Contemporary Iranian Feminism: The Iranian Women’s Movement from the Secular Feminist Perspective of Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani
Roya Sahraei
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
School of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
March 2016
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet •·.·-· Surname or Family name: Sahraie First name; Roya f-. Other name/s: Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: Master of Art School: School of Humanities & Languages Faculty: Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Title: Contemporary Iranian Feminism:The Iranian Women's Movement from the Secular Feminist Perspective of Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani
Abstract This study analyzes the contemporary Iranian women's movement in Iran, focusing on different standpoints amongst women's rights activists. The study sheds light on the vigour and effectiveness of the Iranian women's movement in recent years, and on some of its major participants. My focus is on secular feminist activities and literature, particularly by Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani, a prominent feminist activist, journalist and unaffiliated scholar in Iran. The thesis reveals the importance of Iran's secular feminists, and the key role they have been playing in promoting women's rights and activism. Also revealed, however, is how meaningful change for Iranian women will most likely occur through effective collaboration between secularist and Islamic feminists. By the latter I mean women activists who seek reform within the framework of Islam, who do fight for women's rights whether or not they would describe themselves as 'feminists'. One cannot underestimate the contributions of Islamic feminists, as welL and their capaci1y for further achievements in the pursuit of change for women. In the last two chapters I discuss recent instances of effective collaboration between secularist and Islamic feminists. Further cooperation between them will doubtless be necessary to bring about real progress toward equal rights. Without the determination and leadership already shown by secularists, however, little is likely to be achieved ' To g'!in a solid understanding of the Iranian women's movement, one must consider the role of both types of activist. Rather than focusing on Islamic activists alone as the western media superficially tends to do, as if they were the epicentre of women's activism in Iran, we should recognize that secularists constitute a significant I section of the women's movement. Iran may be an Islamic state, even a radical Islamist one since the revolution i of 1979, but its contemporary women's movement nevertheless has had a strongly secular cast to it. To build ! transnationa1 solidarity, it is crucial that feminist scholars and activists in the West develop a more informed understanding of the complex nature of movements for women's rights elsewhere. I hope to contribute to such an understanding through this study, which is original not only in its focus on very recent developments in Iran but also in drawing on an array of original source materials in Persian, including books, articles and also documents available from Iranian feminist web sites. It must be understood, however, that all material published ·in Iran is subject to interference or censorship by the government. The thesis analyZes three significant campaigns of the recent women's movement in all of which Noushin Ahmadi-J(ho.ra5ani played an important role: the One Million Signatures Campaign of 2006; the Women's Coalition aga\nst the Family Protection Bill of 2009; and the-Movement to Consolidate Women's Demands in the 2009 -presidential election. Analysis of these campaigns and alliances enables us to understand women's situatieirl h{conteinporary Iran; to. assess. women's demands for reform; to acknowledge the breadth of Iran fe~inism; arid alSo to appreciate the daily challenges faced'especiallv by secular women's rights activists.
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Table of Contents
UNSW Statement ii
Table of Contents iii
Acknowledgments iv
Abstract v
Preface vi
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Iranian Women’s Struggles before the 1979 Revolution 11
Chapter Two: The Legal and Social Status of Women after 1979 26
Chapter Three: The One Million Signatures Campaign of 2006 46
Chapter Four: The Two Coalitions of Women in 2007 and 2009 67
Conclusion 81
Bibliography 84
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Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my thesis supervisors in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales: Dr Helene Bowen Raddeker of Women’s and Gender Studies in the School of Humanities & Languages and Dr Helen Pringle in the School of Social Sciences. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you.
I must express my very profound gratitude to my husband Morteza Ershadi and my friends, especially Catherine Netherton, for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis.
And finally I would like to dedicate this thesis to Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani for the inspiration she has been to many women through her life’s passion to bring about positive changes in the situation of women in Iran.
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Abstract
This study analyzes the contemporary Iranian women’s movement in Iran, focusing on different standpoints amongst women’s rights activists. The study sheds light on the vigour and effectiveness of the Iranian women’s movement in recent years, and on some of its major participants. My focus is on secular feminist activities and literature, particularly by Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani, a prominent feminist activist, journalist and unaffiliated scholar in Iran.
The thesis reveals the importance of Iran’s secular feminists, and the key role they have been playing in promoting women‘s rights and activism. Also revealed, however, is how meaningful change for Iranian women will most likely occur through effective collaboration between secularist and Islamic feminists. By the latter I mean women activists who seek reform within the framework of Islam, who do fight for women’s rights whether or not they would describe themselves as ‘feminists’. One cannot underestimate the contributions of Islamic feminists, as well, and their capacity for further achievements in the pursuit of change for women. In the last two chapters I discuss recent instances of effective collaboration between secularist and Islamic feminists. Further cooperation between them will doubtless be necessary to bring about real progress toward equal rights. Without the determination and leadership already shown by secularists, however, little is likely to be achieved.
To gain a solid understanding of the Iranian women’s movement, one must consider the role of both types of activist. Rather than focusing on Islamic activists alone as the western media superficially tends to do, as if they were the epicentre of women’s activism in Iran, we should recognize that secularists constitute a significant section of the women’s movement. Iran may be an Islamic state, even a radical Islamist one since the revolution of 1979, but its contemporary women’s movement nevertheless has had a strongly secular cast to it. To build transnational solidarity, it is crucial that feminist scholars and activists in the West develop a more informed understanding of the complex nature of movements for women’s rights elsewhere. I hope to contribute to such an understanding through this study, which is original not only in its focus on very recent developments in Iran but also in drawing on an array of original source materials in Persian, including books, articles and also documents available from Iranian feminist websites. It must be understood, however, that all material published in Iran is subject to interference or censorship by the government.
The thesis analyzes three significant campaigns of the recent women’s movement in all of which Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani played an important role: the One Million Signatures Campaign of 2006; the Women’s Coalition against the Family Protection Bill of 2009; and the Movement to Consolidate Women’s Demands in the 2009 presidential election. Analysis of these campaigns and alliances enables us to understand women’s situation in contemporary Iran; to assess women’s demands for reform; to acknowledge the breadth of Iran feminism; and also to appreciate the daily challenges faced especially by secular women’s rights activists.
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Preface
I emigrated to Australia from Iran as a skilled migrant in 2005, about two weeks after large women’s rights protests. This was on 12 June in front of Tehran University, and the first of such mass protests since 8 March 1979. The excitement, hope and bravery of women who decided to own the streets of their city after so many years of political suppression after the Islamist revolution of 1979 were admirable. The world witnessed the blossoming of a modern grassroots women’s movement, independent of the government. According to some scholars, this situation was unique since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911.
My father worked in the judiciary and every day he had a sad story to tell about injustices against women in the courts. These stories always made me angry that there should be so much discrimination against women. This led me to study the very limited women’s literature and feminist texts available in those years. After my university studies I decided to work as a translator for women’s magazines. I met Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani in the Tose’e Publication’s Office (it was at the time she started to publish The Second Sex) and soon after I became a member of the Cultural Centre of Women. Meeting and working with her and other feminist activists who dedicate their life to bringing even minor change to Iranian women’s status was a turning point in my life, and I’m proud to say that it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
The protest of 12 June by Iranian feminists was almost enough to make me doubt my decision to emigrate. Certainly, I would have liked to be involved more directly than just during occasional visits back home. Sympathetic observers were anxious about the prospects of this steadily growing, yet still delicate, women’s movement. Many feared the repression that might ensue, that is, the destruction of this fledgling movement by the Islamist government and the possibility of US intervention should political repression intensify. Like with regard to Afghanistan and Iraq, feminist-sounding rhetoric about defending women’s rights was being used by advocates of invasion in the West. Yet Iranian women activists, far from requiring western ‘help’ of this sort, felt sure they could continue fighting successfully for themselves, by themselves.
As I settled into the Australian community, I found surprising the degree to which the media and even intellectuals misunderstood Iranian society and, in particular, women’s situation and the depth of feminism in Iran. Later, I came to see the significance of postcolonial/Third World feminist critiques of the way in which even feminists in the West (particularly liberal and radical feminists) have often
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homogenized Third World women, as all so much more oppressed than themselves. This leads to misunderstandings of women’s actual status, perhaps especially the situation of women in Muslim majority countries. Regardless of how developed such countries are culturally and economically and how much social resistance there is in them, western onlookers tend to paint all with the same brush. This represents a failure to capture the reality of different women’s daily lives and struggles. This understanding is also necessary by women in non-Western societies to avert the homogenizing of “First World” women and also of “Western feminists”.
As I illustrate in the Introduction to the thesis, dominant western discourse has on the one hand promoted a view of Muslim women as victims. It is often assumed on the other hand that they passively accept their situation as their religion decrees it to be the ‘The Will of God’, not man-made. Many Muslim feminists have challenged this view, and the implication that Muslim women can only be ‘saved’ by non-Muslim outsiders.1 The outsider-saviour position is thereby represented as a charitable or philanthropic enterprise. The problem with this approach is that solutions available in the local social environment are overlooked or negated.
Hoping to elicit support in the Australian community, in 2006 I circulated a petition to defend what I saw to be a ground-breaking initiative in Iranian feminist activism called the One Million Signatures Campaign. However, I often encountered Iranian and Australian intellectuals who had misgivings about publicizing Iranian feminist opposition to the regime. They believed that highlighting the oppression of women in Iran in this way might provide those advocating a US attack on Iran with a further pretext, with adverse consequences also for the Iranian women’s movement. Although I could appreciate their viewpoint and reasons for caution, I nevertheless continued to circulate the petition because the One Million Signatures Campaign was a good example of how Iranian women had their own informed viewpoints; were quite aware of constraints on their rights and freedoms; and were fully prepared to fight for change in non-violent and civil ways. What better way to demonstrate that even under a radical Islamist regime an independent secular women’s movement could emerge and even thrive?
I soon found when embarking on my Masters research that the minimal non-academic (media) coverage of contemporary Iran was superficial and apparently ignorant of its longstanding feminist movement. One reason for this is that while Iranian immigrants have resided in Australia and other western countries for many years, and some regularly travel back to Iran, there are few media commentators in touch with or familiar with social movements there. Of course, given the undeniably repressive nature of the Islamist regime, even journalists or scholars with dual citizenship have to be
1 Abu-Lughod, Lila 2013, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. vii
cautious and prepared for the possibility of government reprisals. Without the extensive documentation made available by secular feminists such as Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani from successive (and often banned) journals and websites inside of Iran, this thesis could not have been written; and the same could be said of commentaries on the situation there by several Iranian academics working particularly in American or British tertiary institutions.
The broad aim of my Masters research has been to illustrate the capacity of Iranian women to represent and act for themselves. More specifically, however, I wanted to highlight the struggle of secular women’s rights activists who daily face greater dangers and challenges than those who may call for some reforms but are essentially supportive of the regime. An additional aim is to clarify the relationship between secular feminists and the latter, that is, activist women who are ‘Islamist’ supporters of the 1979 revolution but do at times strive for more rights for women. The relationship between the two has not only been characterized by inevitable tensions but, recently, also some collaboration on some issues.
Iranian secular feminists have in recent years contributed much to promoting democracy and civil rights in the country. The tendency in the western media to reduce all Muslim women’s activities to ones determined or motivated by their faith partly explains the greater visibility of Iran’s Islamist activist women. Some, as noted, may champion further rights for women, but really envisage an Islamic state with a more egalitarian stance on women. The contributions of women such as Shahla Sherkat, Faezeh Hashemi and Azam Taleghani should be acknowledged; however, if we want to understand the Iranian women’s movement in its entirety, and also to assess Iran’s potential for meaningful change in the area of women’s rights, we need to look to secular feminist critics of the regime such as Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani.
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Introduction
In the case of an Islamic state such as Iran, it may be understandable that in order to understand developments there the western media focuses on radical Islamists both in the government and wider society. However, although this sort of focus may help to explain government policy toward women since the 1979 revolution, it would reveal little about the nature of Iranian women’s responses to it. In recent years secular feminists have again come to the fore of Iran’s women’s movement, although at times they have collaborated with Islamic feminists to try to achieve more rights for women.1 My focus is on these overlooked secularist activists, particularly on one leading figure, Noushin Ahmadi- Khorasani. In this Introduction, I first provide some background to Ahmadi-Khorasani’s social-political career.
1. Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani: Background and political career
Nikki Keddie writes, ‘One can be a secularist with a universal view of women’s rights and still cooperate with persons holding different views.2 Keddie was not speaking of Ahmadi-Khorasani here, but her observation certainly applies to her, as we shall see in the second part of the thesis. Ahmadi- Khorasani is a prominent Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist, whose book, The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement, suggests personal reasons for not remembering the revolution fondly. A childhood memory of the revolution is of how her father lost his position as an engineer and senior manager in the oil industry and was replaced by a very young Islamic revolutionary with no education or experience. Mr. Ahmadi-Khorasani had gained his position after many years of study and hard work, but could not adjust to the new Islamic environment and repressive regulations at work. The onset of mental illness caused him to lose his job. Noushin’s family was then faced with many financial problems as her mother did not work outside the home.3
1 A secular person/feminist is not necessarily anti-religion or even an atheist. It can simply mean she/he believes in keeping religious institutions separate from the state/public institutions. Keeping the state impartial toward any religion. So, a Muslim, Christian, Jewish… feminist can be as secular as a non-believing atheist feminist. 2 Keddie, Nikki 2000, ‘Women in Iran since 1979’ Social Research 67.2, 433. 3 Ahmadi-Khorasani N. & Mosavi-Khozestani, D.J. 2012, Bahare Jonbeshe Zanan (The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement), np, Iran, 18. 1
Noushin married at twenty years of age and with her husband, Djavad Mosavi-Khozestani, founded a publishing house in 1990 called Tose’e (Develop) and then published a journal of the same name (Ketab-e Tose’e). The journal was banned by the government after they published some feminist articles in 1998. Noushin with the help of other secular feminists (Parvin Ardalan , Mahsa Shekarloo) founded Markaz e Farhangi-ye Zanan (The Cultural Centre of Women) in 2001 and also published Jense Dovom (The Second Sex) journal from 1998 to 2003. It was banned in 2003, but she then published Fasle Zanan (Women’s Season) from 2003 to 2008. These journals collected articles from different viewpoints by Iranian feminists inside and outside of Iran, as well as some by western feminists. With the help of other women’s rights activists in the Cultural Centre of Women (CCW), they established the first independent electronic journal and website for women, Zanestan (2005). This website was filtered, that is censored, by the government and has disappeared from the net.
Nevertheless, new websites were established by Ahmadi-Khorasani and other members of the CCW, notably Change For Equality in 2006 and The Feminist School in 2007. Workshops for women were held in Tehran and other cities by women’s rights activists to improve women’s awareness about their rights and situation in Iran, and the first independent/non-governmental Women’s Library was established in honour of one of the earlier Iranian feminists, Sedigheh Dolatabady. This centre and its publications and website are now banned by the Iranian government.4 During these years, Noushin wrote and translated many articles, short stories and books, a complete list of which is provided on her personal website.5 She contributed to the Iranian women’s movement much valuable research on feminism and on women’s issues in Iran. She and colleagues also mounted major campaigns over the past ten years. Due to length restrictions, this thesis covers only three of them (until 2009), in the second part of this thesis.6
Ahmadi-Khorasani was put on trial in 2001 due to her publication of a ‘Calendar of Women’ to which the Ministry of Information and Security objected because, among other things, it celebrated resistance to mandatory veiling. The calendar was then banned. Then, in 2007, she was given a three- year suspended sentence for organizing a protest in Haft E Tir Square on 12 June 2006, thereby
4 ibid., 170. 5Ahmadi-Khorasani, Noushin nd, https://noushinahmadi.wordpress.com/, and ‘Bist Sal Faalitihye Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani’ (‘Twenty Years Activities of Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani’) nd, Tavan, https://tavaana.org/fa/content, viewed 16 March 2016. 6 These were the ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ (2006), the ‘Coalition of Women against the Family Protection Bill’ (2009), and the ‘Coalition of Women for the Presidential Election’ (2009); Soon after the Coalition of Women for the Presidential Election, Iranian women launched another notable coalition called the Green Coalition of Women; however, I have not examined this in my study for reasons of thesis length. 2
‘threatening national security’ by her struggle for women’s rights.7 Along with 31 Iranian women, she had been arrested on 4 March 2007 just before the International Women’s Day demonstrations,8 and released on bail. She appeared in the Evin Prison Court ‘to provide some explanations’ for her actions on 22 September 2010 and was informed of her charges the next day.9 These were propaganda or ‘propagation activities against the regime through: writing and publishing content against the regime on the Feminist School website, and secondly, participation in the illegal gatherings after the 2009 elections’.10 Ahmadi-Khorasani defended herself and was released to a custodian until her trial date of 11 March 2012, in the Islamic Revolutionary Court. On 22 June 2012, she was sentenced to one year’s suspended imprisonment and five years of probation. Nashr e Tose’e (Develop Publication House) was shut down under the same ruling as she was the manager of the publication at the time
2. Aims and scope of the thesis
In this thesis I analyze Ahmadi-Khorasani’s substantial body of written work. I also pay attention to her analysis of the ideas and activism of other Iranian feminists working inside and outside Iran during the three major campaigns and coalitions mentioned above: the ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ (2006), the ‘Coalition of Women against the Family Protection Bill’ (2009), and the ‘Coalition of Women for the Presidential Election’ (2009). This study undertakes an analysis of contemporary feminist politics in Iran. While it is necessary to include a brief history of the women’s rights movement in Iran, which I do in the first chapter, the main focus of the thesis is on women’s responses to the 1979 revolution that have culminated in these recent campaigns and alliances.
The central questions I address in the thesis are:
How have women’s status and rights changed over the past century, and what part have women played in bringing about reform?
7 ‘Sentencing / Releases’ 2007, fidh, http://www.fidh.org/Sentencing-Releases-IRN-002-0307, viewed March 2016, and ‘Iran Charges Prominent Women’s Rights Activists’ 2006, Payvand Iran News, 21 June, http://www.netnative.com/news/06/jun/1204.html. 8 ‘Women’s Rights in Iran’, 2009, PRI the World, 27 November, http://www.theworld.org/2009/11/womens- rights-in-iran/. 9 ‘Internet Censors Target Ayatollahs, Feminists and Students’ 2011, The Global Network Defending and Promoting Free Expression, October 2010, http://www.ifex.org/iran/2010/10/08/feminists_targeted/, viewed March 2016. 10 ‘Editor Awaits Trial for Feminist Website Content’ 2010, International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, September, http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2010/09/khorasani-awaits-trial/, viewed March 2016. 3
More recently, what sorts of activities were undertaken by Ahmadi-Khorasani and other influential secularist feminists between 2005 and 2009 in order to achieve better conditions for women in Iran? How far have they challenged the Islamic government in the pursuit of their aims?
How have secular and Islamic feminists differed in their demands and activism, and how far has cooperation between them served to shape the women’s movement in Iran? A further issue of crucial importance concerns further possibilities for collaboration and the likely political effectiveness of this.
My research project is one of the first to address in English the feminism of Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani and the significance and effectiveness of her brand of secular feminism. I examine her feminist politics in relation both to Islamist and Islam-centred women’s rights advocates in the country. The question is whether all women’s rights activists in a Muslim-majority country like Iran could conceivably be united just by their faith, and on what issues. Of course, in Iran conservative politicians and religious authorities typically represent ‘feminism’ as irrelevant or dangerous to Islam and Iranian Muslim women and their families. And, naturally, secularist feminists like Ahmadi-Khorasani do not have the same access to government protection enjoyed by Islam-centred advocates of more rights for women.
3. Categorizing ‘Islamic’ and ‘secular’ feminism
Apart from her recent influence in Iran, the reasons I chose to study Ahmadi-Khorasani included a perceived need to distinguish secular feminists there from those usually termed ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic feminists’. One cannot lump all women’s rights activists in Muslim countries together simply on the basis of their faith. Such terms imply that such activists are not just Muslim but defined by their faith. Ahmadi-Khorasani is defined as a secular feminist by the style of her writings, politics and activism, which is not defined by Islam though often at odds with its application in Iran today.11
Ziba Mir-Hosseini has discussed her usage of the designation ‘Islamic feminist’ in connection with activists in Iran after the 1979 revolution:
I originally used the term [Islamic feminist] to refer to a number of Islamist Iranian women who after the 1979 revolution had played a crucial role in silencing other women’s voices: e.g. Shahla Sherkat, the editor of the official women’s magazine Zan-e Ruz. Azam Taleqani, who took over the pre-revolutionary Women’s Organisation and destroyed all their books.
11 According to Ziba Mir-Hosseini in 2011 (‘Beyond “Islam” vs. “Feminism”’ IDS Bulletin 42.1, 67-77, ‘the term “Islamic feminism” gained currency in the 1990s as a label for a brand of feminist scholarship and activism that is intimately associated with Islam and Muslims’. 4
Zahra Rahnavard, who wrote the seminal text on Hejab and denounced feminism. By the early 1990s, these women had become disillusioned with the Islamic Republic’s official discourse on women, some of them in official positions had stood down and had joined the ‘New Religious Thinkers’, who later were the core of the reform movement. Sherkat started the feminist magazine Zanan; Taleqani founded another, Payam-e Hajer….In my conversations with them in the mid-1990s, these women had no problem with being called ‘Islamic feminists’, which they found an apt description – even if some of them did not yet accept the feminist premise of gender equality. They still saw themselves as part of the Islamic Republic and retained close ties with the political elite…. [Some of the] Islamist women [like Mahbobeh Abasgholizadeh] joined the reform movement and by the mid-2000s were adamantly calling themself a ‘secular feminist’.12
It is clear that there was little tolerance and a very limited space for non-religious/secular activists just after the 1979 revolution,13 but as disillusionment set in within one decade amongst once-radical Islamist women some became merely ‘Islamic’ feminists and some even came to see themselves as secularists. Ahmadi-Khorasani, on the other hand, is not related to any Islamic state organization or NGO, which has not prevented her works14 from becoming highly influential in Iran. As noted, over the past decade she has also been a founder of several major campaigns, coalitions and convergences some of which were listed above. Ahmadi-Khorasani is the one of the leading secularist figures in Iran’s women’s rights movement, and self-defined secular feminists have been increasingly public since the 1990s, united in the basic belief that determining women’s rights and place in society should not be left to religion. Her leadership in feminist activism and publishing and prominence as a critic of government policy on women cannot be disputed.
4. Sources
Comparatively little has been written about modern Iranian women’s history and contemporary women in Iran, either by western and Iranian scholars. Iranian exceptions are often feminist scholars who emigrated mostly after the 1979 revolution such as Nayereh Tohidi, Haideh Moghissi, Ziba Mir- Hosseini, Eliz Sanasarian, Janet Afary, Valentine Moghadam, Shahla Shafigh, Afsaneh Najmabadi and
12 Ibid.70. 13 Those who challenge the rule of the hardliner and their interpretation of Islamic law, including Islamic critics, might fall victim to the regime’s repression. What is at stake here is the absolute power and wealth of the ruling oligarchy (fundamentalist clerics and their military allies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). 14 Examples of her works, many of which were listed above, are the feminist websites and e-journals, Zanestan and Feminist School, and publications such as Jense-e-dovom (The Second Sex) (1998-2003), Fasle zanan (The Season of Women, 2003-2008), Hejab and intellectuals (2011), The Spring of the Women’s Movement of Iran (2012). 5
Kazem Alamdary. There is also little academic literature on the recent campaign on which I focus in the thesis (the One Million Signatures Campaign of 2006) or on the two later coalitions I discuss in the last chapter (the ‘Coalition of Women against the Family Protection Bill’ of 2007 and the ‘Coalition of Women for the Presidential Election’ of 2009). In my work I therefore hope to make an original contribution to the literature on contemporary women and feminism in Iran.
Amongst my important primary materials are Ahmadi-Khorasani’s works such as: Jense-e-dovom (The Second Sex) (1998-2003), Fasle Zanan (The Season of Women, 2003-2008), Hejab and intellectuals (2011), and The Spring of the Women’s Movement of Iran (2012). I also utilize Iranian feminist websites and e-journals such as Zanan Magasin (1992-2008), the Feminist School, Change for Equality, Bidarzani.and Zanestan. These websites include the feminist viewpoints of those residents in Iran such as Shahla Ezazi, Nayereh Tavakoli, Simin Kazemi, Nahid Keshavarz, Kaveh Mozafari, etc.
Researching contemporary Iranian feminism involves difficulties with sources that require explanation. One must rely on websites in particular because is not easy for social critics such as Ahmadi-Khorasani to publish in Iran. They, like others, must secure the approval of the government prior to publishing any material. Moreover, when secular activists like her do manage to get books published or publish in hardcopy magazines or periodicals, many of them deliberately avoid acknowledgement of the actual publisher to protect progressive publishers from closure by the government. Articles by secular feminists and reports on their activities have been published via the abovementioned websites, but these too are subject to state surveillance, filtering and censorship. For example, all Iranian feminist websites such as the Feminist School and Change for Equality were inaccessible due to government restrictions or censorship over the last few months. Around the parliament elections in early 2016, feminist activists including Ahmadi-Khorasani launched a new campaign called ‘More women in Parlaiment’ have been regularly interrogated and threatened. All internal feminist websites once again have been filtered by the government, including the Feminist School and Change for Equality, and some of the feminist articles and the official Ahmadi-Khorasani website have not been available recently. The websites and e-journals on which I draw in this thesis, such as Zanestan (2005), The Feminist School (2007), Change for Equality (2006) and Bidarzani (The Awakening of Women) (2009)15 are all run by Iranian feminists who live in Iran. These websites are the main voice of Iran’s secular feminists, and it would not be possible to research their role and importance in contemporary Iran without recourse to them.
15 This website was launched at the end of 2009 and its first name (translated into English) was ‘Until We Have an Equal Family Protection Law’. At first it was a voice to support the Coalition of Women against the new Family Protection Bill. Five years later the name was changed to Bidarzani (The Awakening of Women) and it is now a reliable website for information on gender discrimination and women’s issues in Iran: http://bidarzani.com/. 6
Such websites are important also because they include material by Iranian academic feminists around the world. Even for them there are limitations to expression in Iran given the fact that many migrated for political reasons. For readers in Iran, the publication of material by Iranian academic feminists abroad such as those listed above occurs primarily in the digital medium. Within a repressive context such as exists in Iran, Iranian political and even academic publications in digital format (even if without formal refereeing) must be relied upon and afforded academic credibility. All of these scholars have formal positions in reputable western academic institutions, so they also publish books or articles in standard academic journals. The material they publish on these informal Iranian websites is based both on personal knowledge as well as careful research.
5. Analysis and approach
Over the past few decades ‘postcolonial’ or ‘Third World’ feminist interventions have enriched feminist scholarship. Adherents of this school of thought of/from the Third and First Worlds alike, have been critical of earlier mainstream western feminist analyses of women in the Third World. A common criticism of liberal and radical feminists in particular is that their views on ‘the’ Third World woman have too often been premised on a universalization or homogenization of the ‘Other’ (usually victimized) woman, which resulted in misunderstandings of women’s widely varying condition in such countries. Postcolonial critics such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty noted the common tendency to emphasize only the universal cross-cultural operation of male dominance and female exploitation.16 Yet, as Ziba Mir-Hosseini has written, both the situation of women and brands of feminism around the world depend upon a wide range of factors, not least different experiences of colonialism:
We all, as scholars and/or activists, are situated beings and must recognise that the legacy of colonialism and the Western hegemony does not allow any of us complete freedom of manoeuvre and analysis…. The accident of birth and our experiences shape our feminism and sometimes chain us; they allow us to be effective only at certain times and in certain contexts; in short, we must recognise the politics of identity.17
The apparently singular Third World woman subject that Mohanty challenged in western feminist discourse can certainly be seen in the frequent representations of women’s rights advocates in Muslim countries as necessarily ‘Islamic feminists’.
16 Mohanty, C.T. 1988, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, No. 30 (Autumn), pp. 61-88. 17 Mir-Hosseini 2011, op. cit., 73. 7
While few western feminists supported the invasions of Iran, Afghanistan or Iraq to ‘save their women’, monolithic constructions of the Third World Muslim woman in such terms also informed the views of US and other policy-makers. This pretext produced some negative results in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the invasions of 2001 and 2003 were partly justified by reference to their ‘barbarity’ concerning women. According to postcolonial feminist critiques found in works such as Women and War in the Middle East, or What Kind of Liberation? (ed. Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt) or Feminism and War (ed. Mohanty et al.), the goal of the Bush administration was not to defend women in such countries, and foreign intervention did little to improve their situation. The intervention of the US and its allies has not brought Iraqi women more freedom. In fact, as an Iraqi woman says in Charlotte Ashtone’s interview by the BBC, women’s rights there have deteriorated: ‘Women used to behave in a more liberal way… I hate to say that, because I hate Saddam so much, but women were freer under Saddam’.18 Although some Muslim women such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji have seen these invasions as bringing positive results for women (according to Mir-Hosseini),19 the critical situation for women in these and some other Muslim countries today underlines the importance of enriching western feminist knowledge of this part of the world in order to facilitate transnational solidarity. Mohanty and others have emphasized that to achieve effective transnational alliances, western feminists must engage with critiques by feminists in and of the Third World to help them move beyond stereotypes and superficial generalizations about women’s situation in such countries.20 Leaving behind the Orientalist/west-centric values that have often informed blueprints for reform in Third World/Muslim countries, they should take heed of what local women believe is necessary to bring about constructive change.
Ahmadi-Khorasani is a case in point, given that few scholars in or out of Iran could equal her understanding of women’s situation and the women’s movement there. In order to investigate what is needed for Iranian women to obtain equality in their society, I therefore choose to rely on the direct experience and intimate knowledge of conditions in Iran of feminist commentators such as Ahmadi- Khorasani.
Not unlike Mohanty, Fataneh Farahani emphasizes how, ‘a focus on the specificity of context, representation and practices is crucial for deeper understanding of each and every circumstance.’21
18 Ashtone, Charlotte, 2011, ‘Iraqi Women: Winners or Losers in a War-torn Society?’ BBC 16 November, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15743078. 19 Mir-Hosseini, op. cit. 75. 20 Mohanty, op.cit. 82. 21 Farahani, Fataneh, 2007, Diasporic Narratives of Sexuality, Stockholm, University of Stockholm, 32. 8
Farahani’s postcolonial feminist approach enables her, she adds, ‘to give voice to those who have continually been the object of monolithic Orientalist discourses’ (which include feminist discourses). Both scholars resist the Orientalism that has haunted characterizations of Third World women first and foremost in terms of their ‘object status’: such women, as Mohanty explains, have too often been reduced to victims of male violence, and/or the colonial process, the Arab familial system, the Islamic code, and so forth.22 Feminist activists such as Ahmadi-Khorasani would not deny that Iranian women can be victimized or oppressed by some of these things; however, they offer a more balanced approach through their focus on the many Iranian women who have been taking action to effect change.
In order to analyze the struggles of Iranian women activists, and explore their similarities and differences, I rely particularly on the first-hand accounts of Ahmadi-Khorasani and other feminist actors on the scene. My approach is analytical and necessarily also descriptive, given the unavoidable descriptive dimension in any type of case study that Pascal Vennsson acknowledges.23 Hence, in the first half of the thesis I describe events over the past century that brought change for women in Iran while also noting early initiatives in the women’s movement.
More precisely, Chapter One is devoted to a brief history of women’s situation and the women’s movement before the 1979 revolution. This begins with the first wave of the fight to emancipate women during the constitutional revolution of 1906. These seventy or so years of struggle by Iranian women has provided much inspiration for the contemporary women’s movement.
In Chapter Two I concentrate on women’s situation in Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979. In this chapter, I investigate the resurgence of the women’s movement after the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1979-1987), noting how Ahmadi-Khorasani and other Iranian advocates of women’s rights have interpreted women’s situation after the revolution. It was such women who gradually formed a new feminist movement. I also examine the responses to this movement of both western feminists and Iranian feminists who left Iran after the revolution, who have tended to be united in their criticisms of women’s status in the new, very repressive Islamist environment. Of course, other women in Iran (supporters of the new regime) could be quite uncritical then of conditions for women, though some became more so over time.
22 Mohanty, op.cit. 66. 23 Della Porta, Donatella & Keating, Michael 2008, Case Studies and Process Tracing: Theories and Practices Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences, A Pluralist Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 245. 9
In Chapter Three I examine the new feminist campaigns in Iran in which Ahmadi-Khorasani played a leading role: the 2006 ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ which demanded the abolition of legal discrimination against women. Its principal demands were: the abolition of polygamy, the right to divorce initiated by women, joint custody of children, equal rights in the Family Protection Law, women’s right to the same standing as men in courts and to equal inheritance with men. The virulent reaction to this campaign and its campaigners on the part of the government and extreme Islamist forces brought the women’s movement in Iran to the attention of the international media. I examine Ahmadi-Khorasani’s influence on this campaign as one its founders, and discuss the approach to the campaign of western feminist and Iranian feminist scholars.
Chapter Four examines Ahmadi-Khorasani’s role in the two Coalitions of Women: the first against the new Family Protection Bill in 2009, which supported polygamy, and the second focused on the presidential election of 2009. The second coalition tried to bring women’s issues to the fore through publications and media appearances, speeches on campaign trails and at street rallies, press conferences, and interviews with candidates. Campaigners were now effectively using the new communication technology (SMS via cell phones, e-mails, and the Internet) to network and mobilize activists. In addition, a film made by a prominent feminist director, Rakhshan Banietemad, covered these efforts in a documentary accessible on the Internet.24 Along with Ahmadi-Khorasani’s influence on women in these coalitions, I examine in this chapter the stance on these coalitions of other Iranian women’s rights advocates in and out of Iran.
24 Tohidi, Nayereh 2009, ‘Zanan va Entekhabat Riasat Joomhory: Farhange Siasi Jaded Iran‘ (‘Women and the Presidential Elections: Iran’s New Political Culture’), The Feminist School, 1 September, unnumbered, http://www.iranfemschool.biz/english/spip.php?article331. 10
Chapter One
Iranian Women’s Struggles before the 1979 Revolution
Introduction
One difficult aspect of research into a social movement is identifying its origin, which is required in this case in order to clarify the legal and social status of Iranian women before and just after 1979. To gain an accurate understanding of the current Iranian women’s movement it is essential to understand its origins and trace the development of women’s participation in political affairs. This chapter briefly sets out the history of women’s movements in Iran in order to identify important issues that have long been challenged by Iranian women in the media and in other activism.
The review is conducted in two sections, on early and then later developments before 1979. First, in regard to the Constitutional Revolution from 1906, the discussion is in three parts on: 1. the status of women before the revolution; 2. women’s participation in political and economic issues during the years of the Constitutional Revolution, which represented the first wave of the fight for sexual equality in Iran; and 3. opponents of women’s emancipation. Second, I consider the legal and social status of women during the Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi periods from 1925 until the 1979 revolution, examining reforms to the legal and social status of women. I end the chapter with an analysis of one of the most effective women’s organizations in this period: the ‘Women’s Organization’.
1. The Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911)
1.1 The Status of Women before the Revolution
An examination of the struggles of the early feminists in Iran reveals many innovations at that time. In the Qajar period (1795-1925), Iran’s contacts with the technologically more advanced western world led to some achievements such as the first factories and electricity, printing, the telegraph and telephone, urban planning and road construction. Technical schools using modern methods were also
11
built, including Dar-Al Fonon founded by a minister of state, Amir Kabir,1 and the first groups of Iranian students went to Europe to study.2
At the time of the 1906-1911 Revolution, women were relegated to a subordinate place in all spheres of life. The illiteracy rate among women was very high, although there are few accurate statistics available because most women were either at home or in Islamic schools known as Maktab Khaneh, which taught only the Quran. The general consensus was that women’s literacy was un-Islamic and a danger to society. Muslim clerics were strongly opposed to any kind of education or training for women except learning the Quran.3 There was even a common belief that women did not have the capacity to learn, as Eliz Sanasarian has pointed out in The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran.4 With juridical matters, too, women were in a poor position, with marriages for young girls common, unilateral rights to divorce only for men, and polygamy. Women had no choice but to accept legal inequalities since the men in authority in the family, the society and religion allowed few avenues for objections. Not only in Iran but generally in the Middle East, women had to acquiesce to legal and social norms, however humiliated and helpless they were made to feel.5
Janet Afary observes that ‘it seems logical that it was only by the Constitutional Revolution that a wide campaign for women’s education began’.6 However, it was with the reform-minded Babi-Bayani, a new religion/sect (1844-1850), as well as Baha’i (which also began in 1844) that the first discourse on gender equality began in Iran. They had opposed polygamy, emphasized the education of women, challenged discrimination against women and demanded choice in the wearing of hejab.7 In 1885, F. Zarin Taj Borghani, one of the Babi Movement’s leaders, shocked a meeting of followers who had gathered from all over Iran by removing her veil.8 She was known for her fiery speeches protesting
1 M.T. Khan Farahani (1807-1852), known as Amir Kabir, was chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, and one of the most capable and innovative figures to appear in the Qajar period. 2 Abrahamian, Ervand 2003, Iran Beine do Enghlab; (Iran between Two Revolution), trans. A. Golmohamadi and M.E. Fatahi, Nashr e Nei (Nei Publication), Iran, 68-70. 3 Fatima Mirnissi and Nawal El Saadawi, along with many other scholars, adopt critical approaches to the idea that women’s literacy was un-Islamic. 4 Sanasarian, Eliz 2005, The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran, trans. N. Ahmadi-Khorasani, Nashr e Akhtaran (Akhtaran Publication), Iran, 29. 5 ibid, 30-31. 6 Afary, Janet, 2000, Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911), trans. R. Rezaei, Nashr e Bisoton, Iran, 240. 7 Momen, Moojan 2011, ‘Madares e Bahaei dar Iran’ (‘Baha’s School in Iran’), The Baha’is of Iran, ed. F. Vahman, Nashr e Baran, Sweden, 169-209, and Vahdati, Soheyla 2009, ‘The Mystery of Tahereh in Iranian Women’s Movement’, Iran e Emrooz, October, viewed March 2011, http://www.iran- emrooz.net/index.php?/zanan/more/19455/. 8 Mash-hoori, Delaram 2002, ‘Rag-e-Tak’, Nashr e Khavaran (Akhtaran Publication), v. 1, Paris, 208. 12
women’s inequality and the compulsion to wear hejab.1 These religious movements were strongly opposed by orthodox Shia and Sunni clerics and by leading intellectuals, and some followers were even prosecuted for apostasy or blasphemy and executed. Nevertheless, the number of people joining such cults grew, no doubt partly because of their teachings on the equality of men and women.
Amidst the Constitutional Revolution Iranian women made rapid progress from 1907 onwards. This was one of the most important social revolutions in the Middle East in the early 20th century, though part of a general trend toward change and reform in the region. Not unlike Russia’s 1905 revolution and Turkey’s great reforms not long after, the Iranian revolution has been seen as a democratic revolution. Referring to Morgan Shuster’s 1913 book, The Strangling of Persia,2 the Iranian feminist historian, Janet Afary, has emphasized the multi-class, multi-cultural and multi-ideological character of this revolution.3 Unfortunately, as Sanasarian shows, male historians have had little to say about women in this era. Sanasarian notes that during the Constitutional Revolution interlocking activities related to women’s rights were pursued in urban centres in three different areas: women’s publications; women’s organizations; and schools for girls.4 She defines a social movement by reference to five major characteristics: discontent among at least a significant minority in society; demanding change in the existing social order due to dissatisfaction with it; staging continual protests; having some sort of organizational structure; and a common commitment to a main goal or ideology. Applying these features to Iranian women’s struggles at the time of the Constitutional Revolution, she sees such actions as clearly constituting Iran’s first women’s movement. An explicit concern with women’s rights was certainly evident by early 1910 with the release of the first women’s periodical.
From the first decade of the last century, schools for girls had also begun to be established, the majority funded by women: the Doshizegan Preparatory School founded in 1907 by B.K. Astarabadi, the Taraghi Preparatory School founded in 1911 by M. Goharshenas, the Namos Preparatory School and some schools for Baha’i girls founded by Bahai believers. Education for girls was crucial, but the new-found courage and confidence of women was not only seen in demands for education. They also formed women’s associations and unions, such as the Women’s Freedom Forum in 1906 and Homeland Association in 1910; and released women’s newspapers and periodicals which were the best resources available for the study of women’s ideas and activities at that time. Due to cultural
1 De Gobineau, cited in The Mystery of Tahereh in Iranian Women’s Movement, 2009, by Soheyla Vahdati. 2 William Morgan Shuster (1877-1960), was an American lawyer, civil servant, and publisher, best known as the Treasurer-General of Persia by appointment of the Iranian parliament, Majles, from May to December 1911. 3 Afari, op. cit., 19. 4 Sanasarian, op. cit., 57. 13
taboos on women’s literacy, publishing by women was often considered a revolutionary act. Although in the Constitutional period, women emphasized welfare issues and legal rights, the right to vote and the hejab issue were also frequently raised. An aversion to hejab as oppressive was repeatedly expressed in the Women’s Language Weekly between 1921 and 1931 by S. Dowlatabadi, and Female Population by M. Eskandari (1922-1932), which caused some harassment by religious people, the clergy and government of the editors of these journals. Other activities during this period included: women going unveiled in European clothing and cosmetics in the streets; participation in an International Women’s Conference in Paris by S. Dowlatabadi in 1926; and even a number of people raising the issue of sexual double standards with regard to divorce rights and polygamy.1 However, despite all these initiatives the women’s movement reached its peak during the 1920s and declined sharply in the early 1930s, with the last woman’s organization being disbanded in 1932. According to Sanasarian, this marked the end of the first women’s movement in Iran.2
1.2 Women’s participation in political and economic issues in the Constitutional Revolution
Although some called for suffrage, women had little involvement in politics in this period, though their participation in economic initiatives could carry over into political affairs. Women participated in establishing the National Bank (Meli) and banning foreign textiles (in a boycott on foreign goods in December of 1911); so clearly some women were participating in political and other public issues.3 Women were active in progressive publishing ventures. For example, articles by Esmat Tehrani (1869- 1911) have been compared by Janet Afary with Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous treatise released in the midst of a revolution in 1792.4 Also common were distributing ‘night letters’—that is, sending out open letters to members of parliament to protest against their poor performance. Women even participated in the ‘national forces’ (anti-Qajar, pro-constitution freedom fighters) that eventually conquered the capital in 1909; as well as in street protests.5 However, women’s overall political participation rate remained quite low. Sanasarian believes that most political issues then would have been seen as irrelevant to the lives of the majority of women.
1 Afari, op. cit., 239, 246, 247, 259. 2 Sanasarian, op. cit., 51, 52 & 82. 3 Afari, op. cit., 236. 4 Ibid., 260. 5 Afari, op. cit., 270. 14
1.3 Male opponents and champions of women’s emancipation
Where women were visible, for example in publishing, there was always the danger of the publications being banned and publishers and writers being sentenced to imprisonment or exile.1 The main opponents of women’s emancipation were clergy and religious individuals who considered it unnecessary or dangerous to Islam and Sharia. They tagged liberal women as Babi or Baha’i and accused them of blasphemy to gag their calls for reform. Further, even left-wing or progressive parties tended either to oppose women’s emancipation or to ignore the reformers and their demands. Then, as now, their objections included the charge that feminism was a western phenomenon and not an indigenous movement. But, as elsewhere, revolutionaries also considered the women’s movement as ‘bourgeois’ and as a means of diverting attention from the ‘real’ revolutionary struggle.2
Nevertheless, there were some male champions of women’s rights then in Iran. From the second half of the 19th century, there were Iranian intellectuals concerned about the ‘backwardness’ of Iran compared to the ‘civilized’ West, and some contributed to the establishment of modern schools. Reformers such as M. Malkam Kahn and A. Taleb Zadeh persuaded the government to provide public education. As Afari has indicated, some constitutional reformers addressed the ‘backward’ condition of Iranian women and expressed the desire to improve their situation, if only to achieve wider ‘civilizing’ national goals.3 However, more than anything else it was the participation of women in the Constitutional Revolution that brought women’s issues to the fore, resulting in the establishment of women’s associations and publications as well as schools for girls. Thereby women soon began to develop an awareness of their own as to what would be needed to gain sexual equality. While they targeted the strong clerical opposition to schools especially for girls and to women’s right to vote and other reforms, women did not criticize Islam itself. Sanasarian observes that where possible they sought to enlist Islam as support for their demands.4
2. The legal and social position of women from 1925 to the 1979 Revolution
Reza Shah (1925-1941) was a non-revolutionary reformer. He did not seek to create a thorough political and social transformation; and certainly did not oppose the traditional class structure. The
1 Sanasarian, op. cit., 83. 2 Afari, op. cit., 250-252, 259, and Sanasarian, op. cit., 32-36. 3 Afari, op. cit., 238 4 Sanasarian, op. cit., 44-46 and 81. 15
only significant change he wanted was that the Pahlavi family to which he belonged become the centre of the ruling class.1 In late 1920, Reza entered the political scene of Iran; in 1921, he became minister of war and, in 1923, prime minister. During these years he was very effective at suppressing movements of opposition. In 1925, he succeeded in pressuring the parliament to depose and exile Ahmad Shah, and install himself as the Shah of Iran. During this period, amid a push for national progress and modernization, women increased their demands for equal rights.2
Yet the women’s movement, which had been active and clearly visible in society before the rise of Reza Shah, now began to decline. Despite this, positive measures for women during his reign included reforms in the following areas.
Changes in marriage and divorce laws: Gradually applied from 1926 to 1940, these included the abolition of religious and informal courts, or at least their legal sanction, and their replacement with civil courts. There was an emphasis on permanent and temporary civil marriage registration at a formal registry under the Ministry of Justice.3 In these reforms, polygamy was not abolished, however, and the legal marriage age did not change, just as the father’s legal custody of children remained unchanged.
Educational opportunities for girls and women: These were expanded. Educational opportunities for girls had already been improved but, due to a lack of teachers, teacher training was adopted in 1936 and this included women. Tehran University was founded in 1934 and both boys and girls were permitted to enter the college.
Hejab prohibition: The women’s movement had been active in this area before Reza Shah, as noted above, with many intellectual women such as D. Maali and S. Dowlatabadi appearing unveiled in public. However, most women had not discarded their veils because of fear of social ostracism and the antagonism of clerics. Except for those who were under the influence of new ideas in modern religious faiths such as Babi and Baha’I, unveiling was an initiative by the state forced on some women, not taken up on the basis of freedom of choice. Reza Shah, however, believed that unveiling signaled a release from domestic captivity and that it would increase women’s awareness of their rights and enable them to take part in public affairs. He was impressed by Ataturk in Turkey who had made the veil optional,4 and after his visit to Turkey in 1935 he formally banned the hejab,
1 James, B.A. nd, ‘Modernization and Reform from Above: The Case of Iran’, Western Political Quarterly 32 (February 1970), 30, cited in Sanasarian, op. cit., 109. 2 Sanasarian, op. cit., 95. 3 It is debatable that under Reza Shah, there was considerable change in legal aspects of marriage and divorce. Some writers argue that the old sharia on these questions remained, and that Sharia lwas codified as the state law concerning family and personal status. 4 Even though Ataturk promoted modern dress for women, he never made specific reference to women’s clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will: Sanasarian, op.cit., 102. 16
making Iran the only non-communist country in the world to do so (the USSR had done away with the veil in its Muslim republics earlier).1
Sanasarian believes that Reza Shah was able to overcome clerical opposition largely due to his authoritarianism and free use of force; he was not one to compromise with the clergy. However, Fereydun Vhaman has shown that Reza Shah closed all of the Baha’i schools just a few days before adopting the Unveiling Act; and the increased number of these schools was the biggest concern of clergy at that time.2 Hence, some compromise is suggested. Reza Shah’s excuse to close Baha’i schools was to punish them for closing their schools on the anniversary of the murder of their leader, Baha’Al- Din. By taking this action he acquired the support of clerics for the Unveiling Act, whose support for government restrictions on the spread of any competing new sects that might challenge the power of traditional schools took precedence over the hejab issue.
Yet, unveiling was not going to help Iranian women much when they were married at 9 years of age, had few rights in marriage, divorce and custody, had far from equal rights in employment opportunities and conditions, and even their political participation was prohibited by law. Although we might now see the unveiling policy as a necessary measure for women, to help them gain work and liberate them from other constraints associated with ‘purdah’ or seclusion, the reform was actually too hasty and caused further social problems. Now many women in traditional families would not leave their houses at all, especially older women to whom unveiling was like nudity. So it is unsurprising that this law was removed immediately after Reza Shah’s reign that ended in 1941.3
As noted, before Reza Shah’s unveiling law some women, including women’s rights activists and intellectuals and aristocratic women, had put aside their veils, so perhaps this trend would gradually have spread without government intervention. With the support of some influential intellectuals and poets speaking out against the constraints caused by the veil and writing anti-veil poetry years before the Unveiling Act — men such as M.T. Bahar, Iraj Mirza, M. Eshghi, F. Yazdi and others — the anti- veiling movement had been gradually gaining some ground. However, the unveiling policy together with other reforms of the First Pahlavi period had a great impact on women’s lives. On the negative side, Reza Shah’s law against the hejab closed off new opportunities for many traditional women that other reforms encouraged, despite the fact that ‘a relatively broad social participation of women in
1 Sanasarian, op. cit., 95-104. 2 Vahman, Fereydun 2010, 160 Saal Mobarezeh ba Aeein Bahaei (160 Years of Persecution: An Overview of the Persecution of the Baha’is of Iran), Nashr e Baran, Sweden. pp.115-117. 3 Sanasarian, op. cit., 101-104. 17
this period was achieved and a young generation of women stepped [forward] independently to participate in issues in public life’.1
Perhaps the major consequence of the unveiling policy was the novelty of a secular authority taking over dress codes, thereby making citizens’ dress a political issue. Dress became a political tool to help the regime put its national goals of ‘modernization/civilization’ into effect. Change in individual appearance is the easiest and most obvious way to broadcast change in society, and legally forcing women to dress in a certain way was made acceptable for the first time. This legal governmental control of women’s dress began with the Unveiling Act, continued with subsequent bans on women going unveiled in public, and can still be seen in Iran today.2
As noted above, despite some reforms benefiting women, Reza Shah’s accession to power brought about a decline in the women’s movement. In the early years of his rule, he did seek to improve the situation of women, and did not interfere with the women’s movement because at the time feminists were supporting women’s education and acceptable changes in the legal system as well as the unveiling policy. As he extended governmental control over everything in an increasingly authoritarian style of rule, however, the women’s movement and their publications were suppressed due to pressure from conservative clerics, or disapproval from Reza Shah himself or the parliament — as with other democratic movements and political parties and their publications. Sanasarian notes that the last closure of a woman-related publication had been the prohibition of Alame Nesvan (Ladies World).3 By Reza Shah’s reign from 1925, parliament was the only legal way to achieve substantial change. Perhaps the failure of the women’s movement to resist was linked to the following constraints: first, it was extremely difficult to promote equal rights among women with a 95% illiteracy rate; second, there was continued opposition from religious leaders; third, the lack of political and economic stability together with a poor communication system did not help; and finally, the movement’s organizational structure and ideas were still too fragile to withstand government power.4
In the 1930s the Homeland Association of Ladies was the only remaining independent women’s organization, but after hosting the 1932 Eastern Women’s Conference in Tehran it ceased its activity for unknown reasons. The chairwoman of the Congress, in any case, was Ashraf Pahlavi (daughter of
1 Ahmadi-Khorasani N., Mosavi-Khozestani, D.J., 2010, Hejab va Roshanfekran (Hejab and the Intellectuals), Unknown publisher, Iran, p.17. 2 Kazemi, Simin ‘nd’, ‘Negahi be Kashfe Hejab va Payamadhaye Aan’ (‘Take a Look at Unveiling and its Consequences), The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?page=print&id_article=6992, viewed 29 February 2016. 3 Sanasarian, op. cit., 106. 4 Ibid., 109-112. 18
Reza Shah), which indicates the Shah’s control over nominally independent associations by this time. Although the implementation of some of the aforementioned changes could have encouraged a women’s movement, Iranian feminists were loathe to endanger the commitment of Reza Shah at least to expanded educational opportunities for girls and women; and since higher education was their primary goal this fear contributed to a tendency to compromise with the government.1 In 1935, a number of educated women formed the Kanoon e Zanan (Ladies Society) in accordance with a decree by the Shah. Sadigheh Dowlat Abadi, as one of the most prominent women in the feminist movement in the 1930s, served as chairwoman of the association. A deep gap was thereby created between elite and other women, which influenced the later periods,2 such as that of the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979).
In 1941, after the British and Soviet invasion of Iran because of alleged concerns about the Shah’s pro- Hitler sympathies, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his young and less experienced son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Reza Shah was exiled to Mauritius and then to South Africa, and died in 1945. Mohammad Reza Shah faced a political vacuum and widespread insecurity and political turmoil. Nevertheless, during the occupation of Iran by the Allied forces until 1946, people had more freedom of expression than over the past 20 years, and many political parties were formed. Women, too, took advantage of the situation and various women’s associations were formed.3
Tashkilat e Zanan e Iran (the Women’s Organization of Iran) was one of the most radical women’s groups. It was the women’s branch of the Mass Communist Party formed in 1943, which promised complete economic, social and political freedom for women. In 1945, they published Bidari e Ma (Our Awakening) and two years earlier Party representatives had submitted a plan for women’s suffrage to the parliament. Some members of the state-sanctioned Kanoon e Zanan (Ladies Society), who had continued their activities after Reza Shah’s departure, formed the Women’s Party, which included some similar objectives to those of the Mass Party but was far less radical. Another organization was Jameiat-e Zanan (Women’s Population) established in 1942, whose main platform was simply to improve the position of women; the daily Today’s Woman was the organ of this organization. The main feature of these women’s groups was their close cooperation with different political parties, but for the political parties women’s rights was a less important issue than others, even for some women
1 Sanasarian, op. cit., 105. 2 Keshavarz, N. & Djavaheru J., 2008, ‘Sazemandehi, Mehvarhaye Mobarezati va Gofteman Jonbeshe Zanan / Doreh Pahlavi Aval’ (‘Organizing, Campaign Themes, and Discourses of Women’s Movement / First Pahlavi Era’), The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article1907, viewed 29 February 2016. 3 Sanasarian, op. cit., 112-118. 19
who were members of these parties. The supposedly universal ideals of their male comrades took precedence over women’s rights.1
Whilst one would not expect feminists with different political affiliations to agree on what women most need, the lack of shared objectives amongst radical women was also partly a reflection of the confusing, strife-ridden political scene at that time. Between 1941 and 1952, the Cabinet changed 26 times. The National Front, a coalition government of a number of parties with different ideologies (socialism, nationalism, liberalism, but not communism), was led by Dr Mohamad Mosadegh as prime minister, who then resigned due to a conflict with the Shah. This led to one of the most dramatic demonstrations in Iran’s history when the Shah attempted to stage a coup against Mosadegh’s government but was forced to leave the country. During Mosadegh’s governance (1951-1953) there was little change in the legal or political situation, although he is known as the most ‘democratic’ leader in Iran’s history.2
In this period the hejab became more pervasive again and unequal family laws on marriage, divorce, custody of children and the age of marriage for girls remained unchanged. Moreover, women still did not have the vote. Hence, in 1952 hundreds of thousands of women found a new unity of purpose and signed a statement demanding equal political and other rights with men, submitting it to Prime Minister Mosadegh as well as parliament representatives and the United Nations. However, due to the large number of objections and dire predictions from clerics about extending the right to vote to women, women’s suffrage was not included in a new Electoral Act.3
In August 1953, the Iranian army (widely believed to have been backed by the CIA) carried out a coup against Mosadegh’s government that reinstated Mohammad Reza as Shah. Once again, all political parties were abolished and the media was placed under strict control, ushering in a new era of repression.4 As can be seen in the Shah’s interview with Oriana Fallaci in 1972,5 his beliefs about women’s issues were not much different from those of his father. He was a dictator who would not tolerate independent initiatives beyond his control, which affected women’s organizations too. But his
1 Ibid., 113 and 114. 2 Sanasarian, op. cit., 116. 3 Ibid., 118. 4 Ibid., 118. 5 ‘The Shah of Iran, An Interview with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi’ 1973, New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/92745/shah-iran-mohammad-reza-pahlevi-oriana-fallaci, viewed 1 December 2015. 20
desire and willingness to ‘modernize’ (that is, westernize) created a situation that feminists could take advantage of.
In line with the Shah’s willingness to modernize the country, improving women’s status was included in the new government’s agenda. In 1956 the Minister of Labour asked the heads of several women’s organizations whose membership had increased substantially to plan a large gathering for women to protest against discrimination against women; with his sanction they were to demand more egalitarian laws with equal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, the right to vote etc. After that, the Woman Population’s Council of Iran was formed in Tehran and two years later it became the Woman Population’s Supreme Council of Iran. The Council consisted of various branches and committees in different cities; and it included a Department of Correction and Rehabilitation for prisoner women. Improving women’s literacy was one of its primary concerns, and it also wanted to expand the Women’s Council’s international connections. Like with the earlier Ladies Society, again the Council was mainly run by privileged upper-class women.
Sanasarian has concluded that these women of the Supreme Council lacked imagination, courage and any egalitarian idealism, in contrast with the earlier dynamic, independent and non-partisan women’s organizations. Perhaps it was their devotion to the government that saved them when a new wave of suppression began in Iran, for women’s organizations were not treated as an illegal activity unlike other parties and organizations.1 Mahnaz Afkhami, founder and secretary-general of the Women’s Organization,2 puts an opposing view: as a leading proponent of women’s rights in the Islamic world and the second female minister in Iran, she has claimed in most of her interviews and writings that it was not compulsory for organizations to join the Women’s Council; and that many organizations that worked with the Council maintained their independence from both it and the government.3 As she was then the Minister for Women’s Affairs, however, she could not be said to be non-partisan.
Many feminist, liberal, leftist and other pro-reform individuals demanded political rights for women in the 1950s and 1960s. Once again in 1959, debates about women’s suffrage took place in the Majlis, but clerics were strongly opposed to it and they prevented public protests planned for International Woman’s Day in 1959. Yet, in 1962, the Shah issued a decree granting the vote to women and allowing
1 Ibid., 132-136. 2 Mahnaz Afkhami is today president and founder of the Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) and Executive Director also of the Foundation for Iranian Studies. She founded the Association of Iranian University Women. As well as being a former Minister of Women’s Affairs, she served as Secretary General of the Women’s Organization of Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. 3 Goftego ba Mahnaz Afkhami: Dovoming vazir e Zan e Iran (Discussion with Mahnaz Afkhami: the Second Female Minister in Iran), 2011, Be Ebarate Digar, BBC Television, London, 22 February. 21
them to participate in city and county councils. When religious scholars objected to women’s suffrage as un-Islamic and put pressure on the Prime Minister, Asadolah Alam, the decree was rescinded. On 8 December 1962, the anniversary of women’s unveiling back in 1936, different associations of women first refused to participate in the commemorative assembly at the tomb of Reza Shah to show their objection to the rescinding of the women’s suffrage decree. Also on 24 January 1963, teachers, government employees and private institutions held a strike over the suffrage issue. The Shah launched the so-called White Revolution in 1963, a reform platform which many believe was a ruse to ensure the survival of the monarchy, but women’s suffrage was introduced as part of it. Now women could vote at district elections if in separate polling booths. On 27 February, women were also given the right to vote and run for parliament. General elections were held in 1963, on 17 September, and six women were elected to the lower house of parliament. When the Shah appointed 30 members to the Senate, he also included two women in his list. Much effort by women’s and other pressure groups had been put into proving that women in Iran could exercise the right to vote in a responsible manner and even exercise authority as sitting members, so it is not surprising that this was included in the Shah’s plans for national progress and modernization.1
2.1 The Women’s Organization of Iran
Since many of the positive legal changes in favour of women, including the Family Support Act of 1974, were achieved with the support of the Women’s Organization of Iran, it is worth devoting a section to it. This Women’s Organization of Iran, replaced the Woman Population’s Supreme Council of Iran in 1966. The platform of the Women’s Organization of Iran changed many times, but its last charter included an aim to increase women’s knowledge of political, economic, social and cultural affairs. In 1967, Family Welfare centres were established to provide training facilities, as well as health care centres, legal advice centres and kindergartens in different areas. In 1969, a social work school was established in Varamin city. The organization focused on research into women’s issues, including discrimination against women, the image of women in textbooks for primary schools, the status of women in tribal communities, male and female roles on television, and women’s dress. It is notable that some of the issues it targeted were similar to those highlighted by western feminist movements. Charitable works were also one of the objectives of the organization, but in the 1970s it focused its
1 Sanasarian, op. cit., 127-129. 22
activities on political and legal reforms in favor of women under the leadership of the new chairwoman, the abovementioned former Minister for Women’s Affairs, Mahnaz Afkhami.1
One of the biggest achievements of the Women’s Organization was the new amendment to the Family Protection Law in 1974, which I explain in more detail in Chapter Four. But, for example, an amendment was included to increase the minimum age of 18 for girls and 20 for boys marrying and place more limits on polygamy. Afkhami believes the Iranian Family Protection Law was a very progressive family law for Muslim majority countries even to this day.2
The leadership of the Women’s Organization was still just as elite, which partly explains its influence, and the continuing intimacy between it and the state can be seen in the organization’s Cooperation Council. This included authorities such as the Prime Minister, several ministers, leading officials of various government agencies, representatives of the Planning Department, radio and TV, and the Department of Employment and Anti-Illiteracy Committee; and it had a meeting every 6 months with the Supreme Chairwoman of the organization. These institutions increased the ability of the Women’s Organization of Iran to promote legislative changes through giving it more legitimacy and authority. Yet, from its inception the Women’s Organization of Iran was composed of traditional-conservative and reformist elements. Reformers believed that the Women’s Organization of Iran did not show enough support for women’s rights and should work harder on this. Traditionalist-conservatives believed that the organization was extremely liberal and too anti-religious. Perhaps the organization’s most positive aspect was its thorough examination of the legal and civil problems faced by women. Nevertheless, the organization minimized any radical demands or activities and played down their achievements in their reports in order to offset objections from the conservative opposition and clergy. This meant however that the organization’s reputation among intellectuals could have been higher.3
According to Sanasarian, the identity of the Women’s Organization was too closely tied to the Shah’s regime. In 1975, after a single legal party, Rastakhiz, was introduced by the Shah, the Women’s Organization changed its political platform to support the government party. The lifelong presidency of Ashraf Pahlavi (the Shah’s sister) and other elite elements of the Organization’s Central Council – 6 out of 10 of the Cooperation Council’s members were appointed by them – gave a regime-dependent nature to the Women’s Organization. Also, the organization did not have effective monitoring or
1 Ibid., 129-136. 2 Mahnaz Afkhami, 2011, BBC Television, op. cit. 3 Ibid., 132-137. 23
control of memberships and boards in its city branches, which were run in accordance with personal politics that discouraged the participation of working women.1
Clearly, the Women’s Organization had its negative and positive sides. This plus the research into women’s issues further sponsored by the Organization laid the groundwork for feminist radicalism on later years.
Conclusion
Women’s subordinate place in all spheres of life was indisputable before the constitutional revolution. Cultural traditions and laws considered women only suitable for reproduction and family nurturance and housekeeping. The much higher rate of illiteracy amongst women, as promoted by the clergy, together with their inability even to vote before the 1960s, made it very difficult for women to act to change their situation. Understandably, Iran’s earliest feminists focused on education: the establishment of schools for girls and further education for adult women. This was the logical first step because women had to be more literate in order to overcome conservative opposition to women’s suffrage and gain more legal rights. However, education was not the only field of battle for the early feminists: apart from political rights and generally more legal rights for women, feminists also emphasized welfare issues. They even challenged the compulsory wearing of hejab and some of them appeared in European dress in public. Nevertheless, despite the emergence of the first women’s movement from 1910 until 1932 and the increased number of women’s associations and women’s publishing, women had little involvement in grass-roots politics.
The main opponents of women’s emancipation were the clergy and other religious conservatives. Of course there were some defenders of women’s rights among male intellectuals and politicians, too, though never very many. Positive change for women began during the Reza Shah Period from 1925, albeit in a limited way in education, in expanded educational opportunities for girls and women. The wearing of the hejab was prohibited by the Shah in 1935, which was seen as positive change by many Iranians, although this issue continues at the centre of political debate and conflict. Some believe that unveiling women signaled a released from captivity and that it had truly positive impact on women’s lives. Others see it as intolerable interference by secular authority in cultural or religious custom, and some questioned the absence of women’s freedom of choice and their own agency in this regard contrasted to the state-dictated compulsory de-veiling or compulsory veiling
1 Ibid., 137-146. 24
This chapter has revealed the difficulties involved in promoting equal rights amongst women with a very high rate of illiteracy and generally no economic independence. Hence, the gap between elite and other women throughout the history of Iran’s women’s movement comes as no surprise. Perhaps earlier feminists such as in the (government-aligned) Women’s Organization could have done more to build a national, multi-class movement, but that is not to deny what they did achieve. As noted above, even if ultimately it was through the willingness to modernize (westernize) of Mohammad Reza Shah that women gained political rights, elite women in the Supreme Council and then the Women’s Organization would have had some influence on this decision, including the independent Women’s Lawyers Association led by Mehrangiz Manouchehri, who played an important role in this process. When women gained the right to vote and to be elected for parliament in 1963 it was partly due to the efforts of generations of Iranian feminists, just as when legal changes in favor of women were introduced through the Family Protection Act in 1974 the Women Organization of Iran had played a vital role in bringing about the reform.
In reviewing the women’s movement in Iran, we see how the struggle for women’s rights has occurred over a period of more than a century. Although the majority of activists have of course been Muslim, and proud to identify as such, nevertheless they resisted the traditional clergy’s attitudes to only a religious education for women; and they also challenged, at least implicitly, Islamic family law. Demanding political rights in the new system of constitutional parliamentary rule was another example of the secular nature of their goals.
25
Chapter Two
The Legal and Social Status of Women after 1979
Introduction
In Chapter Two I analyze the legal and social status of Iranian women up to the early years of this century, also contrasting their situation after the revolution with what it was in the period prior to 1979. To reformulate the complexities of the existing Iranian women’s movement one also needs to examine the roles of women in the revolution. The latter is addressed in the first part of this chapter, which will also address the disadvantages faced by secular feminist activists. In the next section I consider the roles women played during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 as this war had a profound impact on the internal socio-political situation and all aspects of ordinary Iranians’ lives. It is in this section that I analyze the basis of a new brand of feminism that soon came to be designated Islamic feminism, which at first (in Iran) referred to women who had enthusiastically supported the new regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini and his policy of a general Islamization of the country. Some of these women came to be disappointed in the role allotted to women from 1979, and with the daily challenges of living under Sharia law. Limited pre-1979 reforms to family law, for example, soon came to be discarded by the new Islamist government. In the final section I discuss the reform period of 1988-2005 that featured a resurgence in secularist feminist activism. This was when leaders such as Ahmadi-Khorasani came to the fore of the struggle for women’s rights in Iran’s public arena.
1. Women’s participation in politics in the 1979 Islamic Revolution
Although all countries are unique, Iran may have claim to more surprising political changes in the past century than any other country existing continuously during that period. Among these changes have been notable alterations in women’s roles and status.1
There had been some significant changes for women in Iran by the 1970s, as we have seen, but through this decade a renewed conservatism in Islamic politics became popular among opponents of the Shah. He was associated with western models and even imperialism, as were many of his policies, among them more rights for women. Among religious conservatives, women’s suffrage, reforms to family law and even education for women were seen with suspicion.
1 Keddie, Nikki 2000, ‘Women in Iran since 1979’, Social Research 67.2, 405. 26
There has been much scholarly debate about the 1979 revolution in Iran: for example, some hold that the true revolutionaries in Iran never had a chance to achieve their demands because the revolution was ‘hijacked’ by Ayatollah Khomeini. Nikki Keddie, who has authored many works on women in Iran, observes that:
During revolutions various parties often try to convince themselves that their ideals will be realized once the old regime is overthrown, as happened in the Iranian Revolution. The secular leftists and liberals who participated crucially in the revolution expected a major post-revolutionary role, but instead, after a few months of freedom, they were one by one suppressed and eliminated from government by clerical forces from 1980 through 1983. 2
In 1978-79, not unusually, the left-wing and other secular political parties had failed to provide a strong, united popular leadership, which ultimately created more space for an ‘Islamist’ victory.3
As Parvin Paidar has noted in Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was a vigorous opponent of women’s suffrage and of the limited sexual equality legislation enacted during Mohammad Reza Shah’s White Revolution of 1963.4 Soon after his 1979 victory he suspended the 1974 reform to the Family Protection Law. Hence, polygamy, control of the first marriage of girls by fathers or male guardians, accessible divorce for men but not for women, and a minimum age of nine for girls marrying were reinstated. A government proclamation enforcing the wearing of hejab was temporarily derailed after a mass demonstration in opposition on International Women’s Day, 8 March 1979, but was re-imposed soon after. In addition, women could no longer be judges and were dismissed or hounded from many governmental and professional positions. Women reacted against all these policies and renewed social discrimination, as Paidar notes:
The first and strongest reaction to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamization attempt came from secular women on the eve of International Women’s Day celebrations on 8 March. A celebration had been planned by a consortium of Marxist-Leninist women’s groups as the first such celebration since the early 1950s when it used to be organised by the Tudeh Party.5
2 Ibid., 409. 3 The term ‘Islamist’ came in the 1970s to be applied to radical Islamic political trends, that is, populist Islamic politics that appealed to Islam rather than western models for socio-economic justice, and more effective resistance to western imperialism. While the term ‘radical’ is often applied to such politics, adherents have urged a return to traditional Islamic law, Sharia. 4 Paidar, Parvin 1995, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 234. 5 The Tudeh Party was Iran’s communist party, formed in 1941. It was weakened considerably in the 1980s when many communists were arrested and some even executed. Many also had split from the Tudeh Party because of its close ties to the Communist Party of the USSR. 27
Paidar continued that the celebration, however, was turned into a protest as a result of Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronouncements about the suspension of the Family Protection Law, women’s hejab at work and the dismissal of women Judges by the Ministry of Justice, all of which had taken place in a week, before the international Women’s Day. These policies changed the scale and status of International Women’s Day into a massive spontaneous protest movement composed of various strata of women. And as she mentioned the protestors included young and old, rich and poor, veiled and unveiled. But the majority were secular women including students, professionals, the unemployed or housewives, from the middle and upper classes.6
One major focus of research on the revolution has been on the implementation of reactionary legislation concerning women under Ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership. However, the regime’s policies on women were predictable and had been long in the making. In Keddie’s view, there had long been an acute cultural dualism or division in Iranian society. On the one hand, there was a highly westernized elite and new middle class, overwhelmingly secular and often with a western education; and, on the other hand, there was the traditional middle class, or bazaaris, who had close family, ideological and practical ties to the clergy.7 They therefore tended to follow what they considered to be Islamic norms, including chador for women, as well as traditional marriage, divorce and family practices. Keddie also emphasizes that even at times when openly political groups were being suppressed under earlier regimes,8 the Iranian clergy were harder to attack because they phrased their opposition to successive governments in Islamic terms.9 Thus, they were also able to voice their own political dissatisfaction and demands and represent the interests of the conservative bazaar class. This tradition of a comparative safety from repression contributed to how politically activist clerics allied with Ayatollah Khomeini were able to increase their influence in the years leading up to the 1979 revolution.10
6 Paidar, op. cit., 234. 7 Keddie, op. cit. 408. 8 In an informal discussion with me, one eyewitness who was in prison from May to July 1972 (in Ghezel Hesar prison in Tehran) confirmed that of the more than 80 political prisoners then only about 20% per cent belonged to Islamic groups. The rest followed ideologies like nationalism, liberalism, communism or socialism. After the revolution (for example, the mass arrests of communists and others in the early 1980s) the gap would have widened further. 9 Unlike in Sunni Islam, all Shi’i believers must follow a cleric, the so called Mojtahed, to make sure their daily lives meet Islamic Sharia standards or codes, and these codes can change through the Mojtahed’s order or counsel (fatwa). 10 Keddie, op. cit. 408-409. 28
Some women in the 1970s had resumed wearing the chador or the more modern veil called hejab, mainly as a sign of opposition to the Shah and solidarity with his opponents. Other more religious women became political only during the revolution, some adopting the model of Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter and wife of the founder and first Imam of Shia Islam, Ali. These admirers of famous women in Islamic history were suspicious of modern /westernized political models and western feminism.11
Ahmadi-Khorasani in her book Hejab and the Intellectual has criticized scholarly approaches to the issue of Iranian women’s being ‘forced’ to unveil during the Reza Shah period and wear the veil in and after the 1979 revolution. She observes that there is a tendency to see them as passive or lacking in agency, when of course many chose to discard or wear the veil.12 Some argue that the chador and hejab have functioned to unify women, as there is no longer such a gap in the public appearance of women from different classes. It is certainly true that in recent times secular and Islamic women from different classes have worked together to achieve certain goals for women,13 but whether this unity has been encouraged by compulsory and punitive laws on veiling is open to debate. Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code adopted in 1984, anyone not covered with at least a hejab in public places will be sentenced to 72 lashes. Although it was five years before the Act was passed in the House, in 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini had already ordered that women working or appearing in public offices without the hejab had to stop working. Less than a month after the revolution began, on 7 March, the Kayhan newspaper published the headline ‘Women should have the hejab to go to [public] institutions’.14
2. Women’s participation during the Iran-Iraq War
Marlene LeGates has noted that despite there being strong women’s movements in Europe before World Wars I and II, they were greatly affected by the outbreak of war. Suffragists and other feminists confronted a very difficult situation and, while a small segment tried to continue with their activism, many prioritized patriotism and the defence of their countries. For example, leading suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst promoted volunteer services in support of the war effort. 15
11 Keddie, op. cit. 409. 12 Ahmadi-Khorasani N., Mosavi-Khozestani, D.J., 2010, Hejab va Roshanfekran (Hejab and the Intellectuals), np, Iran, 157-162. 13 Keddie, op. cit. 411. 14 Ahmadi- Khorasani, op. cit., 183. 15 LeGates, Marlene 2001, In Their Time: A History of Feminism in Western Society, New York, Routledge, 242, 265 & 283. 29
In Iran during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988, the situation was different in that feminist activism had already begun to be put on hold just before the war. It was not long after the victory of the revolution by 11 February 1979 that Iraq invaded Iran by air and land, initiating one of the longest inter-state conflicts since the Second World War. It was really with the 1979 revolution that the Iranian women’s movement went into decline; so even by the time the war had started, there was effectively no longer a women’s rights movement in Iran.
As noted above, during the early days of the revolution the Family Protection Act was rescinded due to its now being held to be in breach of Islamic Law; and mandatory veiling for women was on the horizon even before the 1984 law on it. Many women voiced their objections to the new conservatism publicly when they participated in the mass protest of 8 March 1979, or organized scattered demonstrations such as one by a gathering of women lawyers and judges who sat in front of the courthouse in Tehran to protest their dismissal. The attacks of the new regime on women’s rights were wide-ranging. Many women were dismissed from governmental organizations such as the education ministry and armed forces, and many also lost positions in the media. In the new Cultural Revolution, initially even universities were closed for three years (1980-1983).16
These repressive measures had already shocked the nation and it was amidst this volatile situation that Iraq invaded Iran. As Shahram Chubin & Charles Tripp note in a work published toward the end of the war:
[The Iran-Iraq] War displaces a potentially divisive issue (the direction of domestic change) by providing an external focus, on which there is much more consensus. Despite its many adverse consequences, the war has enabled the Islamic authorities to strengthen their political control of the country. [Through] The skilful use of the conflict they have manipulated themselves into a monopoly position as defenders of the revolution, while mobilizing the nation into support for a war of uncertain duration. To [do] this, however, they had to increase the reach of the government, to enhance its ‘extractive’ capacity …. By the end of 1983 the government admitted the execution of over 5,000 [of its opponents]; a UN report put the figure at 7,000 by 1985.17
Chubin and Tripp also cite a report by Robert Fisk in The Times on 10 June 1985 stating, ‘The Iranian regime committed itself so totally to the war partly because it had very little else to offer, and also
16 During these years all the universities of Iran were shut down on Ayatollah Khomeini’s order for the purpose of Islamizing them. He also ordered the expulsion from Iran of western and other foreign professors. The universities at the time were centres for thousands of staff and students belonging to left-wing parties, so the closure of the universities created an opportunity for the new Islamic regime to destroy its opponents: Shoraye Alie Enghelab Farhangi (Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution) nd, http://farhangoelm.ir/Default.aspx. 17 Chubin, Shahram & Tripp, Charles 1988, Iran and Iraq at War, Boulder, Westview Press, 74-75, citing The Economist, 11 February 1984, and a UN report by Galina Pohl, Journal de Geneve, 12 February 1987. 30
because the war was in some senses tailor-made for it’; in his view the war would be its ‘most enduring legacy’.18 However, in other research at the time by Robin Wright, the importance of the war to the new regime was that it ensured its survival by providing a justification for the suppression of political opposition: ‘The outbreak of war had also provided a pretext for the clergy’s clampdown of the opposition as well as on their co-partners in the revolution.’19 Wright notes that in the 18 months after Iraq’s invasion, Khomeini’s loyalists removed from office most of the leftists and secularists.
The 1979 revolution dramatically changed the social values of many people, giving religious groups that included lower-class women more opportunities to get involved in social and political activities. They were especially intent on preserving the values and gains of what they called the Islamic Revolution. In one of the Ayatollah’s public speeches he praised the lower classes, claiming that they were united in their support of the new regime and the war: ‘The revolution was by and for the oppressed class, and it is this class that supports the war, and this class that has given most in its cause. Consequently, the other classes, where dissenters are likely to be found, have no right to a say and will simply be ignored in any case as politically irrelevant.’20 Here he was obviously distancing ‘true revolutionaries’ from the western-influenced ‘bourgeois’ class of secular intellectuals who were unlikely to be supportive of either the revolution’s Islamization of Iran or the war. Yet the latter were not in fact ‘ignored’, but rather treated on both counts as deserving of political repression.
However, Chubin and Tripp believe that the war ‘reinforced a sense of solidarity… [through] shared experience… reduced differences among classes or regions, and infused a collective spirit.’21 The involvement of many religious women in the movement supporting the revolution and war led Islamists to attribute even ‘feminist’ ideals to the leader of the revolution, Khomeini. 22 Needless to say, he was happy to support the involvement of these women in political activities, albeit in a limited way given his general policy of denying women a voice in public affairs or role in public administration. Calling Ayatollah Khomeini a ‘feminist’ is about as convincing as calling mandatory hejab a kind of ‘immunization for women in the society’ by a benevolent new regime—its being a policy only designed to protect and care for them.
18 Fisk cited in ibid., 69. 19 Wright, Robin 1989, ‘The War and the Spread of Islamic Fundamentalism’ in The Iran-Iraq War: Impact and Implications ed. Efraim Karsh, New York, St Martins Press, 112. 20 Cited in Chubin and Tripp, op. cit., 80. 21 Ibid., 78. 22Mortazi Langerodi ,M.2011. ‘ Khomeini, Shariati va Zanan Irani’ Jaras http://www.rahesabz.net/story/37422/ 31
Little academic research has been conducted on women in the Iran-Iraq war. An Iranian study entitled ‘Tajrobeh Zananeh As Jang’ (Women’s Experience in the War),23 emphasized that even if they were not combatants, or not living in border towns where battles took place, women were still very affected by the war. Some remained in conflict areas to help resist the Iraqis; others became refugees migrating to safer areas with children and leaving behind some of their families. Amongst those who stayed, some worked as nurses or paramedics; some reported on developments as journalists; others helped with supplying water and food to the fighters. There were also some like Shahnaz Haji Shah who were killed in the first battles. Women in the rest of Iran were affected by the war also because of their men’s involvement as combatants. However, the special circumstances of war led to some women’s taking on roles normally assigned to men, thus bringing about more public visibility and authority for women in the lower to middle class families that mostly dedicated themselves to the Khomeini and his regime. This may have helped to soften the views of the new regime on women, encouraging its leaders to consider allowing them an expanded role at least in wartime. Kamal Kharrazi, the official in charge of War Information, announced in October 1985 a decision to increase the numbers of male combatants at the front, while also using women in war-related tasks behind the lines.24 Chubin and Tripp also note how ‘the new approach… may have been the product of political compromise, but it appeared similar to that articulated for some time by Morteza Rezaei which he linked with the move to self-sufficiency in arms production, and the formation of divisions of women for duties behind the lines.’25
Given the crisis situation during wartime, one can see how women’s concerns with ‘women’s rights’ would be considered a ‘luxury’. Yet, the war was not the only reason for the disappearance of a secular women’s movement at that time, as I have emphasized. On another front, ironically, calls to change Sharia law in some respects actually came from women/men we would now regard as Islamists. For example, of course there were now growing numbers of war widows and their children, according to restored Islamic law, were expected to give up custody of their children to their husbands’ families. Increasing numbers of otherwise conservative women spoke out against such injustices in favour of women’s rights, and over time some reforms were made in the law (at the time at least for war widows).26
23 Gholamreza Jamshidiha & Nafiseh Hamidi 2007, ‘Tajrobeh Zananeh As Jang’ (‘Women’s Experience in the War’), Pazhohesh Zanan 5.2, Autumn, Tehran University. 24 Guardian Weekly, 16 March 1986, cited in Chubin & Tripp, op. cit., 76. 25 ibid., 77. 26 Keddie, op. cit.416. 32
3. Women’s participation during the Reform Period (1988-2005)
Nikki Keddie forecast in 2000 that ‘It is possible that traditionalists will not give up their governmental powers, and also possible that the whole system will eventually crumble and something else take its place.’27 In the latter event, Keddie thought that there would be no more need for secularists to phrase their demands in Islamic terms to avoid persecution. She also, highlighted how during the reform period after the war there was some cooperation between Islamists and secularists [feminists].28 It was not easy for the regime to force women back into their traditional roles only in the domestic sphere directly following a period where they were actually encouraged to support the war effort in visible roles. Various factors may have motivated the regime’s transition to a more reform- minded approach, yet amongst women it was the indelibility of their experiences during the war that helped to create a more reformist agenda. These experiences had raised the expectations of even many lower-class women about their ‘political potential’.
By the end of the war, compared with 1979-80 when rights granted to women during the 1967-74 period were revoked, more women were being socially and even politically active than ever before. As Keddie emphasizes,
Khomeini and his associates, despite their strong traditionalism regarding many gender and family questions, including endorsing inegalitarian provisions of sharia law, had another side regarding women that was understandably rarely noted by secularists at the time. They insisted on the legitimacy and even necessity of women’s political mobilization in the public sphere, and encouraged girls’ education, once the few coeducational schools were made to meet the new rule of single-sex education….29
Hence, more were being educated than ever before, too. Keddie acknowledges how the government not only encouraged women’s public involvement in the war effort, but after initially trying to limit women to certain spheres of employment, which women resisted, it began to open up other work opportunities to them, such as in small businesses and in teaching and medicine.
Hence, despite the initially dismal picture for Iranian women immediately following the revolution, a combination of factors including women’s resistance led gradually to a partial comeback for women’s rights and opportunities. One factor was the increasing numbers of educated and socially/politically
27 Ibid., 434. 28 Ibid., 434. 29 Ibid., 413. 33
active women who, even if they were generally supportive of the regime (and doubtless because of this), were making their wishes heard. Hence some changes were made to legislation in the area of family-related rights, like with the issue mentioned above of mothers’ custody of Martyrs’ children, although these still fell far short of sexual equality in family law.
Since then, dissatisfied Islamist and secular women, who were culturally and politically at opposite poles, have come to unite at times around specific issues. Women of different religious-political persuasions conducted campaigns in the press, the parliament and elsewhere in society. The key role of women’s activism through the press should particularly be highlighted for they used it as a vehicle to resist the new restrictions on women stemming from the annulment of the Family Act in 1979. With this annulment the family law revived the sharia-based civil code of Reza Shah (1925-1941) with 9 years of age permissible for the marriage of girls, no restriction on polygamy, free or accessible divorce only for men, child custody rights only for fathers and their families, and a revival of temporary marriage30 that offered even less security to permanent marriage.
In women’s publications, Islamist women who advocated some further rights for women have understandably stressed those parts of the Quran and early Islamic traditions where they claim men and women were treated as equals. Their interpretation of Islam’s origins emphasizes a gender-based egalitarianism with which to counter discriminatory modern law.31
The weekly Zan-e Ruz, which began in 1964 and was edited by Shahla Sherkat from 1984 to 1991, mainly reflected the views of Islamist proponents of some further rights for women. Keddie cites Hisae Nakanishi’s observation that its tone changed after the revolution when it began opposing Sharia family law by using new interpretations of Islam’s central texts and early history.32 In February 1992 Shahla Sherkat launched a new monthly magazine, Zanan (1992-2007). This became well known for its egalitarian stance on gender and for its critical articles by both Islamic reformists and some secular writers, including Iranian women scholars who are now living abroad, such as Mehrangiz Kar. This
30 One of the biggest problems with temporary marriage is the legal position of children born to the marriage. Men can leave the marriage at any time; and if a man leaves before the child is born, it is hard to get a birth certificate for that child. Single women are not entitled to obtain birth certificates under their own names. As these marriages are mostly designed to gratify men’s sexual desires, they often leave the marriage when the women get pregnant, so as to avoid legal parental responsibility for the children. 31 For example, the Quran gave men permission to take several wives in the context of the special needs of widows and orphans in a time of warfare. It is often argued that it was not meant for periods when the numbers of men and women are more or less equal. The same verse in the Quran that says men can have up to four wives if they treat them equally also says that no matter how hard men try they cannot treat multiple wives equally in all ways, so reformers often say this is best understood as an argument against polygamy (Taleqani, Azam 1998, ‘Concerning Polygamy’, Payam-e Hajar, vol. 62.) 32 Keddie, op. cit., 414. 34
journal addressed men’s as well as women’s views on women’s issues, and published important articles analysing the judicial system in relation to women’s rights.
The opposition of Islamic women who were otherwise supportive of the new regime led it to rethink its policies on women and introduce some more reforms between 1997 and 2005. These included:
. limiting a husband’s right to stop his wife from taking a job;
. inserting twelve conditions into marriage contracts as grounds for women to initiate divorce, providing that husbands signed their agreement to them all (and this reform was mainly the result of a campaign spearheaded by Zan-e Ruz in 1984-85);
. creating special civil courts to adjudicate on family disputes and child custody, which were also allowed to allocate up to half the property acquired during marriage to the wife if she was divorced against her will33 (which was more than traditional Islamic law had allocated to women);
. introducing a revised bill on the judiciary to allow women lawyers to be advisers in family courts on matters relating to children;
. (despite conservative opposition in 1985) passing a bill giving custody of minor children to war widows even if they remarried, which also provided for government funds for their upkeep where needed ;
. changing a technical point within the law in regard to the killing of adulterers (women had also campaigned against the killing of adulterers);
. and distinguishing rape from adultery (so that victims of rape could not be charged with adultery).
However, despite these concessions, other laws were passed restricting things such as women’s freedom of movement: for example, the right of married women to travel abroad without their husbands’ consent. Keddie also acknowledges how at first the government tried to remove women from legal practice altogether, by firing all women judges, declaring their judicial rank null and void, and excluding women from the law faculty. Women lawyers refused to accept this; and some continued to practise in the name of a male family member, while others worked as legal advisers to companies. Women in the parliament also supported women judges and lawyers in their struggle for their rights. All this plus the critical shortage of lawyers trained in Islamic law soon forced the state to revise the law and allow women at least to be advisers to the judiciary.34
33 Paidar, op. cit., 282-293. 34 Keddie, op. cit., 405-438. 35
While secular feminists and religious women continued to work together for reform, these changes still fell well below the calibre of the pre-revolution Family Protection Law. Their struggle continues, however, and support has been gained from some clerics. Commenting on this, Keddie proposes that
A movement launched mainly to gain or regain rights for women in the Islamic Republic could have an ever-broader impact on the reinterpretation of Islamic texts not only in Iran but beyond its borders. Reformist interpretations of Islam are not new, but in the Middle East they have not hitherto used such theologically sophisticated arguments, or been adopted by so many traditionally-educated clerics or by so many women from a variety of social backgrounds.35
The creation of women’s associations, albeit usually with little focus on pressing women issues, began during the presidency of Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and continued under Khatami (1997-2005). It was also around 1990 that Ahmadi-Khorasani began her first civic engagements, by becoming involved with Women for the Environment and the Society for Protection of Children’s Rights.
In the early years of the revolution, minimal effort was made by the government to improve the situation of women, understandably given the dominance of followers of Ayatollah Khomeini who were fully committed to his traditionalist ideology. However, the government did seek to improve conditions for war widows, as noted, and their families and also those of Iranians who were prisoners of war; more generally their concern was with women with no ‘no male head of the family’ (as defined by Sharia). Iranian government policy from the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989 until 2005 was also focused on improving foreign relations, and on economic development. This resulted in addressing the issue of more space for women in public roles, although this was especially for women aligned with the regime and its ideology.
As Ahmadi-Khorasani explained in The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement, the participation of Iranian women in international conferences played an important role in accelerating women’s participation in the body of the governments of Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Khatami (1997-2005). These governments promoted and planned such participation as part of their development plans; the Centre for Women’s Studies was established in the body of the government following the World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1990. Farzaneh magazine was also founded in 1993 by the government to ensure that government policy regarding women and development was followed. This followed the establishment of Women's Studies in universities, which was approved by the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education in 1999. The Office for the Coordination of Women’s NGOs of the Islamic
35 Ibid., 423. 36
Republic was also established before the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, its purpose being primarily to prepare women’s organizations for the conference.36
Due to the many calls for reform, a section called Women’s Affairs was established by order of the Ministry of the Interior as part of the State Council on Women. A pilot organization was formed in 1987 in Qom, and it became widespread by 1990. In 1991, the Bureau of Women’s Affairs was established within the Presidential Office with Shahla Habibi as the first Presidential Advisor on women’s issues and head of the bureau. However, Women’s Affairs has been widely criticized for its lack of any real plan for action to effect reform. At the Fourth International Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 Iranian participants began to develop an action plan. Then the Centre for Women’s Participation in Development Programs (which of course was concerned particularly with devout supporters of the Islamic government) was established in 1997 by a newly-elected reformist government. Among its goals was improving Iranian women’s rights and opportunities. The government’s Fourth Development Program of Iran therefore exhibited a concern with gender and development. Although the statistics concerning the numbers of women in various social arenas such as employment, education and health, including birth control, were showing improvements, feminist critics still believed that the number of Iranian women in such sectors was significantly trailing behind the numbers in the developed world.37
This reform program continued in 19 of December 2001 with the Khatami government putting an Act on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) before the parliament for consideration. According to Ahmadi-Khorasani the basic precepts of the Convention guided the central demands of Iranian women from 1992 to 2000, a period in which there were some moves toward coalition-building by Islamist and secular women, as noted. However, despite the inclusion of demands from a range of well-known secular women such as Shirin Ebadi and Mehangiz Kar, it was not a coalition comprising a broad spectrum of women. Then in 2001 the government’s Centre for Women’s Participation presented to the parliament an Act of Accession by Iran to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Although this Act included a proviso on policies having to be consistent with Islamic principles, it was not approved by Iran’s parliament until 2004. Nevertheless, since according to the Iranian constitution, all laws passed
36 Ahmadi-Khorasani, op. cit., 55-58. 37 Ibid., 55-58. 37
by the parliament must also be approved by the Guardian Council composed of Islamic clerics, the Council found the Act contrary to Islamic Sharia law and the Iranian Constitution and rejected it.38
The issue of becoming a signatory to CEDAW soon became one of the most important topics in the women’s press. Of course, even the existence of a significant women’s press by 1997 showed that debating women’s issues had become easier. This was certainly a contrast with the early years after the 1979 revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war.
4. The re-emergence of secularist feminist activism
Following the Iran-Iraq war and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the presidential election of 1989 saw the victory of Rafsanjani, whose motto was ‘Reconstruction and Development’. During this period(1989-1997), the generalized anxiety in secular circles began slowly to recede.39 Khatami was the next president from 1997 to 2005, his focus being both reform in Iran and reconciliation in international relationships. Over these years the Iranian women’s movement grew as well.40
The situation was still not easy for independent secular activists such as Ahmadi- Khorasani; in fact it was potentially dangerous. As I noted above, she was born in 1969 and was a child at the time of the 1979 revolution. Her family was then under considerable financial and emotional stress with her engineer father being typical of many removed from their positions due to the Islamization of all government departments and agencies.41 Ahmadi-Khorasani published her first articles and short stories under a pseudonym in an Iranian magazine that was published outside Iran by opponents of the Iranian government. After her marriage with Javad Mousavi-Khozestani, they launched a publication named Tose’e (Development) 1990-1998) and started to publish a journal called the Ketab-e Tose’e (Book of Development). Ahmadi-Khorasani tried to create a feminist approach to their content, as she did with other journals she was involved in publishing. Ketab-e Tose’e was banned in 1995 for the inclusion of two so called ‘inappropriate feminist articles’.42 In contrast, Islamists such as Sherkat who called for women’s rights were not seen as feminist and not banned.
38 Ibid., 106-108. 39 Official Website of Hashemi Rafsanjani, http://www.cloob.com/official_website_of_ayatollah_hashemi_rafsanjani, viewed 15 March 2015. 40 Official Website of Mohamad Khatami, http://www.khatami.ir/, viewed 15 March 2015. 41 Ahmadi-Khorasani, op. cit., 16-17. 42 Ibid., 21. 38
By this time a range of secular women who were marginalized after the revolution were gathering together in various circles. They participated in poetry and literature readings; celebrated occasions such as the anniversary of the Constitutional Revolution; circulated and discussed works by marginalized writers and poets; and also enjoyed musical performances by women. By the mid-1990s the celebration of International Women’s Day on 8 March was one activity common to all. Ahmadi- Khorasani participated in many of these circles and events.43
Unlike women who lived in isolation with their activities limited to the home, Ahmadi-Khorasani took advantage of every opportunity to declare her political views to the public. She sought to publish her articles through other channels following the banning of Ketab-e Tose’e and it could take several months to find a publisher for her articles or short stories. Due to such limitations, in 1994 she decided to publish her first journal, The Second Sex (1998-2003), following this with Women’s Season (2003- 2008). The Second Sex was a journal in which the ideas particularly of secular women were represented. However, to establish a publication, people were required to get permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, so Ahmadi-Khorasani’s efforts to obtain a general license for the journal were unsuccessful even if this was under a less conservative government. To publish each individual volume, she needed authorization by the Ministry of Culture which could take months and was a difficult process. When she did manage to publish a few volumes it was with censorship, all of which illustrates the comparative powerlessness of secular women activists.44
Although the situation for secular activists was very challenging, it was around this time that the Women’s Cultural Centre (Markaz-e Farhangi-ye Zanan) was established (in 2001) by Ahmadi- Khorasani and other secular feminists such as Parvin Ardalan and Mahsa Shekarloo.45 They also launched the first Internet journal of women’s rights in Farsi, Zanestan, in 2005. The Iranian women’s calendar (1998- 2002) was also published by Ahmadi-Khorasani.
Ahmadi-Khorasani believes there was more chance for legal reform with regard to women’s rights during the reformist governments of 1997-2005 than there was earlier or even since.46 She bemoans the opportunities missed. Keddie emphasizes that ‘To some degree, since the reformist electoral victories from 1997 through early 2000 [the government] emphasis has shifted away from reforms in women’s status (none having passed parliament during this period) to strengthening press freedom,
43 Ibid., 21-22. 44 Ibid., 33 and 45. 45 Official Website of Markaz e Farhangai e Zana (The Women’s Cultural Centre Website), http://www.iftribune.es/WCC.htm, viewed 12 March 2016. 46 Ahmadi-Khorasani, ‘The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement’, 78. 39
civil society, and democracy, which many women see as preconditions to further expansion of women’s rights.’47 No doubt the reforming Khatami’s acceptance of expanded civil rights was partly what Ahmadi-Khorasani was alluding to with her reference to a missed window of opportunity. Although, as Keddie indicates, the Khatami government’s ‘desire for unity around a universal program of human rights and political freedoms’ never included the gender reforms some expected, Ahmadi- Khorasani’s implication is that she and other activists could have done more to take advantage of this period of reform. On the other hand, despite Keddie’s observation that government reforms in the early 2000s shifted away from a concern with women, we should recall that the Khatami government did present CEDAW to the parliament for consideration in 2001 and they even passed it in 2004. This underlines Ahmadi-Khorasani’s appreciation of the time as one of opportunity. But, of course CEDAW was then rejected by the Guardian Council, so it is little wonder if, as Ahmadi-Khorasani says, some activists since then have given up hope of significant gender reform within the cleric-dominated structure. If governmental trends grow more reactionary again, she warns, ‘more women and men may abandon the gradualist program’.48
The precepts of CEDAW had catalysed the central demands of women from 1990 to 2000, as I noted above. It was during this time, moreover, that the basic requirements for building a coalition between Islamist advocates of women’s rights and secular feminists were met. Ahmadi-Khorasani observes that there were four major trends of thought then among politically active women in Iran, which can be classified as follows by reference to their publications. First, Zanan Magazin represented the New Religious Thinking (Islamic reformists) that became an impressive intellectual force in the society, with a legal approach to reforming mostly family law. Secondly, The Second Sex was representative of secular feminists who had been silenced, marginalized and suppressed during the Revolution. Thirdly, there was also the Farzaneh publication aligned with the ruling regime whose advocates analyzed women’s status through the discourse of development and undertook the establishment of Women’s Studies in some Iranian universities. The Farzaneh journal also supported women’s sport in opposition to conservative attempts to ban it because of public ‘immodesty’. One of President Rafsanjani’s daughters was active in this publication. Finally, there was Payam-e Hajar, which Khorasani identifies as nationalist-religious, its focus not being on women’s issues.49
Many women’s publications were launched, including Roshangaran va Motaleat-e Zanan (Intellectuals and Women’s Studies), voicing some similar arguments to those put by secular feminists. Mehrangiz
47 Keddie, op. cit., 419-420. 48 Ibid. 419-420. 49 Ahmadi-Khorasani, ‘The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement’, 45-49. 40
Kar, Afsaneh Najmabadi and Shirin Ebadi are some of its prominent writers on various feminist issues, including violence against women. Many secular feminists worked as directors, and were writers, poets and translators. Some may have been less politically active than activists such as Ahmadi-Khorasani, but through their efforts they also contributed to bringing women into public visibility. Like in the past, secularist discourse was important in both the formation and strength of the contemporary women’s movement for equal rights in Iran.
The first women’s gathering after the election of President Khatami in 1997 was a forum of female publishers (an organization that continued for 3 years) headed by Shahla Lahiji, manager of the secular magazine, Roshangaran va Motaleat-e Zanan (Intellectuals and Women’s Studies). At this forum Ahmadi-Khorasani was invited to act as manager of the Tose’e journal. In an initial meeting she offered to launch an exhibition of and for women publishers, and to facilitate a public celebration of IWD on 8 March. Despite government policy severely restricting public demonstrations, these two important events took place due to the efforts of Ahmadi-Khorasani and a few other secular feminists. The first secular women’s celebration of International Women’s Day after March 1979, took place in 1999 in full public view in central Tehran.50
In 2000, Ahmadi-Khorasani left the Women Publishers’ Forum and launched the Women’s Cultural Centre. The approach of this organization to the promotion of women’s rights was to ‘protest, participate in awareness-raising, and promote non-violent struggles for women’, its main aim being the diffusion of equal rights discourse.51 The Women’s Cultural Centre was instrumental in the celebration of 8 March in Laleh park in Tehran in 2002 and 2003.52 Using its website to publicize this was an achievement, for simply using the term ‘feminism’ was transgressing the regime’s limits. The Centre sponsored public protests at the murder of 19 prostitute women in Mashhad city by a serial killer in 2001;53 and in May 2004, it demonstrated against the regime’s open support for polygamy by a call to the public to protest against sexist or misogynistic Iranian movies and TV series on government- controlled television.54 All this created the impetus to launch the first women’s secular feminist website and e-journal in Iran, Zanestan, which engaged in a six-month campaign, fighting sexual violence against women. Male sympathizers and supporters demonstrated with feminists, gathering in
50 Ibid., 79, 82 & 83. 51 Ibid., 101-104. 52 Ibid., 113. 53 Ibid., 139. 54 Ibid., 161. 41
Laleh Park in Tehran on 8 March 2003.55 In addition, communication with women’s movements in other Farsi-speaking countries, such as Afghanistan and Tajikistan, now connected the women’s movement inside Iran to others. A Women’s Library (Sadiqah Dolat Abadi) was also launched by the Centre in 2004.56
Despite pressuring Khatami to curtail women’s activities, particularly activism in public, Iranian women activists continued with their efforts to secure more equitable conditions. When an Iranian women’s and children’s rights activist, Shirin Ebadi, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, the Women’s Cultural Centre and other groups organized a public greeting for her at the airport. This gave fresh life to women’s demands for equal rights and the right to demonstrate or even just assemble in public spaces.57 One women’s rights activist, Sima Afshar, also hosted at her home an event arranged by the Women’s Cultural Centre and attended by 150 women in celebration of Ebadi’s Noble Peace Prize. As Ahmadi-Khorasani notes, from this party the Iranian Women’s Forum came into being.58 This diverse group faced many challenges, but among their notable activities were holding a protest meeting calling for more legal and social rights in front of Tehran University on 22 June 2005; and organizing the 8 March I.W.D. celebration in Daneshjo park in 2005. During this last event women were beaten by the police and some were arrested, although they were soon released after international outrage. Then, following a protest against this in 2006 in Hafte Tir square, Ahmadi-Khorasani and another member of the Women’s Cultural Centre, Parvin Ardalan, were summoned to court and sentenced to three years imprisonment for organizing these protests.59
Among Iranian women’s greatest achievements during these years was being able to work together despite intellectual and political differences between the various groups. (I shall address these differences in the following chapters.) Despite the obvious challenges and dangers, they managed to form a visible women’s movement that achieved some unity and cooperation between secular feminists and religious women’s rightists on common goals for women. This new women’s movement also secured the solidarity and cooperation of feminist women who migrated abroad after the Revolution. This was expressed through Iranian feminist scholarship and in other writing published abroad, such as Nimeh Digar (Other Half) and Aveyeh Zan (Women’s Voices); conferences of the Iranian
55 Ibid, 134. 56 Ibid,169. 57 Ibid, 152-153. 58 Ibid, 155. 59 Ibid., 183. 42
Women’s Studies Foundation (IWSF) have also contributed much to feminist discourse on women in Iran.
In August 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidential campaign as a staunch critic of western thought and customs. The arrests of feminists in June indicate a resurgence of conservatism from that year. He changed the name of the Centre for Women’s Participation in Development Programs to the Centre for Women and Families, and proudly announced that his government would not become a signatory to CEDAW. Zohre Tabibzadeh Nory, a staunch Islamist, was appointed by Ahmadinejad to run the Centre for Women and Families; and she announced that from then on a return to Islam would be the Centre’s primary goal. As noted above, before long women’s rights activists, especially those with a secular viewpoint such as Ahmadi-Khorasani, were being targeted. Ahmadinejad’s election opened a new chapter on the women’s movement, heralding another backlash and further reduction of women’s rights. His fundamentalist internal and external policies threatened to destroy the achievements of the women’s movement over the previous reformist period. Nevertheless, because by now the women’s movement was more united and in a stronger position, women’s rights activists not only did not give up but with full knowledge of the risks decided to move forward. On 5 August 2006 they launched the ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ I discuss in the next chapter to pursue more rights for women.
Conclusion
The 1979 revolution brought a considerable backlash against positive reforms enacted prior to its victory. Dismantling the progressive 1974 Family Protection law indicated, in no uncertain terms, the intention of the regime to subvert the current status of women and halt any further reforms and activism on behalf of women. The grim prospects for women’s rights resulted immediately in a massive protest on 8 March 1979, which included protests against the compulsory wearing of the hejab. This mass protest gained little, however, because Ayatollah Khomeini was able to harness the support of the traditionalist lower-middle class to promote his Islamist beliefs regarding proper social roles for women and traditional marriage, divorce and family practices. Further protests by women at their lost social rights were initially prevented by the severe repression in the eighties of opponents of the regime.
The new authority of religious groups appeared to bring widespread dramatic change in social values, but now secular critics were either silenced or forced to become more cautious about what they said
43
in public. The Iran-Iraq war from 1980 helped the Islamic authorities to strengthen their political control and silence the secular voice, but it also gave certain women a new voice, and not only keen supporters of the Islamic revolution. The huge number of women who became widowed, having lost husbands during the conflict, was a key component in new calls for women’s parental rights from an unexpected quarter: from women even from the lower classes who were otherwise supportive of the regime. This created a situation where the government had no choice but to bring the issue of women’s rights to the fore. The new authority for religious women combined with the reality of inequities in patriarchal Sharia law soon encouraged even supporters of the new regime to advocate a more equal place for women in Islam.
The new context of revolution and war created the impetus for new militancy amongst religious women that has often been termed ‘Islamic Feminism’. Some may question to application of the term ‘feminism’ to such women but before long they were calling for more rights for women. Perhaps the real question concerns their capacity to enact substantial change within Islam in Iran in a situation when many Islamists claim religious ‘tradition’ to justify removing existing rights for women. Of course, what Islamic Feminists did have, and the secularists did not, was the means to promote their demands. They could claim a legitimacy from 1979 that the secularists could not, but still the question was how far they alone could mobilise social support and bring about significant change. They may have had the support of some sectors of the government with regards to their Islamic orientation, but still their progress was stymied. But for a few successes in getting the ear of the government, by the 1990s Islamic Feminism had brought little positive change for women. During the more reformist governments from 1988 there may have been a widely expressed desire for more human rights and political freedoms, but women’s rights were generally ignored. Hence, by the nineties, many feminist activists had given up hope of meaningful reform.
Nevertheless, as we saw above, from 1997 to 2005 reformist governments had been pressured into introducing a number of significant reforms to discriminatory family and other law. Apart from the Islamic feminists who gradually since 1979 had become more critical of women’s lack of rights, secular women who had been isolated politically now managed to create opportunities to promote their views. Although restrictions on publishing and gathering in public created obstacles which impeded the progress particularly of secularists, this merely served to strengthen their resolve in pursuing their aims. By analysing the activities of secular feminists such as Ahmadi-Khorasani, one recognizes their perseverance and also the pragmatism that later enabled them to build a bridge between Islamic feminists and secularists. After 2004, Ahmadi-Khorasani played a leading role in encouraging women’s rights activists to initiate a new, broader and more united women’s movement in Iran. Her desire for a
44
more effective united front of women can also be seen in how inclusive she was earlier in her own magazines where she allowed other supporters of women’s rights a voice.
Unfortunately, such unity had not existed from 2001 to 2004 when women failed to create a coalition in support of the Khatami government’s Act on CEDAW. This was the latter part of the period of reformist governments between 1997 and 2005 that Ahmadi-Khorasani described as a time of missed opportunities for Iranian feminism. However, it was not long before a stronger, more unified women’s movement was in the making, culminating in the campaigns and coalitions discussed in the following chapters.
45
Chapter Three
The ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ of 2006
Introduction
On 12 June 2005, after more than a year of meetings and seminars attended by a range of female intellectuals and activists, these same women staged a peaceful protest in front of Tehran University. Taking advantage of the relatively open atmosphere of a presidential election, they raised issues concerning women, including discriminatory laws. This public gathering of women was Iran’s second largest women’s protest since 8 March 1979, which was the biggest women’s demonstration in Iran’s history (including during the Islamist regime). Some Iranian feminists now call 12 June Women’s National Solidarity Day. In 2006, female activists arranged another peaceful protest on 12 June in Haft- e Tir Square in Tehran. This time, however, their peaceful protest was attacked by the police. Many protesters were arrested and some were injured. Photographs of the police attacks were published on a women’s website, drawing the attention of the domestic and international media.
Following the attacks in 2006, over fifty different groups of women’s rights advocates participated in regular meetings from June to September, ultimately producing three historically significant documents. The first document was the Campaign’s petition and it was accompanied by a campaign plan and a book entitled The Impact of Laws on Women’s Lives. These documents became the ‘Minimal Covenant’ for the Campaign. The target of this campaign was collecting one million signatures to support reform of discriminatory laws against Iranian women. It was on 27 August 2006, during a seminar entitled ‘The Impact of Laws on Women’s Lives’, that Iranian women’s rights activists officially made the campaign a world-wide one, demanding an end to legal discrimination against women under Iranian law. The campaign was entitled ‘One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws’ and its aims were set out in its petition and plan, the full English texts of which are included directly below. (The official website of this campaign, ‘Change For Equality’, was mostly in Persian but included English translations.)
In this chapter I examine the aims of the Campaign, analyzing responses to it, including by its opponents. The new cooperation between secular and Islamic feminists in Iran is the topic of the next section. As well as the Campaign’s effects on the Iranian women’s movement, I consider responses to it from feminists around the world. The last two sections concern a new feminist theory, ‘Situational Feminism’, that grew out of the Campaign, and then the Campaign’s strengths and weaknesses. 46
1. The full texts of the Campaign’s Petition and Plan
The Petition:
‘One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws: A Petition Requesting Changes to Discriminatory Laws against Women’ Sunday 27 August 2006
Iranian law considers women as second-class citizens and promotes discrimination against them. Legal discrimination of this type is enforced in a society where women comprise over 60% of those admitted to university. It is generally believed that laws should promote social moderation by being one step ahead of cultural norms. But in Iran the law lags behind cultural norms concerning women’s social position and status.
According to Iranian penal codes, a girl at nine years of age is considered to be an adult. If she commits a crime punishable by execution, the courts can indeed sentence her to death. If a man and a woman become paralyzed as a result of an accident, the punitive damages provided to the woman according to law are half that of those provided to the man. If a man and a woman are both witness to a crime, the law does not recognize the woman as a witness, but the man can serve as a witness. The law allows fathers who obtain the permission of the courts to marry off their daughters even before the age of 13 (the legal age of marriage) to a 70 year old man. The law does not allow mothers to serve as the financial guardians of their children, or to make decisions regarding a child’s place of residence, foreign travel, or medical care. The law allows men to practice polygamy and gives them uncontested rights to divorce their wives at will.
These are only a few examples of the inequities and discriminatory practices against women in Iranian law. Women of lower socio-economic status or women from religious and ethnic minority groups suffer disproportionately from legal discrimination. On the other hand, these unjust laws have promoted unhealthy and unbalanced relationships between men and women, and as a result have had negative consequences on the lives of men as well. Specifically, we can point to the high dowries that many women demand as a condition of marriage, which in essence reflects their lack of a sense of security resulting from legal discrimination and their unequal status under the law. On the other hand, the Iranian government is a signatory to several international human rights conventions, and accordingly is required to bring its legal code into line with international standards. The most important international human rights standards call for the elimination of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. The Campaign aims to collect one million signatures in support of changes to discriminatory laws against women. It will provide education on legal issues to the public and especially to women, raise public awareness, promote collaboration between groups demanding equality between men and women, and document experiences. The Campaign will be implemented through the following means: 1. Collection of signatures through door-to-door contact and dialogue with individual women; 2. Collection of signatures in places and events in which women gather, and where dialogue and discussions with groups of women can be carried out; 3. Implementation of seminars and conferences
47
with the intent of raising the profile of the campaign, promoting dialogue, identifying supporters and collecting signatures; 4. Collection of signatures through the internet. The internet will be utilized to share information about the Campaign, including legal educational materials, and those interested in supporting this effort can sign petitions related to the Campaign’.1
As mentioned on its website, this campaign also aimed to achieve the following goals, in its plan:
The Campaign’s Plan:
1. Promotion of Collaboration and Cooperation for Social Change: This campaign intends to serve as a catalyst in promoting cooperation between a wide spectrum of social activists to advocate for positive social change.
2. Identification of Women’s Needs and Priorities: This collaborative campaign aims to develop connections and linkages with a broad base of women’s groups from different backgrounds. Direct contact between equal rights defenders and other women’s and citizens’ groups will allow those involved in the campaign to identify the everyday concerns of women, especially their legal needs and problems. On the other hand, this direct contact will increase awareness among the general population about the inequities that exist within the law.
3. Amplifying Women’s Voices: Through this campaign, the organizers hope to be able to connect with groups whose demands are left unheard. The campaign [relies] on the needs identified by women themselves; [it aims to] amplify the voices of women whose needs are often not addressed at the national policy level.
4. Increasing Knowledge, Promoting Democratic Action: This Campaign is committed to increasing and improving knowledge through dialogue, collaboration, and democratic action. The Campaign steadfastly adheres to the notion that real and sustainable change can be achieved only if it is community and needs driven and reflective of the desires and demands of the society at large. Changes to women’s status in society need to be based on the belief that legal problems faced by women are not a private matter, but rather symptomatic of larger social problems faced broadly by women. In other words, this Campaign is committed to carrying out bottom-up reform and to creating change through grassroots and civil society initiatives; and seeks to strengthen public action and empower women.
5. Paying our Dues: The initiators of this Campaign recognize that social change and the elimination of injustice are not easily achieved. It is through commitment to collaboration and hard work that we will be able to build the solidarity necessary to create change. Surely this solidarity and collaboration in pushing forth the objectives of the Campaign will have a positive impact on the future of our country. The experiences of women’s democratic movements around the globe, and particularly in countries within the region, have
1 ‘Petition: International Support for Women’s Campaign’ 2006, change for equality (Taghir Baraye Barabari), 27 August, http://www.we-change.org/english/spip.php?article19, viewed November 2015. 48
demonstrated that solidarity and commitment to the goals of collective action are key components [in] the successful elimination of discrimination. The struggle for equal rights in Iran will indeed be a lengthy, difficult and arduous process. The true path to achievement of equality will not be paved through existing power structures or a dialogue solely with men and women in positions of power. Rather, achieving the goals of this Campaign will be based largely on a strategy [that] seeks to raise awareness among individual women and citizens about their identity and their status within society.
6. The Power of Numbers: The successful implementation of this Campaign will prove once and for all that the demand for changes to discriminatory laws is not limited to a few thousand women, who have supported these types of efforts in the past. In fact, the successful implementation of [the] Campaign will demonstrate that support for legal changes are broad-based and that a large majority of men and women are suffering from the inequities that are promoted by Iranian law. The Campaign will strive to demonstrate that women are [employing], and have consistently employed a variety of means and venues to voice their objections to the [law], such as the writing of books and articles, the production of films and other forms of artistic expression, and through social activism. Those women with fewer and more limited resources have demonstrated their objection through more difficult channels, such as recourse in the courts, running away from home, or more destructive means such as suicide [through] self-immolation. In an effort to demonstrate the widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, the Campaign will aim to highlight the many strategies used by women to challenge discrimination in the law.
7. Power in Plurality: The successful implementation of this Campaign will also shed light on the fact that the demand for changes in the law is not only voiced by a specific group of women. In an effort to silence the voices of women calling for change, critics claim that demands for legal change are expressed by a particular group of women, who are out of touch with the realities of ordinary Iranian women. These critics wrongly claim that only elite, socially and economically advantaged women seek changes to laws, in direct opposition to the real needs and sensitivities of the masses of Iranian women. These claims are indeed incorrect, as discriminatory and unjust laws negatively impact the lives of all women, whether they are educated or not, live in upper class neighborhoods or poor communities, are married or single, live in rural areas or in cities, and so on. The Campaign will work to address some of these issues. 2
2. Responses to the Campaign
The launch of this campaign was not welcomed by Iran’s conservatives and government, and the reasons for government opposition to such a campaign were made quite clear. Like with their opposition to any other reform movement, the government, while promoting Sharia and declaring
2 ‘About ‘One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws’ 2006, Taghir Baraye Barabari (Change for equality), 27 August, http://we-change.org/site/english/spip.php?article18, viewed November 2015. 49
that not all women want to change the laws, claimed that the campaigners were supporters of the U.S. Apparently, they were even ‘spies’ or instruments of the American government who sought to overthrow the Iranian regime. The government’s accusations were predictable. However, the extent of their opposition, which included even physical attacks on campaigners, was not expected. I discuss this political repression below.
The Campaign was under pressure due to criticism mounted by a range of different groups, among them conservative politicians and clerics. Amongst those who opposed it there were:
those who do not believe in social movements of any kind and who see any activism as a direct attempt to overthrow the government;
those who claim that changing discriminatory laws is not the priority of all Iranian women;
those who believe the biggest problems for Iranian women are the ‘culture’ and traditions of Iran’s society and not discriminatory laws;
those who believe the most important priority is to force the government to create jobs for women;
those who belong to purportedly left-wing groups that believe that Iran’s government is an anti-imperialist government, though operating as a dictatorship (due to the threat of war from the USA and its allies, they also believe it is better not to criticize the government nor press for reform);
those who believe that efforts to change discriminatory laws against women will merely give women legal rights, and not effect significant change in women’s everyday lives (as was the case with their right to vote from 1962);
and, finally, also those who advocate a military attack on Iran by the US and its allies and are concerned that a democratic gesture of changing discriminatory laws against women, might reduce the pressure for a military attack.
Of course, some critics voiced more than one of these criticisms.
Ahmadi-Khorasani, as one of the main founders and theorists of the Campaign, tried to answer these critics. For example, in her 2007 book, One Million Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws,3 she defended the importance of launching this Campaign by examining the subordinate situation of Iranian women. Here she emphasizes the widespread impact of discriminatory laws, describing them as a common problem for women of every class and ethnic and religious group. Under Iranian law, women are considered ‘half men’ in the sense that they have half the legal value that men possess.
3 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Noushin 2007, Jonbeshe yek Milion Emza, Revayati az Daroon(One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws: An Internal Narrative), np. 50
Thus, in court the testimony of two women is equal to the testimony of one man, and women receive half the inheritance of male members of their family. As a result of this imbalance, Iran’s discriminatory laws produce inequitable family and social relationships. For example, Ahmadi- Khorasani shows how despite the fact that men who want to have multiple wives are in the minority, the law permits this.4 Regardless of how individual citizens may see it, the legal perception of a citizen’s marriage (and the express purpose of that marriage) is centered on sexual/reproductive concerns that essentially continue to serve patriarchal interests. Marriage not only serves a primary function of patriarchy by keeping family succession and property in the hands of males, it treats as absolute the higher status and authority of husbands. For many women, marriage within this particular matrix is unable to meet emotional needs of love and equal companionship. Ahmadi- Khorasani also analyses the ‘fall-out’ from this sort of marriage. She details the increase in Iran in the incidence of extreme violence, both self-inflicted by women and that inflicted on women by men, often through immolation. She highlights the efficiency of male-serving laws beyond their use in courts of law, while also emphasizing the role of the law in defining and reinforcing private and public abuses of women in Iranian society.5
For example, for wives both the law on polygamy and the ‘temporary marriage’ law lead to a lack of security in family life. Ahmadi-Khorasani compares the system of polygamy with monogamy, noting how relationships outside marriage are at least discouraged in monogamous societies, even if there is no criminal sanction against infidelity.6 Some relationships outside marriage are legal in polygamous societies such as Iran, at least for men, as they can have four wives and unlimited Sigheh (temporary marriage) under a law on temporary marriage. This relation is said to be based on ‘mutual’ agreement and can be valid from 9 minutes to 99 years. In Iran, further wives (Sigheh) pose a more significant threat to the legal status of the first wife than in western societies as they can not only cause her to be divorced (and in Iran divorce is much easier for a man to secure than for a wife), but, in the case of the husband’s death, will substantially reduce her inheritance.7
In monogamous patriarchal societies, there have long been sexual double standards demanding virginity before marriage and fidelity after it, in practice only for women. Legal systems that recognize polygamy, however, are still today more obviously based on double standards that partly derive from the need for secure paternity in the patriarchal family; in addition, they legally safeguard men’s ability
4 Ibid., 17. 5 Ibid., 22 & 23. 6 Ahmadi-Khorasani, One Million Signatures, 24-25. 7 Ibid., 23, 24, 28. 51
to own multiple women or merely satisfy their desires for multiple sexual liaisons.8 Under Iranian Sharia, double standards also apply with criminal punishments such as lashing (or even stoning to death)9 for sexual relationships outside of this framework.10 Women in polygamous societies always fear their husbands’ remarriage and this fear is transferred in the historical memory of women from generation to generation.
Ahmadi-Khorasani also emphasizes how the religious family law that legitimizes polygamy and temporary marriage even strengthens the economic standing and social-political power of men.11 The man stands on his assets, allowing him to choose women as he will, while generally women are forced to depend economically upon men. A husband is legally able to stop his wife from working (even if she had a professional job before marriage). All these legal provisions, and the gender discrimination from which they stem, result in generalized fears and insecurities among women. Hence, for a century or more many Iranian women have been demanding an end to discriminatory family laws against women. For secularists such as Ahmadi-Khorasani, family relationships and rights should be subject to secular civil law, not religious control.
To return to the nature of the Campaign, we need to understand that due to fear of political retaliation campaigners did not publicize signatories of the petition. Hence, it is not clear how many people have actively supported the campaign. Non-governmental media sources report that the Campaign was welcomed by many people from its inception in 2006. As the Campaign proclamations indicated, however, the call for change to legal gender discrimination in Iran is not restricted to a small segment of the female population because the disadvantages embedded in patriarchal law affect all women in the most fundamental aspects of their daily lives. Hence, it should come as no surprise that even some supporters of the Islamist revolution became disillusioned with its stance on women. On the other hand, while men have long been able to abuse their permanent and temporary wives with impunity, women’s consequent fears and insecurities have contributed to a recent rise in the number of women who kill their husbands. No doubt what is alarming about this for Ahmadi-Khorasani is not only the increase in the number of husbands being killed by wives, but more the fact that typically such women have suffered abuse and feel they cannot escape their husbands. As noted above, it is
8 Ibid., 30. 9 In Iran stoning was removed from the New Islamic Panel Code in 2012. 10 Ghanoone Jadid Mojazate Eslami; (New Islamic Panel Code) Act 2012, Section Two, ‘Jaza va Shalagh’ (‘Crimes Subject to the Lash’), Articles 221- 232, page 51-53, www.haghgostar.ir, and http://www.ghanoonbaz.com/anavin/kaifary/mojazat.htm. 11 Ahmadi-Khorasani, One Million Signatures, 33 and 34. 52
much easier for a man to secure a legal divorce than it is for a woman,12 and otherwise the law offers women little protection.
In response to the question of why the Campaign ‘only’ (or, rather, particularly) called for the abolition of discriminatory family law, Ahmadi-Khorasani explains that Iranian women have struggled for many years to achieve social equality more generally, but with little success. The legal reform of discriminatory law is a demand shared by most groups of women in Iran today, even if they differ on the question of whether Sharia law can accommodate meaningful reform, or whether such matters should properly be left to religious control. Changing discriminatory family laws against women has the potential to change other forms of discrimination against women, for example in employment. The Campaign’s programme to change laws that discriminate against women therefore has the potential to mobilize a large proportion of Iran’s women, which suggests that significant legal and cultural reform may be attainable.
Conservatives may deny that Sharia is the problem, finding it convenient to blame ‘culture’ for Iran’s social problems and discontent. However, one of the most powerful influences on culture is the legal system and its traditional foundations in male-defined and male-serving religious law. Law is enduring and creates and perpetuates particular mindsets. Words intrinsic to Islamic polygamy and the laws safeguarding it such as ‘obedience’ — disobedience (called nushouz13 as well as farash14) to a husband being punishable under the law — have determined the so-called ‘cultural’ values in daily life. Ahmadi- Khorasani insists that such words have a tangible and sometimes devastating impact on family relationships. The One Million Signatures Campaign also targeted such discriminatory language.
Ahmadi-Khorasani urged individuals and groups to do anything they could to support the movement, although she was critical of bravado or senseless heroics.15 Given that the Iranian government has proved itself to be severely repressive, even of activists in the Campaign, this would merely play into their hands.
12 Ibid., 43. 13 According to Iranian marriage law, a wife is supported by her husband and is not an equal partner who shares in his property. She is entitled to financial support only while she obeys her husband. Should a wife disobey her husband or leave even a violent husband, this is called nushoz, which entitles him to cancel her support, or deny a divorced wife alimony: Article 1107 of the Civil Code, http://www.mut.ac.ir/legal/madani.pdf. 14 Article 630 of the Penal Code holds that a man who finds his wife committing adultery with a male stranger can justifiably kill both of them, even if he is not sure whether his wife is ‘obeying’ the stranger (i.e. being forced by him): http://www.ghanoonbaz.com/anavin/kaifary/mojazat.htm. 15 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 57. 53
3. Secular feminists and Islamic feminists: Toward cooperation
Prior to the launch of the Campaign, there was only limited cooperation between secular feminists and other women’s rights activists, including Islamic feminists inside of Iran. It is clear that there were even outside-inside collaboration and contacts between Iranian diaspora feminist activists and feminist activists inside Iran, this campaign however expanded that collaboration. The campaign, however, taught all women’s rightists that if they are seeking change for the benefit of all women in Iran, women of different political persuasions and affiliations have to work together. Ahmadi- Khorasani emphasizes: ‘The only way to reform these laws in favor of women is to use all the available facilities and capacities of society such as strengthening the egalitarian discourse, support for human rights discourse, and efforts among the elite and the people’.16
With reference to the 12 June 2005 and 2006 women’s protests, Iranian literature clearly illustrates the distance between secular and Islamic feminist activists before this time. Despite some rapprochement between secular and Islamic feminists during the Women’s Forums in 2003, these seminars had not included some women’s rights activist groups or individuals close to the government. For example, the leading Islamic feminist journalist and editor of the Zanan magazine, Shahla Sherkat, who had been invited repeatedly to participate by Ahmadi-Khorasani, did not participate in preparatory meetings held before the women’s protest of 12 June 2006.17 In fact, Sherkat had been vocal in opposing the women’s call for a protest demonstration on 12 June 2005. Even after the 2006 police attack on the women’s protest in Haft e Tir Square, she wrote an article in Zanan condemning the organizers including Ahmadi-Khorasani, claiming that women who participated had been ‘put up to it’, that is, to protest in a manner that placed them in danger. She deemed the conduct of the protest ‘revolutionary’, that is, unlawful, and criticized the organizers and participants for mimicking Western feminist tactics without consideration of their appropriateness for Iran.18
In response to Sherkat and other opponents of the women’s protest in Haft e Tir Square, Ahmadi- Khorasani questioned the Islamic feminists’ inactivity in regard to protesting women’s lack of rights. She challenged their self-righteous claim to being the only proper voice of Iranian women’s rights, implying that they had achieved little for Iranian women. Most importantly, Ahmadi-Khorasani questioned their lack of action in failing to take women’s issues out of the realm of mere writing, to action in the public sphere. Presumably, since they had more chance of getting the attention of the
16 Ahmadi-Khorasani, One Million Signatures, 54. 17 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Noushin 2006, ‘Tajamoe 22 Khordad va Sokhani ba Femenisthaye Islami’ (Protest of 12 of June and a Word to Islamic Feminists), Nameh Zan no. 7, 271-280. 18 Sherkat, Shahla 2006, ‘Amre Siyasi Shakhsi aast’ (‘The Personal is Political’), Nameh Zan no. 7, 267-270. 54
government, they could have done more lobbying of politicians, too. But, Ahmadi-Khorasani called for action, an example being how they could have made the government’s Women’s Day held every year on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, a platform for opposition to discriminatory laws against women in Iran. Ahmadi-Khorasani also demanded to know why Islamic feminists such as Sherkat apparently believed that ‘other’ (i.e. secular) women may not ‘own’ the streets of their cities: why was it not legitimate for them to voice in public their concerns as citizens of Iran? She pointed out that Iran’s constitutional law states that any citizen has the right to peaceful protest. Ahmadi-Khorasani challenged Islamic feminists, if they believed that secular and Islamic women’s activists could not work together, to leave the secularists to act without interference. She suggested that the women’s movement might be better served with a redirection of this sort of condemnation toward a government that would set a belligerent force upon a women’s peaceful protest.19
This was the first time since the revolution that women with a secular ideology stridently defended both their views and tactics. In doing so, they highlighted clear distinctions between themselves and conservative Islamic feminists. Nevertheless, this dialogue has been welcomed by Iranian academic feminists abroad such as Afsaneh Najmabadi,20 who treats even a heated conversation between Ahmadi-Khorasani, Sherkat and other women’s rights activists as positive. She also advises against any strict delineation between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, Islamic feminists and secular feminists, advocating that both groups commit themselves to establishing a common dialogue.21
4. The spark for the One Million Signatures Campaign
The One Million Signatures Campaign united a large number of women with different viewpoints around one common goal, through a combination of factors. First, up until 8 March 2005, a successful campaign of women together with men, directed against violence toward women, had been conducted for more than six months, and it was seen as a successful model.22 In regard to campaigns against violence toward women, Ahmadi-Khorasani notes that women’s rights activists in 2005 criticized holding only a conventional public gathering each year for IWD or the 22 June ceremony of
19 Ahmadi-Khorasani, op. cit.277 20 Afsaneh Najmabadi is Professor of History and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. 21 Najmabadi, Afsaneh 2006, ‘Aghaze Goftegohaye Rou dar Rou’ (‘Face to face Dialogue’). Nameh Zan no. 7, 295-303. 22 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 132. 55
Women’s National Day of Solidarity, with no further plan to achieve something in women’s favour. These activists asked: ‘What benefit do these works [for women] bring, when it [just] occurs on one day of the year [22 June or 8 March] followed up on the same day of the next year?’. This led the 22 June protest organizers to try to find ways to link the Day of Solidarity in June to 8 March. Their aim was to increase the impact of public demonstrations, or to maintain the momentum in their public presence,23 thereby making the issue of women’s rights visible to the public all year round. So they launched a six months campaign against violence toward women from 22 June 2004 to 8 March 2005.
The political situation of Iran at the time provided further momentum for the campaign of 2006, for in that year reformers had proposed a referendum to change the Constitution. There were many supporters in the women’s movement, including Ahmadi-Khorasani.24 Many intellectuals, among them human rights and women’s rights activists, were disappointed at the banning of the referendum by President Khatami and supreme leader Khamenei. This prompted the renewed campaign for women’s rights in 2006. After the government attacked the women’s protests of 12 June, women’s rights activists retreated for a time from public demonstrations, though they were still holding frequent meetings to launch new actions. In one of these meetings Ahmadi-Khorasani suggested they publish a statement about the demands of the June 12 protest and the ongoing threat of repression, and even collect signatures in support of their campaign.25 According to some of the campaigners, this was the ‘spark’ for what came to be known as the One Million Signatures Campaign.
A further factor that inspired the Campaign was the reform of Islamic family law in Morocco in 1992. The removal of legal inequalities there strengthened the dream of a successful campaign in Iran.26 By setting themselves the task of collecting one million signatures to demand the abolition of discriminatory laws against women, members of the Women’s Cultural Centre and associated activist groups cast their net widely.27 Other individuals and groups who had supported the 22 June protest in
23 Ibid., 227. 24 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Noushin 2005, ‘Jonbeshe Zanan va Jonbeshe Refrandoum’ (‘The Women’s Movement and the Referendum Movement’), Iranian Feminist Tribune, http://www.iran- nabard.com/zanan/050308.htm, viewed 6 March 2016. 25 This was verified by Ahmadi-Khorasani in response to an email enquiry from me. The exact date of the meeting is not known, but it was around mid-June when daily meetings were being held at the Women’s Cultural Centre in response to the 12 June arrests. 26 Moroccan women managed to collect a million signatures over a year. Their campaign had many opponents including clergy and religious fundamentalists, but ultimately campaigners delivered these signatures to the Prime Minister, which resulted in amendments to the laws in favour of women. This legislation is still however far from gender equality: ‘MOUDAWANA, A Peaceful Revolution for Moroccan Women’ nd, Tavana, https://tavaana.org/en/content/moudawana-peaceful-revolution-moroccan-women, viewed March 2016. 27 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 227-228. 56
2006 were invited to sketch out their strategies. It was envisaged that such a campaign would be a continuation of the 22 June protest, so it was natural that those involved in that would be the Campaign’s initial promoters.28
The idea for a campaign with a target of ‘One Million Signatures’ was soon arrived at by a collective of secular feminists led by a few activists including Ahmadi-Khorasani. This Campaign and also the Iranian feminist movement in general, have been secular in its orientation even though Islamic feminists have been an important part of this movement . Some had long since come to the conclusion that in working toward equal rights, patriarchal values and customs embedded in religious belief and law must necessarily be challenged. The question, however, was whether they could survive in a radical/’revolutionary’ Islamic state. Did the identity and very survival of the women’s movement in Iran have to be dependent upon an alignment with religious belief and custom? Could they remain secular in their identity and activism? This problem plagued the Campaign as it confronted the common belief that one must not contradict what were assumed to be the basic tenets of Islam. There were some Islamic scholars, however, who had proposed revisions of discriminatory laws, included Ayatollah Sanei and Ayatollah Bojnordi, so change to Sharia law was not seen even by all clerics as incompatible with Islam. Hence, implicit permission to seek reform was given by them—that is, through an implied ‘Fatwa’. This was and is important as Shi’a Muslims are expected to follow precepts of the religion laid down by the Mojtahed’s/clergy’s religious orders or rulings (fatwa).29
5. Responses to the Campaign from abroad and their effects on the Movement
The Campaign was welcomed also by many women’s and human rights activists around the world. Some signed the Campaign petition as Iranians (because it was planned to hand over these signatures to the Parliament, so only Iranian residents’ signatures could count), and others signed it as supporters. Prominent voices of external support included western scholars like Nikki Keddie, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the Women’s Nobel Peace Prize Committee.30 Naturally, Iranian
28 Among those involved in these campaign meetings were individuals and groups from the Women’s Cultural Centre, the Centre for Women, the Women’s Commission (OCU), members of the Board of Sohrab Razzaghi, the Association of Women’s Health, and Hestia Andish, an NGO concerned with women’s rights: ibid., 228. 29 Keshavarz, Nahid 2006 ‘Islam va Jonbeshe yek Million Emza’ (‘Islam and the Movement of One Million Signatures Campaign’), The Feminist School 20 January, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article9, viewed March 2016. 30 ‘Hamiyan va Azae kampain’ (Supporters and Members of the One Million Signatures Campaign) 2008, Taghir Baraye Barabari (Change for Equality), 6 May, http://we-change.org/site/spip.php?article1927, viewed March 2016. 57
scholars who had migrated or were just working abroad were amongst the signatories. One of the important achievements of the Campaign was the launching of a renewed discourse about women’s rights in Iran in the community of Iranian feminist scholars abroad, who through their contributions greatly enhanced Iranian feminist literature.
Iranian scholars resident in Iran and those abroad could differ in how they perceive the Campaign and contemporary Iranian feminism, however. One scholar, Mehrdad Darvishpour, who lives in Sweden, has questioned the tendency that he sees to be stronger amongst Iranian feminist scholars and activists abroad, of seeing secular and Islamic feminists in Iran as entirely distinct and opposed to each other. Nevertheless, at an extended seminar or mini-conference in Berlin in 2009,31 he himself divided contemporary trends in feminism into four categories: anti-religious feminism, Islamic feminism, Muslim feminism and secular feminism.
Darvishpour believes that anti-religious feminism found a special place in Iran after the revolution, but is currently more popular among the Iranian diaspora. He argues that Islamic feminists do not specifically pursue equal rights for men and women – rather, they demand ‘justice’ for women as well as men. He adds that the emergence of the phenomenon of Islamic feminism is the result of different influences, including the public participation of women of Islamic orientation in the revolution and during the Iran-Iraq War. He continues that the alliance of some Muslim feminists (who were not necessarily supporters of the Revolution and of the new Islamist regime) with secular feminists was another factor in the growth of women’s movement in Iran. Moreover, he suggests that the formation of the One Million Signatures Campaign was the work of these last two feminist groups.32 Scholars may disagree with his categorization of feminist groups in Iran, but they have agreed that the Campaign itself was not clearly divided into such categories. Even some Islamic feminists could agree with some of its critiques and demands. Hence, there came about a more unified membership than had hitherto been achieved.
During an Iranian Women’s Studies Conference held a year later in Paris, Nayerh Tohidi (Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at California State University) made some similar points. Clearly, she is not amongst the Iranian scholars abroad said to have been too focused on secular and Islamic feminist difference. In 2010 she insisted that ‘artificial, unhealthy and oftentimes unnecessary stress [is] created from a contradictory duality of Islamic versus secular’ feminism, or ‘reformist vs revolutionary’, or even
31 ‘Seminar e Jameh Madani va Jonbeshhaye Zanan 23 ta 25 Bahman’ (Social Movement and Women’s Movement Seminar) 2009, d.w, 15 February 2009, http://www.dw.de/ (unnumbered). 32 Ibid., unnumbered. 58
‘tensions between generations’.33 Tohidi does not oppose making a distinction between secular and religious (here Islamic) feminists, but is wary of turning such distinction into an antagonistic one. She stresses the necessity of coalition building and cooperation on the basis of common interests on a practical and pragmatic basis rather than ideological differences. On this question, her view is similar to that of Parvin Paidar, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Noushin Ahmadi-Khorasani, Ziba Jalali, Nahid Keshavarz, Mansoureh Shojaei, Shirin Ebadi, Mehrangiz Kar, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and several others. This same criticism could perhaps be applied to my own approach. I have, however, acknowledged unity and cooperation between secular and Islamic feminists. There is also no doubt that many in the Campaign, like Ahmadi-Khorasani herself, see their own brand of feminism as secular in style and goals; while Islamic/Muslim feminists define their feminism (or goal of more rights or justice for women) in terms of identification with Islam and faith in its ability to accommodate reform.
A similar emphasis on unity in the Campaign and contemporary Iranian feminism can be seen in the work of another Iranian scholar abroad, Kazem Alamdari, Professor of Sociology at California State University. In an article contributed to the Campaign’s official website and journal, he described the Campaign as a modern movement with a ‘pragmatic approach’. Emphasizing Iran’s ‘failure to fulfil [the] idealistic and ideological demands of social movements, including the women’s movement’, he noted that it is because of this that ‘the younger generation of women … take a new path that is different from the past.’ In this ‘modern’ Campaign, the women’s movement avoided mere theorizing and sought to find a practical, more workable answer to the question of how women could confront and resolve their problems.34 In other words, young women were now pursuing their legal demands more ‘pragmatically’ through public action and unity between women of different persuasions, not through intellectual debate behind closed doors, nor by relying on political parties. Guided by this philosophy they were now engaging more fully with the public world. For Alamdari, the One Million Signatures movement was a prominent and inspiring symbol of social and intellectual change in Iran.35
33 Tohidi, Nayereh 2010, ‘Naghd va Baresi Jonbeshe Zanan dar Bastare Jonbeshe Sabz’ (‘Review of the Women’s Movement in the Context of the Green Movement’), in Political Changes and Democratic Struggles of the Iranian Women’s Movement, Papers for the 21th Annual International Conference of Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation, 24-26 July 2010, Paris, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article6905. 34 Alamdari, Kazem nd, ‘Jonbeshe Yek Million Emza Olgooei Baraey Jonbesh Haye Madani Iran’ (‘The One Million Signature Model for Civil Society movement in Iran’), The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/campaign/spip.php?article210. 35 ‘Hashte Mars va Kampain yek Million Emza’ (‘One Million Signatures Campaign and 8 March) 2007, http://efatmahbaz.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57%3A2010-04-29-15-44- 10&limitstart=3. 59
6. ‘Situational feminism’: A new feminist theory
Alamdari’s general observation about the Campaign and new women’s movement as more concerned with pragmatic action and unity is reasonable, but this is not to say that theory was ignored. For the secularists in particular, there arose a dilemma. How were they to proceed in terms of which feminist theory to follow? Which theory would best inform their thought and action? Traditional styles to choose from were liberal, leftist and radical feminism, which have not only found expression in the West, but would existing brands of feminism suffice? Would they meet the needs of or be effective for Iranian campaigners? Perhaps they would have to create a new feminist theory altogether. In the second Campaign journal/website, Feminist School, which was set up by Ahmadi-Khorasani herself in 2007, she provided a compass point, a place from which to pursue a feminist philosophy suited to women in Iran.
Here Ahmadi-Khorasani did draw on Western feminist frameworks and models, but said she wanted to incorporate elements appropriate to the requirements of the Iranian context and the Campaign.36 A crucial feature of her proposition was that this new Iranian feminism was not unlike ‘personal politics’ in Second Wave women’s liberation movements involved the Campaigners embracing feminism in their everyday lives, actually ‘living’ feminist principles. A necessary component of this lived feminism was to be the process of continual assessment: tracking the usefulness, validity, and value of tactics as they were used. In effect, Ahmadi-Khorasani advocated a synthesis of existing theory rather than the wholesale adoption of any specific brand of feminism; she was also realistic in her expectation that Iranian feminists could not lay claim to an entirely new feminist theory. Moreover, it was the young Campaigners, whom she describes as the fifth generation of feminists in Iran, who would be integral to the effectiveness of this synthetic approach. Ahmadi-Khorasani appreciated the vibrancy and enthusiasm of this group whose brand of synthesized feminism she termed ‘situational feminism’, noting that while these young feminists may have had a broad understanding of western feminist theory and practice, they were intent on adapting and then integrating this with the ‘day to day’ struggle in Iran. Ahmadi-Khorasani suggests that while we may view it as a form of ‘radical feminism’, it nevertheless differs in accordance with a different time and context (or ‘situation’ in Iran).
In support of Ahmadi-Khorasani’s stance, another Iranian scholar, Shahla Shafigh,37 suggested an alternative description of these young feminist campaigners. In an interview printed in the Feminist
36 Ahmadi-Khorasani, ‘One Million Signatures’, 99-102. 37 Shahla Shafigh is a sociologist and human rights activist based in France whose research is on the status of women in many Middle Eastern countries as well as the status of Iranian/Muslim immigrants in France. Her book Women Beneath the Veil was published in 1995 in France. 60
School website/journal in 2007,38 she compared them with so-called ‘Emergency Feminists’ in urban France such as the Muslim feminist and politician, Fedela Amara,39 who tried to help young French mothers and girls. Shafigh detected definite parallels between them and the ‘Situational Feminists’ in the One Million Signatures Campaign. Scholars such as Ahmadi-Khorasani and Shafigh indicate that the problems of Iranian society are due to a special set of circumstances that cannot be analysed adequately with traditional western feminist categories. The One Million Signatures Campaign may have shown some similarities to Second Wave western liberation movements (and an example I shall come to is with regard to organizational problems in the loose structure typical of broad-based social movements). Moreover, Ahmadi-Khorasani and other leaders of the Campaign would not deny some western feminist influence upon Campaigners. Nevertheless, the Campaign also had its own unique context (‘situation’), problems or challenges, and needs.
7. The Campaign: Strengths and weaknesses
The most serious organizational issue faced by the Campaigners concerned what strategies to adopt to avoid government suppression. To prevent the closure of women’s centres and NGOs, for example, women in the Campaign decided to accept the personal risk to themselves as individuals when they signed the petition (though, as noted above, they did not publicize all the names of signatories). The same was true when they responded to the call for an organized gathering after the police suppression on 22 June 2006 in Haft e Tir square. All the organizers including Ahmadi-Khorasani were interrogated as individuals and therefore their organizations such as the Women’s Cultural Centre remained safe from the regime’s attacks at that time.
Other problems confronted by Campaign leaders were the sheer size of the movement and hence suitable venues for meetings, as well as the lack of organizational inexperience of many campaigners. Mention has been made above of different groups and individuals invited by the Women’s Cultural Centre to enter into strategic discussions and assist in the formation of the Campaign. Among those who responded to the call to the 22 June 2006 (Hafte Tir) protest, most had no previous experience with organizing a large number of people. Its founders could not possibly have foreseen that the Campaign would attract the crowds that it did. But, working with many independent individuals
38 ‘Interview with Shala Shafigh, Emergency Feminism’ 2007, the Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/campaign/spip.php?article211, viewed November 2015. 39 Erlanger, Steven 2008, ‘A Daughter of France’s “Lost Territories” Fights for Them’ 2008, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/world/14amara.html?_r=0, viewed March 2016. 61
presented the organizers with challenges that the Women’s Forum had confronted a few years before when holding public protests or seminars. Ahmadi-Khorasani describes this set of difficulties as,
A lack of sufficient experience in organising prospective and new campaign members became apparent with initial activity of the Women’s Cultural Centre, and the call to protest the misogynistic broadcasting series and movies of the Association of Journalists in 2004. These [activities] were hampered by the absence of a meeting place. Space for meetings was [our] constant problem.40
Also in her 2007 book as well, The One Million Signatures Campaign: An Internal Narrative, Ahmadi- Khorasani had analyzed the challenges of the Campaign. There she addressed various issues such as giving priority to the central goal of the campaign (collecting the one million signatures) and the steps needed to reach this goal; challenging too-ambitious or glory-seeking members; and trying to address the tension between organizational centralization and pluralism. There were also some who wanted Campaigners just to be lobbyists focused on negotiating with government leaders to try to bring about reforms, though most saw publicity as a more pressing concern, that is, bringing their critique of discriminatory law to the attention of the wider public. However, following the launch of the Campaign, the most difficult thing seemed to be the maintaining and even strengthening of democratic methods in internal relationship between the campaigners. In a country such as Iran, practice in democratic relations was scant, limited only to short periods between shifts of dictatorial powers when people were entitled to free expression in the public arena.
The Campaign originally was intended as a three-year project,41 but various factors resulted in a change to that projected time-frame so that today the Campaign’s situation is ambiguous. That is, although the official Campaign website (Change for Equality) is still accessible, whether the Campaign is still active today is unclear due to a number of factors. There was severe repression by the regime, for example, not only with the arrests of 22 June 2006, but with an increasing number of arrests of Campaign members. Another factor was the disagreement between two founders of the Campaign, Ahmadi-Khorasani and Parvin Ardalan, that resulted in a splinter group led by Ahmadi-Khorasani in 2007 which launched its own website called the Feminist School (the official website of the Campaign had been Change for Equality). Ahmadi-Khorasani and those associated with this second website, who separated from the main body of the Campaign, called for more pluralism or representativeness in the Campaign in order to improve its effectiveness. This separation probably weakened the overall movement at the time, but Ahmadi-Khorasani nevertheless insisted in 2007 that the Campaign be built
40 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 163 & 164. 41 Ahmadi-Khorasani 2007, ‘One Million Signatures’, 122. 62
upon ‘diversity and openness’, which would lead to more ‘unity, solidarity and harmony, and gain equal rights for activists’.42 Moreover, many campaign members later tied the fate of the Campaign to public protests at the outcome of the presidential election in 2009 (protests that came to be known as the Green Movement), which eventually led to the emigration of many members of the Campaign from Iran. All these factors caused the Campaign project to remain unfinished and its status today unclear; even the number of collected signatures remains unknown to the public.
Another issue with the Campaign, according to some academic feminists outside of Iran such as Nayereh Tohidi, was its loose movement structure, which can result in a lack of leadership. At the 21st Iranian Women’s Studies Conference held on 24-26 July 2009 in Paris, Tohidi identified at least five challenges faced by the Iranian movement. She suggested that all five issues needed to be addressed both practically and theoretically, since a clear theoretical framework had to be in place on which to base action. The first challenge she addressed was the matter of organizational methods, acknowledging that feminists elsewhere have tried to avoid traditional party organization with vertical hierarchies embodying uneven power relationships:
It was common for radical Second Wave movements such as Women’s Liberation to see such organization as typical of patriarchal and undemocratic relationships. Instead, they tended toward horizontal, loose organization and a non-hierarchical power structure without formal leaders, nor even majority rule, and so on. To achieve a horizontal distribution of power is one of the challenges that feminists constantly face. In Iran, however, women’s rights activists have had less choice about the type of organization they would favour.43
Tohidi noted that ‘in the face of constantly increasing repression and insecurity’, some may see a ‘loose movement without a formal membership’ to be a ‘wiser option’. Referring to the common view that ‘women have no need of leadership’, she mentioned women’s bitter experience with non-democratic leaderships in the world of patriarchal politics. So feminists’ avoidance of such organizational traditions can be a virtue not a weakness, she acknowledged, though this depends on the specific political context. First, having a formal, permanent leadership would possibly paralyse a movement if police arrested its leaders. On the other hand, however, Tohidi emphasizes that a fear of the tyranny of power could lead a women’s movement to the other extreme of indecision or complete powerlessness.
With regard to leadership in the Iranian Campaign, Tohidi observed that:
42 Ibid., 149. 43 Tohidi, Nayereh 2010, ‘Naghd va Baresi Jonbeshe Zanan dar Bastare Jonbeshe Sabz’ (‘Review of the Women’s Movement in the Context of the Green Movement’), in Political Changes and Democratic Struggles of Iranian Women’s Movement, Papers for the 21th Annual International Conference of Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation, 24-26 July 2010, Paris, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article6905 (unnumbered). 63
It is a [mere] claim or an illusion to say the ‘One Million Signatures Campaign’ has no leader. These slogans, no matter how sincere, are a sign of immaturity and romanticism, and misunderstanding of democracy and firmness in women’s movement….
Although this campaign could not have begun without leadership, and it is obvious that the coordination and management of fifty-plus activists, experts, trusted figures and others committed to women’s rights in Iran had to be involved even to begin this project. Those who took upon themselves the authority and the right to write their documents and set out the Campaign objectives for a project of [three] years began by defining clear and specific objectives; and they founded one of the most beautiful, effective and promising feminist movements in Iran.44
She continued by noting that there had been ‘sporadic debates’ or different opinions expressed in the Campaign’s annual assessment by activists, yet even here its leading and pioneering campaigners needed to take upon themselves the authority to give an overview of the by then four-year campaign to the public. And of course someone needed to analyse and publicize debates and decisions in the Campaign because of its importance in the history of Iran’s women’s movement. The public also had to be ‘informed about whether they planned to continue the campaign or to announce that they were putting an end to the project’. Here she was alluding to the uncertain status of the Campaign even by mid-2010.45 Tohidi ended by observing that the pretence that the movement had no real leadership could lead to ‘serious irresponsibility and uncertainty’ of this type, in effect throwing out a challenge for it to acknowledge de facto leaders such as Ahmadi-Khorasani.46
Ahmadi-Khorasani did respond to that challenge a few years later by publishing her 2012 book, Bahar e Jonbesh e Zanan (The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement). Here she clarified the current status of the Campaign while also describing three important incidents that illustrated the challenges faced by campaigners: firstly, the arrest of 33 more people in February 2007; secondly, the violent attack by regime’s security forces on a campaign workshop in the city of Khorram Abad in August 2007; and lastly, the confiscation and destruction of several sheets of signatures by the security forces during the arrest soon after of some members of the Campaign after their homes were searched. This trend of surprise ‘inspections’, confiscation of materials and destruction of things like petitions continued for almost a year. Ahmadi-Khorasani observed, however, that despite all the problems, at the end of the second year after the Campaign launch in mid-2006, it was able to withstand the repression to some
44 Ibid. (unnumbered). 45 Ibid. (unnumbered). 46 Further analysis of ‘glocal’ aspects of the women’s movement in Iran and other countries can be found in Tohidi, Nayereh. 2010. “The Women’s Movement and Feminism in Iran: A Glocal Perspective’ in Women’s Movements in the Global Era, ed. Amrita Basu, 375-414, Boulder, Westview Press. 64
extent by the creation of ‘self-establishing branches’ and multiple websites (such as the first one, Change for equality, and then the Feminist School). The diffuse nature of the movement served to expand discourse on the Campaign and created an important phase in the women’s movement, the methods of which were later applied to other social movements in Iran.47 However, Ahmadi-Khorasani indicated that the Campaign had come to an end when she evaluated its achievements. She concluded that there had been a ‘win-win’ result both for campaigners and Iran’s state forces: a win for the government, which had tried everything to prevent the campaigners from changing the law, but also a win for the campaigners who wanted more public awareness of discriminatory law in Iran and of opposition to it.48
Conclusion
Even if it was also with the support of Islamic feminists, it was the secularists who created a solid foundation for the one Million Signatures Campaign, which opened a new chapter in Iranian feminism and activism. Campaign leaders capitalized on every minor success and even losses such as arrests in an effort to advance the effectiveness of the cause. They embraced highly visible, very public protest. Their activism especially from the 2005 and 2006 protests sought to emphasize the legal discrimination suffered by Iranian women and the repression visited by the government on those who opposed it. Their first aim was to bring more awareness to people in Iran with regard to the law and its inequities for women. Of equal importance was the mobilization of ‘everyday’ Iranian women and men—who may not necessarily have identified as activists much less as feminists. A crucial feature of Campaigners’ activism was their determination that it be predicated on non-violence and thus within the bounds of the law. The main strategy of the Campaign, a simple collection of signatures on a petition, fulfilled this condition. The subsequent intention was to present the petition with the accompanying ‘one million’ signatures to the Parliament to prove that it was not only a small elite group of women who were demanding change. Their expectation of a government willingness to listen, however, was disappointed, and no concessions were made. The government’s response to this public appeal amounted to more surveillance and brutal repression. The demands of the petitioners were simply ignored without any attempt at moral or political justification. The Campaign’s main goal of reform was not realized and the final total of signatures was never officially recognised; in fact, names were not made public to avoid any threat and repression toward the signatories.
47 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 252. 48 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 258. 65
In the final analysis, however, one could hardly judge the Campaign to be a failure simply because of the government’s response. Increased awareness of women’s disadvantaged status under the law even among people at Iran’s grass roots was perhaps the most significant achievement of the Campaign. This was not only a dialogue amongst intellectuals. In addition, the Campaign attracted international media interest not only in the legal status of women in Iran but also in the existence there of a vocal and visible women’s rights movement. A common goal of reforming discriminatory laws against women had even facilitated cooperation between secularists and Islamic feminists in spite of other differences between them. Working in the Campaign showed Iranian feminists how to survive in a repressive context, how to be pragmatic and creative, and how to be tolerant of different ideas. This gave them the strength to work together in future campaigns in the ‘Two Coalitions’ of 2009 discussed in Chapter Four.
66
Chapter Four
The Two Coalitions of Women in 2007 and 2009
Introduction
This chapter examines two major coalitions of Iranian women activists who worked within and outside the government. To my knowledge, there is very limited academic literature on these two coalitions, indicating an original contribution my research makes to the field. The coalitions were concerned with a bill proposing changes to the Family Protection Law, and with the coming presidential election. During this presidential election, activists tried to raise the awareness amongst presidential candidates and the Iranian people of women’s legal status by highlighting women’s demands. These are not the only campaigns or coalitions formed in Iran by women’s rights activists in recent years, but limitations of space did not allow me to cover them all in this thesis as I noted above.
The first section of this chapter concerns the 2007 Coalition of Women against the new Family Protection Bill. After commenting on the history of family law in Iran, I explain the nature of women’s objections to the new bill, beginning with those of women who were in government or with close ties to the regime. I then turn to secularist feminist opposition to the bill, focusing on the structural problems confronted by this coalition. The second section concerns the Coalition of the Women for the 2009 Presidential Election. After commenting on the history of women’s participation in elections since 1979 and highlighting important elections for Iranian women such as the Fifth Parliamentary elections in 1996, I focus on the 2009 election in the convergence of different women’s demands in the women’s movement that since the One Million Signatures Campaign had become much broader.
1. The Coalition of Women against the New Family Protection Bill
1.1 The History of Family Protection Bills in Iran
The first Family Protection Bill under the old regime was put forward in 1963 by Mehrangize Manouchehrian.1 In 1967, another woman, Senator Mehrangize Dolatshahi, acted to improve the status of women under Iranian civil law, and through their efforts the Family Protection Act was ratified
1 ‘Layehe Pishnahadi Mehrangiz Manochehrian dar Majmoeh Ghavanin Khanevadeh dar Saale 1342’ (‘Mehrangiz Manochehrian’s Family Protection Bill in 1963’) 2008, The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article1218, viewed 20 March 2016. 67
by the National Assembly. Before that, family matters had been always regulated by religious law or Sharia, though there had been some reforms (mentioned in Chapter Two).. In 1974, the Women’s Organization (also discussed earlier) was instrumental in bringing about further positive changes to the 1967 Family Protection Law, such as increasing the age of marriage for girls and boys, and making polygamy legal only with the permission of a civil court, and only if the first wife agreed to it.2 During the crisis of 1979, however, in order to satisfy the clergy and to control the Islamist revolution, Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Emami, made some changes to the Family Protection Bill that included decreasing the age of marriage again for girls and boys. But, as noted in Chapter Two, soon after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini went so far as to suspend the 1974 reformed Family Protection Law, so once again marriage and other family matters are regulated by traditional religious law or Sharia.
In successive governments since 1979 there were no significant changes to or even official debate on family law until 2000. It should be recalled that this was during the period of reformist governments. In that year, three governmental women’s institutions that were specifically set up to consider women’s status and situation under religious law, funded Mofid University for academic research on women’s status under sharia. This was with the purpose of amending laws in relation to women by presenting the ‘Women’s Master Plan for the Legal System’. This was intended to be a first draft subject to further research and amendment. The three bodies were the Centre for Women’s Participation, established during the Khatami presidency in 1997, the Fraction of Women of the Sixth Parliament after the revolution, and the Social-Cultural Council, established in 1988. The study lasted until 2004. The aim of the research was to propose a bill to the government of Mohammad Khatami amending the laws relating to women. The bill called for a revision of the law in order to improve women’s legal status. It suggested that both civil and criminal law be investigated with regard to discrimination against women.3
The bill proposed various changes to both religious and civil law in support of women’s rights. Hence, this bill addressed not only issues in family law, but also sought to amend the Penal Code, Labour Law and Social Security law, which are all affected by Sharia. By the time the proposed bill was presented to cabinet to be put before the parliament for ratification on April 2005, only a month was left for the Sixth Parliamentary House and there was no discussion of the bill in parliament.4 The bill was supposed
2 ‘Matneh Kameleh Ghanoon e Hemayat az Khanevadeh dar Saale 1374’ (The Full Text of the Family Protection Act) 2008, The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article990, viewed 20 March 2016. 3 Ahmadi-Khorasani N., Mosavi-Khozestani, D.J., 2012, ‘Bahare Jonbeshe Zanan’ (‘The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement’), np, Iran, 260. 4 For each newly elected parliament following the 1979 revolution a numeric title was allocated. The first parliament following the revolution was entitled the First House, the second elected parliament, the Second House, and so on. 68
to be held over to the next parliament in the following year, but in 2005 the newly elected president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, not only had no intention of presenting the document to parliament for ratification; he actively destroyed all traces in parliamentary proceedings of the bill and its proposals.5 This included an entire two-volume publication of research on women’s legal status, along with 30 other detailed studies.6
In 2006, the judiciary prepared a bill with the aim of reforming and updating the Family Court Procedure Act, and submitted this to President Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet to be sent to parliament. In July 2007, President Ahmadinejad added various controversial provisions including clause 23, which made it easier for men to secure additional permanent wives. Effectively, he intended to institute polygamy more fully than had been the case in Iran’s earlier laws. Ahmadi-Khorasani explains as follows: ‘The clause specified subsequent marriages, as being subject to the permission of the court, after obtaining proof of financial ability to do so [support additional wives] and an assurance of just and equal treatment toward all wives.’7 This was not the only contested clause, but it was the most controversial. As Ahmadi-Khorasani notes, even in post-revolutionary civil law, polygamy was not clearly delineated and sanctioned as such; only the inheritance law provided instruction on how to divide inheritance between the multiple wives of a man. President Ahmadinejad sought to make polygamy’s lawfulness more explicit and legal permission for polygamy easier for men to receive.
1.2 Objections to the Bill by women in (or close to the) government
In August 2007 the government of President Ahmadinejad presented his new bill to parliament and its text was made available to the public. Soon after the release of the bill, it was met with protests even from women within the government or close to the regime (including some fundamentalists), in the form of meetings as well as interviews with the media. Individual complaints from women in parliament were published. These women presented two petitions to parliament in September and November 2007, denouncing the bill. Wide opposition to the bill soon created an informal alliance
5 Mansouri Azar nd, ‘Khamir Kardan e Ketabha ba Doreh Ketabsozi Tafavoti Nadarad’ (‘Actively Destroying Books Has No Difference with Book Burning Period [in our History]’). Zanan e Mosalman Noandish, http://www.zananenoandish.com/index.php/2014-06-05-09-21-29/item/459-2014-12-14-12-17-15 & ‘Khamir shodaneh 32 jeld ketab piranone khoshonat alaihe zanan dar dolateh Ahmadinejad’ (‘Paste 32 books on violence against women during Ahmadinejad’) ‘n.d’, Pegah, https://www.balatarin.com/permlink/2015/1/3/3766748 & ‘Kam Lotfi be Zanan be Nameh Layeh e Khanevadeh’ (‘Ignoring Women in the Family Protection Bill’) 2007, Zanestan, 3 September, http://www.zanestan.es/news/07,09,03,01,47,04/. 6 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 261. 7 Ibid., 263. 69
between groups of women with different views, such as conservatives/fundamentalists as well as reformists from the Participation Party, and serving members from the Construction party.8 As Ahmadi- Khorasani states, the alliance between these women formed a coalition of sorts, enabling their more effective and active involvement in the broad women’s movement. It was this alliance that provided the platform for the so-called Islamic Coalition of Women a year later in 2008.9
President Ahmadinejad’s bill of July 2007 was published in the newspapers a year after the beginning of the One Million Signatures Campaign. Many feminists, both secular and Islamic, had actively worked side by side in the Campaign to gain more legal rights for women. The bill, then, was a blow for activists, and sounded an alarm for all women in Iran who were pursuing egalitarian aims or even just more ‘justice’ for women. It indicated that how fragile the situation of women was, for it was now under direct attack. If President Ahmadinejad’s government enacted the bill, it would worsen the already harsh conditions many women experienced. In September 2007, at the time of a press conference to mark the first anniversary of the Campaign, Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, described the bill as a big step backwards in women’s social status. She also called upon parliamentarians to oppose the bill, warning that a failure to do so would result in women presenting themselves en masse to parliament to protest their inaction.10
1.3 Secularist opposition to the Bill
Pressure also came from the members of the One Million Signatures Campaign who had earlier authored and published a ‘Study of the Family Protection Bill from a Legal, Sociological and Psychological Perspective’.11 A petition was then issued to representatives in parliament, to remove the bill from their agenda, and it was signed by 2000 people and also published on the Women’s Cultural Centre website, Zanestan, as well as in some newspapers by reformers.12 For five months women with different ideological standpoints protested against the bill, organizing seminars and conferences,
8 The Participation Front of Islamic Iran is the full name of this party. 9 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 269. The Islamic Coalition of Women (2008) is a coalition of Islamic women from a diverse range of political and intellectual women (mainly from the Participation Party and the Construction Party). The coalition has announced its belief in the Islamic Republic, but called for women’s rights and an end to oppression and discrimination. The members of this coalition are Islamic women and as mentioned in their statement, their aim is to improve the status of women and protect women’s role and position within the orbit of an Islamic state. 10 Ibid., 270. 11 ‘Kam Lotfi be Zanan be Nameh Layeh e Khanevadeh’ (‘Ignoring Women in the Family Protection Bill’) 2007, Zanestan, http://www.zanestan.es/news/07,09,03,01,47,04/, viewed 20 March 2016. 12 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 271. 70
writing and signing petitions, and meeting with representatives of parliament. They did this individually and in groups, also publishing individual letters to parliament opposing the bill, and distributing postcards with the slogan ‘No to the Family Bill’ even within the parliament. All these efforts resulted in the parliament, which was approaching the end of its term, removing the bill from their agenda and postponing deliberation on it until the following Eighth Parliament in 2008.13
However, the majority of the representatives in the new parliament were fundamentalists. In July 2008 the Legal Commission of the parliament approved the bill, which was only one step from its introduction to the parliament for approval. This again alerted the women’s movement, which was then even more convinced of the importance of having a strong voice among the people with which to combat such a reactionary bill. Women were now in a better position to undertake effective political action than in 1979, when the new regime repealed the comparatively progressive 1974 Family Act. They had gained useful experience in non-violent civil action at the Women’s Forums and in the One Million Signatures Campaign. The number of independent women’s NGOs and pressure groups had increased especially in the first two years of the Campaign. Despite all the difficulties with censorship and police surveillance, they had been able to work together in women’s interests and now did so again to try to stop the passage of the bill.
Since women had been unable to resist the repeal of the progressive Family Law in 1979, they were determined to learn from this event. They gradually gathered to take aim at this new target, signing a specific petition to create a Coalition of Women’s Groups against the Family Protection Bill. The approval of the bill by the Legal Commission of the parliament prompted diverse groups of women to begin a new round of activities. As noted, these activities served to blur the distance between them, since they could agree on the need to oppose further discrimination against women under family law.
All groups involved in this first Coalition launched a special section on their websites to focus on critiquing the new Family Protection Bill. Coherent inter-group activism was initiated, including calling upon individuals to send the anti-Bill postcards to parliamentarians. Brochures that explained the bill and its problems in plain language were printed and distributed throughout Iran.14 Apart from the face to face meetings with members of parliament arranged by members of the One Million Signatures Campaign in many cities of Iran, there was also a letter written and signed by 100 lawyers entitled ‘Lawyers Appeal to Members of Parliament’, which outlined the discriminatory nature of the bill and included suggestions for its amendment.
13 Ibid., 274. 14 Ibid., 273. 71
By that time in mid-2007, the structure of the One Million Signatures Campaign had changed. At the end of its first two years it had been consolidated into three main entities (Change for Equality, the Feminist School, and the Iranian Women’s Club),15 though the movement also had the support of a number of independent groups in other cities of Iran and abroad. The momentum had already been created by the Campaign for shaping an even larger and more effective women’s movement, more likely to be able to halt the new bill.16 Many small centres gradually came together to protest and they succeeded in forming a wider coalition that included even Islamist women, which succeeded at least in getting the government to put the bill on hold for a few years.
It took only a month from early August 2007 when the coalition first called for opposition to the bill to early September for the bill to be removed from the agenda for the Eighth Parliament to be held in 2008. During this short time the most influential action of the women’s movement to date had taken place with support from women across the political spectrum. The Nationalist-Religious Coalition of Iran, Women’s Committee of the OCU,17 the Human Rights Committee and female members of the Islamic Council of Tehran all issued statements condemning the bill. A decisive moment in the campaign against the new bill was on 4 August 2008 when the more conservative organizations such as the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Women’s Committee of Iranian House Party and Women of New Thinking came together to meet with the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights as well as secular women activists.18
1.4 Structural problems in the Coalition and their resolution
15 This was an e-journal and Jila BaniYaqhob was its editor. This e-journal has repeatedly filtered by judicial order and hackers constantly attacked the website. In one of the attacks on 30 March 2007, the contents of this site were completely cleared and attackers left a message: ‘stop interfering, with a No Entry sign. There is no sign of this website in the internet at the present time. 16 The primary groups were the Centre for Women, the Feminist School, the Women’s Field, Change for Equality, Women’s Commission OCU, Mothers for Peace, the Women’s Reformist Assembly, Association of Iranian Journalists, Centre of Hestia Andish, Human Rights Watchdog and the Human Rights Committee of the Alumni Association of Iran: Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 277, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article1128. 17 This is the [generally conservative] Union of Islamic associations and student organisations across the country or ‘Office for Strengthening Unity’ (O.C.U.). Liberal activists such as Ali Afshari, Bahareh Hedayat, and Mousavi Khoeiniha were leading figures in this network. 18 ‘Ebtekar e Kampain yek Million Emza dar Kalifornia Bareaye Eteraz be Mavadi ke Barie Zanan dar Kharej az Keshvar Moshgel Saz Ast’ (‘How Iranian Women outside of Iran can Potest the Family Protection Bill, Idea from Iranian Women in California’) 2007, The Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article1428, viewed 21 March 2016; ‘Hamayeshe Hemayat az Hoghogh Zan dar Khanevadeh’ (Conference on Women’s Rights in the Family) 2007, Fars News Agency, 10 August, http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8705200377, and Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 279-81. 72
Despite the ultimate success of the Coalition in 2008, an inability at times to reach consensus and a lack of formal leadership were the most critical threats to its stability. This problem had revealed itself throughout the One Million Signatures Campaign as well, as noted in the previous chapter. Planning, organizing and coordinating were all affected by these two central problems that derived from the horizontal organizational structure of the movement. Ahmadi-Khorasani refers to these structural problems within the coalition in her book of 2012, The Spring of the Iranian Women’s Movement. Here she mentioned, for example, something as basic as the group e-mail contact list, which had been designed to facilitate the coordination of the groups participating in the coalition but was not effective in bringing about a consensus in decision-making. In her opinion, even though this contact list was able to bring together the different participants in the coalition, it did not enable the movement to arrive at decisions that would be binding for all members. This inefficiency meant the Coalition could not move forward as effectively as it would have done with a small recognized leadership with the power to implement decisions about action. She notes a common tendency for the movement to get bogged down in issues that were not as pressing. But, of course the problems faced by loose movements of activists anywhere include who their official representatives are to be, and how they are to be chosen—that is, if a consensus can be reached that the movement actually needs a formal leadership. In Ahmadi-Khorasani’s view, however, the lack of formal leadership, consensus and effective decision- making has been a destabilizing feature of mass movements of women in Iran, and this coalition was no exception.19
Nevertheless, the great respect held by Iranian women for Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel prize-winner, enabled her to resolve this situation. She invited a small select group of women to deliberate on the urgent task of finding more effective ways to oppose the Family Protection Bill.20 This group came up with the idea of meeting with parliamentarians, and chose their delegates. On 1 September, hundreds of well-known figures in the women’s movement, led mostly by secular feminists, went to parliament; and initially from midday to 2 pm on that day they split up and met with more than 50 members of parliament. On the same day, the speaker of the parliament declared the bill withdrawn, but these meetings lasted for several days as the women knew that this could be only a temporary withdrawal. During this time the usually more conservative Assembly of Reformist Women (who were also members of the coalition) met with the women’s faction of the parliament. Even a group of fundamentalist women closely aligned with the government21 wrote a letter to the supreme leader,
19 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 280. 20 Ibid., 283. 21 The group included Fatemeh Rakeei, Zahra Shojaei and Masoumeh Ebtekar. 73
Ayatollah Khamenei, and asked him to stop the bill.22 The letter mentioned above, the ‘Lawyers’ Appeal to Members of Parliament’, also contained an appeal to stop the bill and proposed changes to the Family Protection Bill to hand over to the Parliament. This was presented by Farideh Gheirat, a woman lawyer. According to Ahmadi-Khorasani, this action by lawyers was rare and very important in the history of the judiciary and the Iranian women’s movement.23
In turn, however, the conservative members of parliament protested its withdrawal. This included very conservative women in parliament who called the coalition of activists ‘abominable secularists’, announcing that they themselves would do anything to get approval of the bill passed. One week later, the bill was put back on the parliament’s agenda, but this time with the disputed clauses removed, including the polygamy-related clause 23. These clauses were assigned for further evaluation to the Legal Commission, and the remainder of the bill adopted on September 19.24
At a meeting held by the Women’s Committee of the OCU on 11 September 2008, several well-known figures of the women’s movement pronounced the removal of the controversial clauses a major victory for the women’s movement. This experience again revealed that despite their differences, women could work together effectively for a common goal. It was a rewarding experience, as it represented the capacity of the women’s movement to gain further momentum in its struggle for women’s rights. While the campaign against the law had highlighted weaknesses within the movement, it also proved it was able to lobby parliamentarians successfully and negotiate with other official bodies. That it did so as a unified movement with a platform that could be seen to represent the entire membership was critical to its success.
Nonetheless, Ahmadi-Khorasani mentions divisions in the movement about how to proceed with presenting amendments to the controversial clauses in the bill. She notes that even though the movement had access to the ‘Appeal’ signed by a hundred lawyers that had proposed amendments to the bill, still it could not come to a consensus on supporting this. After the temporary victory of the coalition, the women’s groups failed to follow up on it with a proposal clearly outlining their further demands – the underlying difficulty being their inability to arrive at a general agreement.25 Hence,
22 ‘Gah Shomar Vaghayeh Etefaghiyeh Kayehe Khanevadeh’ (‘Family Support Act, the Events Calendar: August 2007 to 2008’), http://old.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1190672, viewed March 2016, and ‘Namehe Fatemeh Rakeei, Zahra Shojaei and Masoumeh Ebtekar be Rahbar dar Bareh Layehe Khanevade’ (‘Letter to the Supreme Leader about the Family Protection Bill by Fatemeh Rakeei, Zahra Shojaei and Masoumeh Ebtekar) 2008, http://meydaan.info/news.aspx?nid=2377, viewed March 2016. 23 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 293. 24 Ibid., 290. 25 Ibid.,295. 74
after four years of conflict between the Legal Commission and parliament, and parliament and the Government, on 6 March 2012, the bill was actually passed even if the initial article 23 had been revoked.26
This experience showed that it was difficult for the women’s movement to effect change in legislation with so few having a formal role in the political process. The achievements of the women’s movement can easily be reversed if its spokespeople are excluded from government. Ahmadi-Khorasani concludes that the election process is pivotal in achieving feminist goals: ‘If we are to achieve our demands, we must have the political representatives who will carry our demands through.’27
2. The Coalition of Women for the presidential election
2.1 Women’s participation in elections since 1979
By 1979 many women were conscious of the need for change, and were seeking to improve their status in society. Yet during election time after the 1979 revolution, public conversations were dominated by the question of whether or not voting was even worthwhile. Women had had the right to vote since 1962 and run for office since then, but what was the point when any candidate voted for was subject to approval by the Guardian Council? This is comprised of clerics most of whom want to ensure parliamentarians’ obedience to sharia provisions and the supreme leader. Any particular candidate with any agenda that was in opposition to that of the Guardian Council could simply be dismissed.
The election of women candidates came to be more of a public issue in 1995-6 well after the revolution. The Construction Party and its Women’s Committee planned for the candidature of Faezah Hashemi (daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was president of Iran from 1989-1997). One might think that this would be uncontentious and that she would have wide support. However, conservative women in and out of the parliament opposed the election of Faezah Hashemi or any other women candidates from the Construction Party, referring to them as Liberals and to their ideas as dangerous to the stability of the Islamic family structure. Faezah Hashemi is known particularly for defending women in sport; and her proposal to enable women to ride bicycles in public (even in a segregated area) was too confronting for conservatives. Many believe that women should not be
26 ‘Payane Residegi be Layehe Hemayat az Khanevadeh’ (‘End of Reviewing the Family Protection Bill’) 2012, Khaneh Melat News 6 March, http://icana.ir/NewsPage.aspx?NewsID=191691. 27 Ahmadi-Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 306. 75
present even in audiences at sports events and certainly oppose the participation of women in most public sports. However, the controversy over Faezah Hashemi’s defence of women in sport and at sports events gained her enough support to gain admission to the Fifth Parliament of 1996.28
By this time women secularists were more active in society, as we have seen, and again encouraging the public propagation of feminist discourse. However, most did not believe that women’s participation in elections would be enough to bring about positive change to women’s overall status in society, and thus focused on the development of independent women’s organizations unaffiliated with the government.29
In 1997 a presidential election took place, which resulted in the success of President Khatami and the rise of reformist governments. Women’s participation as voters in the 1997 elections was so significant that many politicians and the press were commenting on the huge number of women who voted. Moreover, with the Khatami government in power, city and village local elections were instituted in 1999 for the first time even though there was provision for local elections in the constitution of the Islamic Republic. Politicians, including the women of the Participation Party under the leadership of Zahra Shojaei, encouraged local women to run for office in these council elections. Preparatory meetings and forums were held, and the necessary information and administrative documents distributed to candidates. The candidates were also given training in the skills required for campaigning and sitting on local councils. Collectively, these widespread efforts resulted in a significant percentage of women candidates winning seats in Tehran and other cities.30 Ahmadi-Khorasani, in an interview with Zanan in 1999, described the new presence of women in government roles, even if at just the local level, as effective in improving the democratic process: ‘Perhaps this is not directly related to women’s issues but it helps women to move forward and to grow.’31
In a statement published in Zanan in December 1999, the Centre for Women’s Participation invited all women to participate in parliamentary elections. Now secularist and religious nationalist women, who since 1979 had been excluded from the central government, were candidates in a national election for the first time. Although many of them were ‘disqualified’ by the Guardian Council and thus had no
28 Ibid., 317. 29 Kar, Mehrangiz 1995, ‘Entekhabat va Sarnevesht e Hoghogheh Zanan’ (‘Elections and the Fate of Women’s Rights’), Zanan Magazine December. 30 Shah-Rokni, Nazanin 1999, unknown title, Zanan Magazine, January and February 1999, cited in Ahmadi- Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 324. 31 Ahmadi- Khorasani, Zanan Magazine, April 1999, cited in ibid., 325. 76
official permission to participate in the election campaign, they publicly supported women candidates who ‘qualified’, and their activities raised the confidence of women outside the government.32
Around the same time, at the end of Fifth Parliament and beginning of the Sixth Parliament, Shahla Lahiji, the well-known manager of Roshangaran magazine, and other women’s publishers, as well as Shahla Sherkat, manager of Zanan Magazine, held Q&A sessions with women representatives of the Fifth Parliament (1996-2000), and also with newly elected women candidates for the Sixth Parliament (2000-2004). Secular women such as Shirin Ebadi, Mehrangiz Kar and Shahla Lahiji criticized the lacklustre performance of women in the Fifth Parliament, leading Faezah Hashemi, herself one of these parliamentarians, to defend them. In the Sixth Parliament the majority of parliamentary members were reformists, but this was not the case with the Fifth. So, despite numerous efforts to secure more rights for women, including introducing the bill to include Iran in CEDAW, little had been achieved in the earlier sitting of parliament. The conservative majority and the Guardian Council rejected any bill aiming to secure rights for women.33 Thus, as explained in Chapter 2, the CEDAW bill did not succeed.
Due to the inability even of the many reformists in the Sixth Parliament to create meaningful change, many women lost hope. The secularists began again to focus on building up a social movement through which to mobilize the majority of women and bring about real change. The reformers in government had failed to fulfil various promises, frustrating the entire society. This state of affairs led to a decrease in the interest of women and men in voting in the next parliamentary election of 2003 and the presidential election of 2005.
The introduction of the 2006 Family Bill by the Ahmadinejad government shocked the women’s movement and raised concerns more broadly; it highlighted the need for change in the legal framework of elected institutions. First, the problem of the veto power of the Guardian Council remained, but, clearly, true change would only be possible if many more members of parliament were more progressive, and there was a reforming president as well. In the women’s movement, many now accepted the importance of this. This, combined with the success of the movement in at least getting the passage of the new Family Bill postponed and then article 23 removed from it, led to the launch of an attempt to consolidate women’s demands in the upcoming presidential election.
2.2 The 2009 presidential election and the ‘Movement to Consolidate Women’s Demands’
32 Ahmadi Khorasani, Iranian Women’s Movement, 327. 33 Ibid., 328 and 329. 77
Prior to this initiative, the women’s movement had gained a lot of operational experience through the launch of the Women’s Forums, the One Million Signatures Campaign, the Coalition against the Family Bill, and even actions such as election boycotts. However, activists had suffered police harassment and arrests, as discussed above. Following the repressive measures of the Ahmadinejad government, women looked for ways to rebuild. Ahmadi-Khorasani, like many women’s rights activists, wanted to take advantage of the atmosphere of relative freedom in the hiatus allowed during presidential elections, to bring women’s groups together again and revitalize the women’s movement.
To this end Ahmadi-Khorasani conferred with the publisher, Shahla Lahiji, and Mansoreh Shojaei, another secular women’s rights activist. The three decided to discuss Ahmadi-Khorasani’s ideas with other members of the women’s movement, and a meeting was arranged with women from across the whole political spectrum, to be held in Lahiji’s office, the office of Roshangaran magazine. Soon after, several meetings were held in the same office and it was suggested that a coalition be formed to decide on and present women’s demands during the election campaign. This was unanimously accepted by about hundred present on 8 March 2009. According to Ahmadi-Khorasani, such a coalition of diverse women was rare within the women’s movement. In the initial meetings, two committees were formed: the Executive Committee to prepare booklets and brochures and the Codification committee. She notes that unlike the previous movements, this campaign was neat and organized, tasks effortlessly went according to plan, and this brought great joy to all members. This success was due in large part to the greater experience and improved capabilities of those involved in this second coalition called ‘The Movement to Consolidate Women’s Demands in the Presidential Election’. 34
The Movement was officially launched on 25 April 2009 at a press conference attended by many well- known secular women and Islamic feminists. Although they decided on the slogan ‘vote for women’s demands’, their biggest challenge was the choice of the main demands. However, the two most important ones became: ‘Join the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women’ and ‘Reform constitutional law in favour of women’. Both faced opposition from the reformist women who since the Khatami presidential period (1997-2005) had emerged on the political scene (and in the body of government and Parliament) but finally they agreed to adopt these two demands.35
2.3 Criticism of the Consolidation Movement
34 Ibid., 354. 35 Ibid., 360. 78
Members of the movement were accused of colluding with the Islamic Republic’s government due to a continued emphasis on negotiations with parliamentarians. This criticism had begun earlier during the fight against the Family Protection Bill. Another criticism raised by supporters of the consolidation movement was that instead of merely focusing on women’s demands in the election, they should be supporting particular candidates. Ahmadi-Khorasani and other secular women were opposed to this, believing that because the women’s movement was very vulnerable, it should remain independent of the political parties and not promote or support particular candidates.36
Some members of the movement held discussions on the demands of the coalition with two reformist candidates on 6 June 2009, a few days before the election. Two hundred social activists and local and international media were present at this meeting in the office of the Women of the Islamic Revolution. Rakhshan Bani-E’temad, a film director, who had joined the coalition and documented women’s activities in the Consolidation Movement, screened her documentary We are Half of the Iranian Population. The movement’s main aim was to raise awareness of the importance of the elections to women by encouraging them to vote for their rights; it highlighted, in some cases exposed, candidates’ viewpoints about women’s status in Iran. At the end of the meeting, a movement leader, Lahiji, declared an end to this successful coalition, an unparalleled phase of the Iranian women’s movement. With this end to the movement’s official existence, women were encouraged to disperse and return to their independent activities until called upon to act in concert as a unified movement again. Putting a clear end to this Consolidation Movement, or any coalition or campaign, was something women had learnt from the ambiguous outcome of the One Million Signature Campaign.37
Conclusion
Women’s fragile situation under an Islamic government has been revealed in this chapter through examining the Family Protection Bill’s history in Iran from the 1960s to 2009. But, at the same time, this chapter again illustrates the effectiveness of collaboration between women’s rights activists, both secular feminists and Islamic feminists, to defend and further women’s rights. While fundamentalists and conservatives control the state, they could attack women’s rights at any time, and there will be no possibility of resisting this if secular feminists and Islamic feminists do not work together. It is clear that having an active and effective women’s movement is crucial, and having more representatives with egalitarian views in all of the country’s elected institutions is necessary, too. Furthermore, pressure can
36 Ibid., 354, 361 and 362. 37 Ibid., 368. 79
be put on conservative or vacillating members to be more answerable to women, a tactic that was used successfully by these coalitions. Iranian feminists and women’s rights activists showed their understanding of the importance of a unified movement by launching the ‘Movement to Consolidate Women’s Demands’ during the presidential election campaign in 2009 and the earlier coalition against the new family act. In both cases activists were effective in demonstrating the importance of bringing women’s issues to the fore of government deliberations and raising public awareness of discrimination against women.
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Conclusion
The systematic subordination of women has been a consistent feature of modern Iranian society. For a century this situation has provided the impetus for the critiques and demands put forward by Iran’s women’s movement, in a constant pursuit of improvements to the status of women in the family, politics and society. Activists have achieved some gains and also suffered some losses in the face of constant impediments placed in their way by the clergy, and the unconcern or active opposition also of most governments. Political repression has also been a constant.
In the struggle for access to education, for suffrage and legal equality, and for the right to be equally active and visible members of society, Iranian feminists’ greatest obstacle has been cultural and religious tradition, as well as historical and geographical, geopolitical factors, especially the democracy deficit and socio-economic and political underdevelopment. This has lent the issue of more rights for women a complexity unique to this region of the world. Added to this, the Islamist revolution of 1979 undeniably had a destabilizing influence on women’s achievements to that time. Despite the initially dismal picture for Iranian women immediately after the revolution, however, a combination of factors including resistance from a broad spectrum of women led to some improvement in women’s situation. By 2009, even secular feminists who after 1979 had been isolated politically managed to create opportunities to have their voices heard in society and even in government circles. In fact, once again they have been playing a leading role in the struggle for more rights for Iranian women.
From using formal political events such as elections to publicize their demands to other means, simply making women’s voices heard has been a principal strategy of Iranian feminists since the 1990s. One significant part of this is the effort to reclaim the right of women to inhabit public spaces, which has included: public celebrations of International Women’s Day; the twin June 12 (of 2005 and 2006) events protesting the inequities experienced by women and the repression of activists; the launch of the One Million Signatures Campaign in 2006; and then the public demonstration of unity between secularist and Islamic feminists. Despite (and partly because of) constant sabotage by the state, the secularists sought organizational methods with which to enhance the effectiveness of political action. The combined force of successive coalitions of secular and Islamic feminists, especially from 2007, enabled them to prevent the government from introducing to parliament retrogressive family legislation. By the two Coalitions period, a range of activists, lawyers and politicians concerned with rights for women demonstrated that they had the facility to force women’s demands into the spotlight in parliament and the media. 81
Before this time, Islamic feminists had achieved little for Iranian women. Despite some efforts to disseminate critiques of women’s legal situation, they did not succeed in bringing women’s issues to the fore in the government or in mainstream political discourse, even though their views had more chance of being accorded legitimacy. This critical lack of agency on the part of Islamic feminists meant that they failed to bring about any significant progress from the time of the Islamic revolution. If their basic aim is to institute more ‘justice’ for women within the context of Islam (even if not necessarily full sexual equality), their record before 2007 shows that their efforts alone are unlikely to bring significant change for women.
Most western media give the impression that only women who are Islamists (enthusiastic supporters of the regime) have a voice and are effective in Iran. Recent events have shown, however, how far this is from the reality there. My study has shown that there is (once again) an active and progressive women’s movement in Iran of which secular feminists have assumed the leadership. The term ‘secular’ counterposed to ‘Islamic’ may suggest a necessary inspiration from western feminism, but to assume this would be to overlook the specific complexities of Iran’s social, cultural and political context. A scholar such as Ahmadi-Khorasani would not deny influences from western feminism over the past century, but the intimate knowledge of Iran’s special circumstances and Iranian women’s specific needs on the part of Ahmadi-Khorasani and other secular leaders like her has created a unique feminist movement in Iran.
This is a movement that is certainly deserving of further, more detailed study. Researchers do face the difficulty of a comparative lack of academic (Feminist Studies) resources, but with an ability to read Persian one can overcome this. There is, in fact, a wealth of valuable material now available from feminist activists and scholars in Iran, particularly due to the wider accessibility of the Internet. This study would not have been possible without crucial web sources such as Zanestan, Change for Equality, and of course Ahmadi-Khorasani’s own website and e-journal, the Feminist School. When I began this study, as a former women’s rights activist in Iran I was quite familiar with the views and actions of its secularist women activists. I knew how significant a role they had been playing in the Iranian women’s movement even up to 2005. While my sympathies undeniably lie more with the secularists, during the course of this research I came to recognize that true change for Iranian women will most likely occur through ongoing co-operation between secularist and Islamic feminists.
Armed with the organizational and strategic power of collaboration, Iran’s women’s movement clearly has more potential today than at any time since the revolution. Co-operation between secularist and Islamic feminists makes it difficult for conservatives to be convincing in their claims that advocates of
82
women’s rights are anti-Islamic and only the handmaidens of U.S. or western imperialism. The greater potential of a united movement, however, does not rule out the possibility of further obstacles impeding progress toward equality. Questions that remain hard to answer include: Where do these obstacles really stem from? Do they lie in Islam itself? Certainly, Islam not only inheres in but virtually controls every aspect of Iranian civil and legal life. So is it the rule of sharia law that is the problem? Can it not be reformed enough to render sexual equality possible? One is inclined to doubt the possibility while Iran’s political system remains so dictatorial—that is, under the control of a clerical supreme leader and the Islamic Guardian Council. However, the post-1979 regime’s conservatism and willingness to resort to force to silence dissent has been more widely challenged since the 1990s, by a range of critics and opponents. As I have shown, amongst them are many women, moreover, some of whom keeping on fighting despite the dangers they face.1
1 As I mentioned before a personal email from Ahmadi-Khorasani revealed that her activism during the last month’s election resulted in repeated police interrogations as well as the shutting down of various feminist websites. In some cases the latter was only temporary, but Ahmadi-Khorasani’s personal website is another matter. 83
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