Iranian women (or Persian women) in this article refers to women of, or from, traditional Persian or modern Iranian culture.[1]
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Throughout the history of Persia, both men and women used make-up, wore jewellery and coloured their body parts. Moreover, their garments were both elaborate and colorful. Rather than being marked by gender, clothing styles were distinguished by class and status.[2] Women in modern Iran (post 1935 "Persia") are of various mixes and appearances, both in fashion[3] and social norm.[4] Traditionally however, the "Persian woman" had a pre-defined appearance set by social norms that were the standard for all women in society.[5] For example, the observations of a late Qajar era orientalist read:
Archeological excavations at Shahr-e Sookhteh "Burnt City," a prehistoric settlement in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of southeastern Iran, has revealed that the women of the 4th-3rd millennium BCE community maintained a high level of socio-economic status. Of the seals discovered in graves there, 90% were in the possession of women,[6] who in turn made up over 60% of the population.[7] The distribution of the seals, which as instruments of trade and government represented economic and administrative control, reveals that these women were the more powerful group in their prehistoric society.[6]
"The position of woman in ancient Persia was apparently in nowise inferior to her standing in the Vedic times of early India. As among other oriental nations, however, submission to her lord and master is taken for granted, and the woman who is 'obedient to her husband' comes in for a special meed of praise in the Avesta and elsewhere; but it is perfectly evident, as a rule, there was not that subjection which results in loss of personality and individuality."[8]
The early Achaemenid-era Persepolis fortification and treasury tablets refers to women in three different terms: mutu, irti and duksis.[9] The first refers to ordinary (non-royal) women; the second to unmarried members of the royal family; and the last duksis to married women of royalty. Such differentiated terminology shows the significance of marital status and of a woman's relationship to the king. The tablets also reveal that women of the royal household traveled extensively and often personally administered their own estates.[9] The queen and her ladies-in-waiting are known to have played polo against the emperor and his courtiers.[10] The only limits on the extent of the authority exercised by the king's mother were set by the monarch himself.[11]
In the tablets, "non-royals and the ordinary workers are mentioned by their rank in the specific work group or workshops they were employed. The rations they received are based on skill and the level of responsibility they assumed in the workplace. The professions are divided by gender and listed according to the amount of ration. Records indicate that some professions were undertaken by both sexes while others were restricted to either male or female workers. There are male and female supervisors at the mixed workshops as evident by the higher rations they have received with little difference in the amount of rations between the two sexes. There are also occasions where women listed in the same category as men received less rations and vice versa. Female managers have different titles presumably reflecting their level of skill and rank. The highest-ranking female workers in the texts are called arashshara (great chief). They appear repeatedly in the texts, were employed at different locations and managed large groups of women children and sometimes men working in their units. They usually receive high rations of wine and grains exceeding all the other workers in the unit including the males."[9] In addition, pregnant women also received higher rations than others. Women with new-born children also received extra rations for a period of one month.
A few experts claim that it was Cyrus the Great who twelve centuries before Islam, established the custom of covering women to protect their chastity. According to their theory, the veil passed from the Achaemenids to the Hellenistic Seleucids. They, in turn, handed it to the Byzantines, from whom the Arab conquerors inherited it, transmitting it over the vast reaches of the Arab world.[12]
The Sassanid princess Purandokht, daughter of Khosrau II, ruled the Persian empire for almost two years before resigning. Also, during the Sassanian dynasty many of the Iranian soldiers who were captured by Romans were women who were fighting along with the men.[13]
Persian women are depicted in many masterpieces of Persian paintings and miniatures.[14] These are often used as sources to "trace through the sequence of women's fashion from earlier periods".[15] Drawing a Persian girl dressed in colors with Persian wine at hand has been a favorite style for portraying love.
At the Battle of Ctesiphon (363) the victorious Roman soldiers prized young Persian women, seizing them as war booty.[16]
Iranian women as dancers were highly regarded in China. During the Tang dynasty bars were often attended by Iranian or Sogdian waitresses who performed dances for clients. Poets like Li Bai flirted and wrote about them in their poems. Whirl dances were often performed by these girls. Some of these blue-eyed and blond-haired Persian and Greek girls danced in bars and clubs in China during this period.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]
The sister of the Sassanian Prince Peroz II was married to the Chinese Emperor, who allowed Sassanian refugees fleeing from the Arab conquest to settle in China.[29] The Emperor of China at this time was Emperor Gaozong of Tang.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (Wudai) (907-960), there are examples of Chinese emperors marrying Persian women.[30]
The young Chinese Emperor Liu Chang of the Southern Han dynasty had a Persian lover in his harem.[31][32] He nicknamed her Mei Zhu, which means "Beautiful Pearl"(媚珠). From the tenth to twelfth century, Persian women were to be found in Guangzhou, and in the twelfth century large numbers of Persian women lived there, noted for wearing mulitiple earrings and "quarrelsome dispositions".[33][34] Multiple women originating from the Persian Gulf lived in Guangzhou's foreign quarter.[35]
Of the Chinese Li family in Quanzhou, Li Nu, the son of Li Lu, visited Persia in 1376, married a Persian girl, and returned to Quanzhou with her. Li Nu was the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty reformer Li Chih.[36][37]
The Pahlavi Shahs were the rulers of Iran between 1925 and 1979 and they introduced many reforms concerning women's rights. An example of an early reform introduced by Reza Shah was the 'forced unveiling of women by a special decree on 8 January 1936 which, as the name suggests, involved the police force pulling the hijab away even from religious women, by force.'[38] Women's involvement in society in general increased. Iranian women increasingly participated in the economy, the educations sector and in the workforce. Levels of literacy were also improved. Examples of women's involvement: women acquired high official positions, such as ministers, artists, judges, scientists, athletes, etc. This improvement in the position of women became so ingrained that the conservative Islamic revolution could not completely undo it.
Under Reza Shah's successor Mohammad Reza Shah many more significant reforms were introduced. For example in 1963, the Shah granted female suffrage and soon after women were elected to the Majlis (the parliament) and the upper house, and appointed as judges and ministers in the cabinet.'.[38] In 1967 Iranian family law was also reformed which improved the position of women in Iranian society. It was included in the civil code and was designed to protect wives, children and female divorcees. The general thrust of the reforms were to promote equality between men and women in society.
The Family Protection Laws of 1967 and 1973 required a husband to go to court to divorce rather than simply proclaim the triple talaq of "I divorce thee" three times, as stipulated by traditional sharia law. It allowed a wife to initiate divorce and required the first wife's permission for a husband to take a second wife. Child custody was left to new family protection courts rather than automatically granted to the father. The minimum age at which a female could marry was raised from 13 to 15 in 1967 and to 18 in 1975.[39]
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution Iran became an Islamic Republic.
During this era of Islamist rule Iranian women have had more opportunity in some areas and more restrictions in others. One of the striking features of the revolution was the large scale participation of women from traditional backgrounds in demonstrations leading up to the overthrow of the monarchy. Hijab became compulsory (although this had not been mentioned during the revolution). Large numbers of women entered the civil service and higher education,[40] and in 1996 fourteen women were elected to the Islamic Consultative Assembly. The Iranian women who had gained confidence and higher education under Pahlavi era participated in demonstrations against Shah to topple monarchy, not knowing that the regime to follow would strip them from their human rights. The culture of education for women was established by the time of revolution so that even after the revolution, large numbers of women entered the civil service and higher education,[41] and in 1996 fourteen women were elected to the Islamic Consultative Assembly. In 2003, Iran's first woman judge in Pahlavi era, Shirin Ebadi, won Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in promoting human rights.
According to UNESCO world survey, at primary level of enrollment Iran has the highest female to male ratio in the world among sovereign nations, with a girl to boy ratio of 1.22 : 1.00.[42] By 1999, Iran had 140 female publishers, enough to hold an exhibition of books and magazines published by women.[43] As of 2005, 65% of Iran's university students and 43% of its salaried workers were women.[44] and as of early 2007 nearly 70% of Iran's science and engineering students are women.[45] This has led to many female school and university graduates being under-utilised. This is beginning to have an effect on Iranian society and was a contributing factor to the anti-regime protests by Iranian youth.
Women make up almost 30% of the Iranian labor force, and the percentage of all Iranian women who are economically active has more than doubled from 6.1% in 1986 to 13.7% in 2000.[46][47] As well 27.1% of the ministers in government are women (ranks 23rd out of 125 countries) and 3.4% are parliamentarians (140th out of 157 countries).[48] In 2009 Fatemeh Bodaghi became Vice President for Legal Affairs and a top advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.[49] Maryam Mojtahidzadeh who runs the women's ministry was also selected as an advisor to the president.[50]
At least one observer (Robert D. Kaplan) has commented on the less traditional attitude of many women in Iran compared to other Muslim countries. "In Iran, you could point a camera at a woman ... and she would smile. If you did that in Pakistan, the woman would run away and a man might throw a rock at you."[51]
However, the Islamic regime has placed a number of restrictions on women's dress and behavior. At the beginning of the revolution, it was announced that women appearing on television would have to wear the hijab, (also known as rousari). A couple of months later it was announced that women working in government facilities and buildings would also be required to wear hijab, and a few months after that that all women had to wear the hijab in public.[52] Separation of the sexes was also instituted so that now, everything from "schoolrooms to ski slopes to public buses" is strictly segregated by gender.
Restrictions on women have varied over the history of the Islamic Republic. In the first years after the revolution, females who didn't cover all parts of their body, except hands and face, were subject to punishment of up to seventy lashes or sixty days imprisonment.[53] Family law reverted to traditional status that had prevailed before the Pahlavi dynasty (Qajar era). Men could again abandon wives by simple declaration, while wives had no judicial recourse for divorce. Children of divorce went to the father and widowed mothers could lose their children to the nearest male relative. Some of the harsher aspects of these laws were later modified.[54] Women were encouraged to stay at home and not seek a job until the Iran-Iraq War started and women's employment was needed.[55]
During the presidency of Mohammad Khatami restrictions became less severe but hard-liners have attempted to roll back reforms of that era. As of late 2011 Women and girls were no longer allowed to ski in the absence of a husband, father or brother -- ski resorts having been "something of a haven from the Islamic dress code" and from laws enforcing separation of boys and girls.[56]
There are also women in the Iranian police who deal with crimes committed by women.[57][58]
In 1997 women defied the ban on entering soccer stadiums in an act of protest against sex segregation. During the so-called "soccer revolution" an estimated 5,000 women stormed the gates of the national stadium to join 120,000 men in celebration of Iran's national football team which had returned to the country after participating in the 1998 World Cup.[59]
Women in Iran were granted right to vote in 1963.[60] They were first admitted to Iranian universities in 1937.[61] Since then, several women have held high-ranking posts in the government or parliament. Before the 1979 revolution, several women were appointed ministers or ambassadors. Farrokhroo Parsa was the first woman to be appointed Minister of Education in 1968 and Mahnaz Afkhami was appointed Minister for Women's Affairs in 1976.
Some, such as Tahereh Saffarzadeh, Masumeh Ebtekar, Azam Taleghani, Fatemeh Haghighatjou, Elaheh Koulaei, Fatemeh Javadi, Marzieh Dabbaq and Zahra Rahnavard came after the revolution. Other Iranian women, including Goli Ameri and Farah Karimi hold positions in Western countries.
Over recent years, women in Iran, whether Nobel laureates like Shirin Ebadi who became the first Muslim woman to win the prize, or young Ivy League professors such as Maryam Mirzakhani, have "achieved greatly in areas like education, political participation, and social mobilization, and have made great strides in terms of entering different fields of academia". The gallery below is only a random sampling:
The movement for women's rights in Iran is particularly complex within the scope of the political and religious history of the country.[62][63] Women have consistently pushed boundaries of societal mores and were continually gaining more political and economic rights up to the Iranian Revolution. Women heavily participated at every level of the revolution; however, within months of the formation of the Islamic republic by Ruhollah Khomeini many important rights were repealed.[63][64] Almost immediately upon assumption of power by Khomeini, women protested the policies of the Islamic government.[64][65]
During the last few decades, Iranian women have had significant presence in Iran's scientific movement, art movement, literary new wave and the new wave of Iranian cinema. According to the research ministry of Iran, about 6% of full professors, 8% of associate professors, and 14% of assistant professors were women in the 1998-99 academic year. However, women accounted for 56% of all students in the natural sciences, including one in five Ph.D. students.[66] In total 60%-65% of the university students in Iran are women.
With the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Western media claimed that women's rights declined.[67][68][69] However, after Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009, the first female minister was appointed.[70]
The official women's day in Iran is on the birthday of The Prophet's daughter Fatimah. In ancient times, the 29th of Bahman (18 February) was considered Persian women's day and many people still celebrate this day. History of the celebration dates back to Zoroastrian tradition. International Women's Day is also celebrated by Iranians specially by people involved in Persian women's movement.
Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the Iranian government requires women to wear loose-fitting coats or cloaks such as the chador in public, as well as a headscarf that covers the hair. Something loose must be worn to cover the body in order to avoid exposure to men who are not mahram.[71][72][73][74][75][76]
The ordinary headscarf is called rusari روسري in Persian. A type of head covering common among students and government employees is the maghnaeh مغنعه. The maghnae is a "wimple-like head covering", black in color, that is "usually required on college campuses and at other public institutions" in Iran.[77]
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.[78] 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, Moniru Ravânipur and Mina Assadi to name a few. 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.[79]
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. 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.
Googoosh is one of the most famous Iranian singers. Her legacy dates back to pre-Revolutionary times in Iran, where her fame reached heights equivalent to Elvis Presley or Barbra Streisand. She really became iconic when after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran she was forced to become silent and lived unheard of for more than 20 years. In 2000, she emerged out of Iran, where female rights are still restricted, and in an extraordinary turn of events toured the world. However, her comeback was denounced in Iran and she is since unable to return to her country. She fears arrest in the event she does return and she is currently living in Los Angeles, California in exile among thousands of other Iranians.
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.[80] 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.
In Persian literature one can find references to women as far back as Pre-Islamic times.[81] In some cases, women are mentioned as the potential force behind the failure or success of men. For example Dehkhoda states that "women are the taste of life" (زن نمک زندگیست), but then warns that some Men may find this taste too strong to bear (کام مرد از این جهت شور است). In verse, Sa'di rephrases this as:
زن بد در سرای مرد نکو
A bad wife in a man's home,
هم درین عالم است دوزخ او
can bring hell down to this Earth.
زن خوب فرمانبر پارسا
The honorable, obedient and noble woman,
کند مرد درویش را پادشا
can turn the vagabond into a king.
But many texts elevate the status of women in their writings by using the word lady (بانو) instead of woman (زن) in their verses, whether narratives or anecdotes. For example in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh one reads:
ببوسید پیشش زمین پهلوان
Kissed the earth at her feet he did, the great hero.
بدو گفت کای مهتر بانوان
Called onto her he did: "oh highest of all the ladies".
Numerous examples from other poets can be seen as well:
عادت بود که هدیه نوروزی آورید
It is a tradition of the free to bring Norouz gifts
آزادگان به خدمت بانوی شهریار
for the lady of our royalty.
---Khaqani
نشنیدستی که خاک زر گردد
Have you not heard that dust turns into gold
از ساخته کدخدا و کدبانو
by the work of the Man and the Lady of the House?
---Naser Khosrow
And many creators of classical verse and prose were women themselves as well. One can mention Qatran Tabrizi, Rabia Balkhi, Táhirih, Simin Behbahani, Simin Daneshvar, Parvin E'tesami, Forough Farrokhzad, Mahsati and Mina Assadi in this group to name nine of them.
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