintegration need to be represented in politics, and their rights need to be of great concern. 

In addition to this, Ethiopian elites and politicians who have been on the side of this thesis have to work to foster positive diplomatic relations and political alliances for mutual benefit with the sovereign countries of all Horn of Africa countries . Related to this, elites should take care to not fail in conspiracy by interfering with the political issues of countries in the Horn of Africa and pronouncing the issue of port early, since this can cut off alliances and leave synthesis in danger. 

In Ethiopian political history, the source of problems and solutions is the elite . It is the elite who developed anti-thesis and tried to create the sovereign state of Tigray and the sovereign state of Oromia in disintegrated Ethiopia. Similar, it is elites who can mobilize peoples to unite on the thesis for the journey to Ethiopanism. Accordingly, it is time to fill the playing field of the thesis, even though it is a complication to be sure, as if the Prosperity Party, rebel groups, or this and that ethnic groups have stood on the thesis for Ethiopian achievement. 

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