Women\'s Culture in Iran Westerners,

Women's Culture In Iran

Westerners, including western feminists often have a stereotyped version of women in Iran. Iranian women are often painted in various stages of "oppression." They are required to cover themselves up, do not enjoy equal political, legal, or economic rights, and are subject to the authority of their fathers or husbands. While there is a grain of truth to many of these images, they paint an incomplete picture of the status of Iranian women today.

In Voices from Iran: The Changing Lives of Iranian Women, sociologist Mahnaz Kousha attempts to give a more complete account of Iranian women's lives today. The key phrase in the title is "changing." As the country continues to undergo rapid political and economic transformation, it is no surprise that the lives of women will be affected as well.

This paper builds on Kousha's research to present an assessment of women's status in Iran today. It examines both the challenges that remain as well as the advances that women have achieved throughout the years. In the last section, this paper also employs a cultural relativist approach, to explore how Iranian women are able to exercise power and exert influence via traditional cultural practices.

Though schooled in the United States, Kousha grew up in Iran and therefore had access that might not have been available to other Western-based scholars. The result is eight chapters, composed of interviews and oral histories with 15 women in Tehran. Voices from Iran is an intimate look at Tehrani women and their concerns. Beyond political and economic rights, Kousha also carefully draws out how women view questions such as marriage, father-daughter relationships, and whether men are "better off" in Iranian society than women.

Kousha and her interviewees do not gloss over the human rights concerns, and Western readers will find many of their initial stereotypes about Iranian women validated. For example, women face many legal and social strictures, simply on the basis of their sex. In areas where Shari'a law is dominant, for example, women could only inherit up to half of what their male relatives receive. In addition to religious rulings, the rationale for such laws are deeply embedded in Iranian culture. Since women are not seen as breadwinners or family-providers, they supposedly do not need as much inheritance.

These images tie in with human rights reports regarding the rights of women in Iran. The 2005 Human Rights Report released by the U.S. State Department documents cases wherein police beat women for offenses such as wearing makeup, being accompanied by men who were not relatives or by behaving in "immodest" ways.

Women are still barred from serving in many judicial positions. Legally, women still need to obtain the permission of a male relative -- preferably a husband or father - to obtain a passport or to leave the country. The landmark 1967 Family Protection Law that protected a wider range of women's rights in the home and the workplace has been replaced by Shari'a practices.

This overview points to the continuing challenge for women's and human's rights advocates. Certainly, much work remains in ensuring that women enjoy the rights that are guaranteed them by international laws and treaties. Women's groups based in Iran and internationally thus continue to call attention to the status of Iranian women, and on issues such as the lack of economic independence, vastly unequal wages and the glass ceiling. It should be pointed out, however, that many of these issues exist for women in developed countries such as the United States.

Voices from Iran, however, also looks at aspects of Iranian women's power and influence, an issue that often receives little notice with Western scholars and activists. Iranian wives, the interviewees point out, possess a great influence over their husbands, giving them great power within their families. Among younger generations, women have made strides towards amassing greater social capital, through institutions such as education.

More than fifty percent of new college admissions, for example, are female students. After the Islamic Revolution (1978-1979), and the following war with Iraq, female college graduates began to enter emerging businesses and industries. Many women, for example, enter the publishing industry, open private medical clinics or enter artistic fields such as film. Younger women have turned to writing and graphic design. This influx has tremendous positive effects for the next generation of young women as well, as their mothers encourage them to pursue higher education.

In fact, the interviewees in Voices from Iran see the revolutions and political upheavals as having a silver lining in terms of women's rights. As with World War II in the United States, for example, the eight-year war with Iraq meant that many men were engaged in fighting for the military. This created a labor shortage, one that was filled by women. Though many women returned to domestic labor after the war ended, the seeds of change had already been planted.

Many Westerners often equate Islam with a natural decrease in women's political and economic rights, but as Kousha's book shows, the true relationship can be far more complicated. Prior to the Islamic Revolution, for example, many families still restricted their daughters from working outside the home or attending college. However, when Shari'a laws were instituted, many young women report being encouraged to work or study outside the home. The idea was that religious laws "protected" the women by demanding that men behave in honorable ways.