Iranian women's movement

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This article is primarily about the women's movement in modern Iran. For information about women in traditional Iranian/Persian culture, please see Iranian women. For information about women's rights issues in Iran, see Gender issues in Iran.

The Iranian women's movement, also called the Persian women's movement, involves Iranian women's experience of modernism since the 19th century and the evolving concept of the "modern Iranian woman" and associated developments in art, science, literature, poetry, and politics. Iranian women make up a remarkable fraction of intellectual circles in Iran and have helped to shape modern Iranian identity.

Contents 1 The Persian Constitutional Revolution 2 The Iranian Revolution 3 Contemporary Persian literature 4 Persian music 5 Education 6 Modern art 7 Sports 8 Women's health in modern Iran 9 Women's movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries 10 Women's studies in Iranian universities 11 Women's movements in the Iranian cultural sphere 12 The Evolving Relationship Between The Iranian Women's Movement and Western Feminism 13 References 14 Further reading 15 See also 16 External links

[edit] The Persian Constitutional Revolution

Iranian women played a significant role in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11, which became a turning point in their lives. They participated in large numbers in public affairs and held important positions in journalism and in schools and associations that flourished from 1911-24.^[1] Prominent Iranian women who played a vital part in the revolution include Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi, Noor-ol-Hoda Mangeneh, Mohtaram Eskandari, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, and Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri.

At the turn of 20th century, many educated Persian women were attracted to journalism and writing. Danesh (1907) was the first specialized journal focusing on women's issues. Later, Shokoufeh, Nameie Banovan, Alam e Nesvan, and Nesvan e Vatan Khah were published in Tehran. Moreover, Nesvan e Shargh in Bandar Anzali, Jahan e Zanan in Mashhad, Dokhtaran e Iran in Shiraz, and Peik e saadat in Rasht addressed women's issues throughout Persia (Iran). Although the defeat of the constitutionalists (1921-25) and the consolidation of power by Reza Shah (1925-41) destroyed the women's journals and groups, the state during these years implemented social reforms such as mass education and paid employment for women. Reza Shah also began his controversial policy of Kashf-e-Hijab, which banned the wearing of the Islamic hijab in public. But like other sectors of society in the years under Reza Shah's rule, women lost the right to express themselves, and dissent was repressed.^[2]

[edit] The Iranian Revolution

During the Iranian Revolution in 1979, women's rights again swung generally towards religious conservatism. Despite the decree of many top Iranian clerics such as Ayatollah Taleghani, the state, under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini ordered women to wear the hijab and obey strict religious rules. However, the revolution also brought many lower- and middle-class women into the public sphere without their traditionally mandated chaperones. Confinement of women to the private sphere had frustrated women's rights advocates in Iran for many years. Despite its conservative thrust, the Islamic revolution broke the private-public barrier overnight. When Khomeini called for women to attend public demonstrations and to ignore the night curfew, millions of women who would otherwise not have dreamt of leaving their homes without their husbands' and fathers' permission, took to the streets. Khomeini's call to rise up against the Shah took away any doubt in the minds of many devoted Muslim women about the propriety of taking to the streets.

The early 1990s brought a marked increase in the number of women employed in Iran. Dramatic changes in the labor force might not have been possible if Khomeini had not broken the barriers to women entering into the public sphere unchaperoned. Women were also more likely to pursue higher education, a product of the free education and the literacy campaigns. Today, more women than men are pursuing higher education in Iran even though the Islamic Republic tries to limit women to domains exclusive to women. For example, the government has set quotas for female pediatricians and gynecologists and has made it difficult for women to become civil engineers.^{[citation needed]}

In May 1997, the overwhelming majority of women voted for Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric who promised more political freedom. His election brought a period during which women became increasingly bold in expressing ideas, demands, and criticisms. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights and women's right activist, further emboldened women's rights activists inside Iran and cemented their relationships with Iranian feminists abroad.^{[citation needed]}

During the Sixth Parliament, some of Iran's strongest advocates of women's rights emerged. Almost all of the 11 female lawmakers of the (at the time) 270-seat Majlis tried to change some of Iran's more conservative laws. However, during the elections for the Seventh Majlis, the all-male Council of Guardians banned the 11 women from running for office, and only conservative females were allowed to run. The Seventh Majlis reversed many of the laws passed by the reformist Sixth Majlis.

[edit] Contemporary Persian literature

See also: Persian literature

Over the past two centuries, women have played a prominent role in Persian literature. Contemporary Iranian poets include Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Parvin Etesami. Simin Behbahani has written passionate love poems as well as narrative poetry enriched by a motherly affection for all humans.^[3] Behbahani is president of The Iranian Writers' Association and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1997.

Contemporary authors include Simin Daneshvar, Shahrnush Pârsipur, and Moniru Ravânipur. Daneshvar's work spans pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Iranian literature. Her first collection of short stories, Âtash-e khâmush (Fire Quenched), was published in 1947. In 1984, she published Savushun (Mourners of Siyâvash), a novel that reflected the Iranian experience of modernity during the 20th century. Shahrnush Pârsipur became popular in the 1980s following the publication of her short stories. Her 1990 novel, Zanân bedûn-e Mardân (Women Without Men), addressed issues of sexuality and identity. It was banned by the Islamic Republic. Moniru Ravânipur's work includes a collection of short stories, Kanizu (The Female Slave), and her novel Ahl-e gharq (The People of Gharq). Ravânipur is known for her focus on rituals, customs and traditions of coastal life. ^[4]

[edit] Persian music

See also: Iranian women and Persian music

Perhaps Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri was the first female master of Persian music who introduced a new style of music and was praised by other masters of Persian music of the time.^{[citation needed]} Several years later, Mahmoud Karimi trained women students—Arfa Atrai, Soosan Matloobi, Fatemeh Vaezi, Masoomeh Mehr-Ali and Soosan Aslani—who later became masters of Persian traditional music. Soodabeh Salem and Sima Bina developed Iranian children's music and Iranian folk music respectively.

Innovations made by Iranian women are not restricted to Persian music. For instance, Lily Afshar is working on a combination of Persian and Western classical music.

[edit] Education

See also: Higher education in Iran and Science in Iran

The writer and activist Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi founded the first school for Persian girls in 1907. In this school, Iranian women could study a variety of subjects, including history, geography, law, calculus, religion, and cooking.

Enrollment of 12 women into the Tehran University in 1936, marked the entry of women into university education in Iran.^[5] By the end of the 20th century, women accounted for 70 percent of all university students of the natural sciences and engineering, including one fifth of all Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) students.

Iranian women have also participated in science Olympiads. For instance, Maryam Mirzakhani won gold medals in the 1994 and 1995 International Mathematical Olympiads. An alumna of the Sharif University of Technology, she is an assistant professor at Princeton University.

[edit] Modern art

see also: Modern and Contemporary Art in Iran

Iranian women have played an important role in gaining international recognition for Iranian art and in particular Iranian cinema.

Since the rise of the Iranian New Wave of Persian cinema, Iran has produced record numbers of film school graduates; each year more than 20 new directors, many of them women, make their debut films. In the last two decades, the percentage of Iranian film directors who are women has exceeded the percentage of women film directors in most Western countries.^[6] The success of the pioneering director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad suggests that many women directors in Iran were working hard on films long before director Samira Makhmalbaf made the headlines. Internationally recognized figures in Persian women's cinema are Tahmineh Milani, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Zahra Dowlatabadi, Niki Karimi, Samira Makhmalbaf, Mahin Oskouei, Pari Saberi, Hana Makhmalbaf, Pouran Rakhshandeh, Shirin Neshat, Sepideh Farsi, Maryam Keshavarz, Yassamin Maleknasr, and Sara Rastegar.

Iranian writer-director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is probably Iran's best known and certainly most prolific female filmmaker. She has established herself as the elder stateswoman of Iranian cinema with documentaries and films about social pathology. One of the best-known female film directors in the country today is Samira Makhmalbaf, who directed her first film, The Apple, when she was only 17 years old. Samira Makhmalbaf won the 2000 Cannes Jury Prize for Blackboards, a film about the trials of two traveling teachers in Kurdistan.

[edit] Sports

See also: Women's Football in Iran

Women contributed to the development of polo, which originated in the royal courts of Persia 2,500 years ago. The queen and her ladies-in-waiting played against the emperor and his courtiers.^[7]

Today, Iranian schools offer sport for Iranian students, including girls. Despite restrictions, Iran has many female athletes who have won medals in international competitions. In 2000, Atousa Pour-Kashian became world chess champion. In 2004, Zahra Asgardoun won a silver medal in the sanshou (sparring) competitions of the Asian women's wushu (martial arts) event.

On 30 May 2005, Farkhondeh Sadegh, a graphic designer, and Laleh Keshavarz, a dentist, became the first Muslim women to make a successful ascent of Mount Everest. In December 2005, Iran won the Asian women's canoe polo crown. In 2006, Iranian wushu athletes won five medals in the Third Grand International Wushu Festival in Warsaw, Poland. Iranian women's national team athlete, Elham Sadeqi, won three golds in taolu (wushu forms) events. Iran's top race car driver is Laleh Seddigh, who is skilled in both circuit and rally driving.

National Iranian women's teams take part in football (soccer), taekwondo, chess, and track and field events.

[edit] Women's health in modern Iran

See also: Health care in Iran and Family planning in Iran

In the 20th century, female social activists, health workers, and non-governmental organizations promoted the health of women by stressing the importance of regular check-ups such as the Pap smear, mammography, and blood tests. Vitamin D and calcium supplementation and hormone replacement therapy were emphasized with the goal of preventing osteoporosis.

In 2005, the Iranian parliament approved abortions carried out before four months gestation if a woman's life was at risk or if the fetus was malformed. With technical support from the United Nations Population Fund, the government undertook literacy and family planning initiatives. The fund's specific contributions to the Literacy Movement Organization of Iran included training more than 7,000 teachers, developing a nine-episode television series on women's health issues (including family planning), and procuring computers and other equipment.^[8]

[edit] Women's movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries

The women's movement during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's era, the Iranian revolution, and in post-revolution Iran continued to be strong. Perhaps the most notable figure was Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Prize for advocating democracy and human rights, especially the rights of women and children. Ebadi in collaboration with figures like Simin Behbahani, Mehrangiz Kar, Elaheh Koulaei, Shahla Sherkat, Jila Bani Yaghoob, Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, Azam Taleghani, Shahla Lahiji, and a few others directed the women's movement in Iran in the late 20th century and at the turn of the new millennium.

In 1992, Shahla Sherkat founded Zanan (Women) magazine, which focused on the concerns of Iranian women and tested the political waters with its edgy coverage of reform politics, domestic abuse, and sex. Zanan is the most important Iranian women's journal published after the Iranian revolution. Zanan systematically criticized the Islamic legal code. It argued that gender equality was Islamic and that religious literature had been misread and misappropriated by misogynists. Mehangiz Kar, Shahla Lahiji, and Shahla Sherkat, the editor of Zanan, led the debate on women's rights and demanded reforms. The leadership did not respond but, for the first time since the revolution, it could not silence the movement.^[9]

In 1997, it became legal to sign a new kind of prenuptial document in Iran. The object was to give women some of the rights that they lacked in Shariat (Islamic religious law). Under the terms of this prenuptial contract, the groom forfeited rights to polygamy and unconditional divorce, and the bride acquired rights to initiate divorce, divide assets, claim joint custody of children, and receive child support. As most men would not sign such contracts, the possibility of signing had little practical effect. A small number of family courts have returned, and divorce is referred to these courts. Women can function as judges but do not have the title. Mahriyeh (a stipulated sum that a groom agrees to give or owe to his bride) is indexed and linked to inflation. Women have more legal options for initiating divorce than they had in the past.^[10]

In May 2006, a group of women's movement activists in Iran initiated the "Stop Stoning Forever" campaign ^[11] campaign. The objective of this campaign is to change the Islamic Penal Code of Iran such that stoning will never again be issued as a sentence or practiced as a punishment. Until March 2008, the campaign has succeeded to save 5 women from the stoning in association with the Volunteer Lawyers' Network.

On August 27, 2006, a new women's rights campaign was launched in Iran. The "One Million Signatures"^[12] campaign aims to end legal discrimination against women in Iranian laws by collecting a million signatures. Examples of such laws include one that sets the age of legal adult responsibility for girls at 9 years, one that gives lower value to legal testimony by women than to legal testimony by men, and one that limits punitive damages in cases of the wrongful injury or death of a woman to half of that of a man. Since discriminatory laws affect women and men from all backgrounds rather than a specific class, the campaign has a wide range of potential supporters: traditional or modern, religious or non-religious, underprivileged or well-off. The supporters of this campaign include many Iranian women's rights activists inside Iran and also international activists including many Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

[edit] Women's studies in Iranian universities

In 2001, Allameh Tabatabaii University, Tarbiat Modares University, and Azzahra University initiated women's studies programs at the Master of Arts level, and shortly thereafter Tehran University organized a similar program.

[edit] Women's movements in the Iranian cultural sphere

Women of modern Iran have close contacts with the women from the Iranian cultural sphere, that is, Persian-speaking countries, primarily Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Central Asia. Many women's rights activists, artists, and literary figures in the region cross borders to assist each other. For example, Iranian journalist Jila Bani Yaghoub and film-maker Samira Makhmalbaf have contributed to the culture of Afghanistan. Iranian intellectual Farah Karimi wrote a book entitled "Slagveld Afghanistan" that criticizes Dutch military policies in Afghanistan, and in 2006, she was appointed as the representative of the United Nations in Afghanistan affairs.^[13] In 2003, Sima Bina, the voice of Khorasan (a region of northeastern Iran), performed secular threnodies at the Théâtre du Soleil for the benefit of the "Afghanistan: one child one book" project created by the organization Open Asia.^[14] Moreover in 2004, the World Bank funded a "network of Persian women" for promoting the welfare of women in Persian-speaking lands.^[15]

• Afghanistan: Influential figures include:
  • Sima Samar, the first Deputy Chair and Minister of Women’s Affairs.
  • Safeeieh Ammeh Jan, prominent Tajik-Afghan women's rights activist.

• Tajikistan:

Tajik women founded more than 100 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in recent decades to defend their rights and improve their quality of life. Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi acted as a role model for a new generation of Tajik women. Many Tajik businesswomen have economic ties with Iran.^[16] In 2005, a conference on poverty among women was organized in Iran, and a group of Tajik journalists, activists, university lecturers, and athletes were invited to Iran to exchange experiences.^[17]

[edit] The Evolving Relationship Between The Iranian Women's Movement and Western Feminism

As women continue to help shape modern Iranian identity, western scholars are increasingly interested in documenting their complex and varied experiences. While the growing women’s movement in Iran suggests parallels with feminism in the west, there are differences of opinion on what the relationship between these movements is and should be.

Some suggest that only by accepting help from western feminists, whose progress has been recognized within western society, can the Iranian Women’s Movement be recognized. This perspective suggests that western feminism can offer freedom and opportunity to Iranian women that their own religious society cannot. In addition, advocates of this view argue that no matter what the Iranian Women’s Movement is able to achieve within Iranian society, the status of individual women within this society will always be less than what has been achieved by western feminists^[18].

By contrast, others suggest that parochial movements of women will never be successful, and that until a global sisterhood made up of women from all nations and religions has been established, feminism has not truly arrived^[19]. According to this perspective, the Iranian Women’s Movement must merge with the global feminist community, both contributing to the movement and drawing strength from its established constituency.

There is yet a third perspective suggesting that a global women’s movement will inevitably ignore and undermine the unique elements of indigenous Iranian feminism which have arisen as a result of their history and religion^[20]. A global movement into which all women are equally assimilated no matter what their cultural background will be unsuccessful, according to this perspective, because it ignores the unique needs of each individual woman.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Edward G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909. Mage Publishers (July 1995). ISBN 0-934211-45-0
• Farideh Farhi, Religious Intellectuals, the “Woman Question,” and the Struggle for the Creation of a Democratic Public Sphere in Iran, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 15, No.2, Winter 2001.
• Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Religious Modernists and the “Woman Question”: Challenges and Complicities, Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution: Political and Social Transition in Iran since 1979, Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp 74-95.
• Shirin Ebadi, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, Random House (May 2, 2006), ISBN 1-4000-6470-8

[edit] See also

• Intellectual movements in Iran
• Women's movement
• One Million Signatures

[edit] External links

Articles:

• Portrayal of Women in Iranian Cinema: An historical overview by Shahla Lahiji
• Manifestation of Feeling: A Selection of Paintings by Iranian Female Artists
• A Holistic Approach Underpins the Iran's Success in Family Planning (UNFPA)
• One Million Signatures Campaign (we-change.org)
• The Iranian Camila Batmanghelidjh has won the UK's Women of the Year 2006 award. (BBC)
• Iran's Women's Rights Movement and the One Million Signatures Campaign
• The Iranian Women’s Movement: A Century Long Struggle
• Women Mayors in Iran

Websites and forums:

• Women's Field
• Zan (in Persian)
• Iran-Dokht (in Persian)
• Iran Women's Study Foundation
• Iranian Feminist Tribune (in Persian)
• Focus of Iranian Women (in Persian)
• Islamic Republic of Iran Center for Affairs of Women's Participation