UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title State and the Paradox of Gender Segregation in Iran Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16x707q2 Author Shahrokni, Nazanin Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California State and the Paradox of Gender Segregation in Iran By Nazanin Shahrokni A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Raka Ray, Chair Professor Michael Burawoy Professor Cihan Tugal Professor Saba Mahmood Professor Norma Claire Moruzzi Fall 2013 Abstract State and the Paradox of Gender Segregation in Iran by Nazanin Shahrokni Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Raka Ray, Chair This dissertation is about state formation processes and gender segregation practices in postrevolutionary Iran. It uses gender segregation as a policy and spatial indicator to trace the shifts in state power between the establishment of the Islamic Republic (in 1979) and 2009. It explores the politics around the production of gender-segregated spaces, the imperatives of the state that produces them, and the implications for women’s public presence. Building on 182 interviews, more than 16 months of fieldwork between 2008 and 2011, this dissertation offers a thorough account of the (trans)formation of three major sites of gender segregation in Tehran, Iran, namely women-only parks, segregated buses, and men-only sports stadiums. Throughout this work, I argue that current models that attribute the endurance of the Islamic Republic of Iran to its application of coercion and prohibitive measures, fail to account for the productivity of the Iranian state power. Thus, instead of dismissing the Iranian government mode of rule as that of religious totalitarianism using repression, I illustrate that it is more productive to look closely at the intricacies of power and the multitudes of their logics, in order to understand spaces, gender, Islamic rule, and subject formation. This dissertation contributes to theories of the state, feminist theories, and theories of urban governmentality: First, a close examination of the state’s official rationales for gender segregation policies and the tensions and problems these policies address illuminates how the state continuously reconfigures its power in order to maintain its legitimacy in an increasingly globalized world with its shifting geopolitical alignments. By delineating several historically contingent shifts in gender segregation policies, I illustrate the broader shift in the Iranian state power from authoritarian sovereignty in the 1980s to disciplinary governmentality. 1 Table of Contents Introduction 1-19 State and the Paradox of Gender Segregation in Iran Chapter 1 20-34 “The Mothers’ Paradise”: Women-Only Parks and the Dynamics of State Power Chapter 2 35-51 Ideologies in Motion: Gender-Segregated Busing and the Right to the City Chapter 3 52-71 Access to Freedom Denied! The Ban on Women’s Sports Spectatorship and the Politics of Soccer Conclusion 72-73 The Global Surge in Gender Segregation References 74-81 i Acknowledgments I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Raka Ray, without whose guidance and persistent support this dissertation would not have been possible. I would like to thank my committee members, Professor Michael Burawoy, Professor Cihan Tugal, Professor Saba Mahmood and Professor Norma Clair Moruzzi who also showed much support and enthusiasm for my work. In addition, a thank you to Jennifer Carlson, Abigail Andrews and other members of the Raka Ray Dissertation Group whose careful comments have contributed to the improvement of this research. I would also like to thank to the Al-Fallah Program, Center for Middle East Studies at UC-Berkeley, the Center for Race and Gender and the Center for the Study of Right Wing Movements at UC-Berkeley for their financial support granted through predoctoral fellowship. ii Introduction State and the Paradox of Gender Segregation in Iran In April 2009, on a sunny afternoon, I met with Reza Mostafavi, the director of social and cultural studies at Tehran Municipality, in hopes of designing and conducting a survey of women who use municipality-supervised women-only spaces. In order to convince him of the significance of such a survey and the ways in which it could help the municipality to evaluate its projects, I began our conversation by highlighting what I conceived of as the positive effects of such spaces. I shared with him my observations of women’s presence in public spaces in Tehran compared with similar cities in the region (e.g., Cairo, Beirut, Dubai). “Whereas in most of these cities, public spaces are overtly masculine and dominated by men,” I told the director, “city spaces in Tehran seem to be comfortably populated by women with different class backgrounds and from various walks of life.” In order to justify the need for conducting a survey about the use of women-only spaces, I explained that in my opinion gender segregation is one of the factors that has facilitated the presence of women in public spaces. “Thus,” I told Mr. Mostafavi, “it would be great to conduct a survey and document the positive impacts of such spaces, which have mushroomed under the mayorship of Mohammad Baqir Qalibaf.” In the course of the conversation I realized that the more I highlighted the increasing presence of women in Tehran, the less interest the director showed in facilitating my survey. Speaking his mind, and not the official policy of the municipality, Mr. Mostafavi tried to direct my attention to what he formulated as the “worrying” implications of gender-segregated spaces, which had made him reassess the plans for their expansion. First, he was concerned about the empowering effects of such spaces and how they had led to the emergence of a “feminist consciousness.” He regarded this development with alarm: These segregated spaces have become safe spaces in which some dangerous feminist ideas are spread. Women get together, discuss their problems, and inform one another about their legal rights. This is problematic! When I probed him to elaborate on what he thought was “problematic,” he said: Let me give you an example. When we decided to open women-only parks, we were thinking of housewives stuck in small apartments all day, putting up with their children, cooking and cleaning. Not having the space to relax, vent, or exercise, these women get depressed, anxious, and impatient. So when the poor husband returns from work, she has no patience and would easily pick on him or start a quarrel. The opening of women-only parks, according to the director, was aimed at “saving the poor husbands who look to their homes as quiet havens.” These parks, Mr. Mostafavi had hoped, would act as safety valves where women could release their daily pressures and “get ready to welcome their husbands with a smile!” Things had turned out different, as the director suggested: “Look! Women go to these parks, sit together, talk with one another, and somehow all this talk turns them into feminists! Then they come back home and pick on their husbands even more than before!” 1 Mr. Mostafavi’s second concern was about the transformative effects gender-segregated spaces have had on the division of labor in families: I don’t understand what’s positive about women’s increased presence in public spaces, especially at nights. Once, during one of my nightly evaluation visits to public libraries, I saw a few women in the women’s section. My God! I was shocked. You know that these libraries are open overnight. It was around midnight. “Don’t they have fathers? Husbands? What are they doing here in the library at midnight?” I asked myself. So I approached one of them to figure out what she was doing in the library at midnight. It turned out that she was a doctor, a general practitioner. She wanted to take the medical specialty exams, but had two small children and with them at home she had no time or space to study for her exams. She told me that she was happy to have found that we had recently opened an overnight public library, with a designated space for women, in their neighborhood. She takes care of her children until 5 or 6 p.m., when her husband returns from work. They eat dinner together, after which she leaves the children with her husband and comes to the library to study for her exams. As he stood up to guide me out of his office, he told me: “You find this positive perhaps!” This conversation captures the difference between what the state intended gender-segregated spaces to be and what they in fact became. Gender-segregated spaces can seem to be a way to keep women out of public space, but their effect has been to bring women into the public sphere. Women embrace these segregated spaces not simply because of some flat version of Islamic ethics, but because of many practical and sometimes even non-Islamic concerns. In practice, gender-segregated spaces have fostered a feeling of women’s entitlement to the public sphere and a way for them to lay increasing claim to it. Thus, although the state implemented its gender- segregation policy in order to better regulate its (female) population, the policy produced a population more mobilized to question and challenge state authority. The state’s attempt to recover legitimacy produced a public discussion of the state’s failures, intensifying its fragmentation. This study is an inquiry into the politics of the production of gender-segregated spaces in postrevolutionary Iran.