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Women carve out space within Islamic society
By Ramin Mostaghim
(IPS)-- Studying for a sociology degree at Tehran University has a double
purpose for 21-year-old Negin Razaee — first, it is her investment
toward a career and second, she is able to ward off a pre-arranged marriage.
“I think I’m very different from my mother and the generation
gap is widening. Getting a BA in sociology enables me to resist a pre-arranged
marriage and choose my own spouse,” she says, adding that her minor
degree would be journalism.
Moreover, Razaee says in an interview, “If I get married, I will
keep on working for my own pocket.”
“Frankly speaking, I come from a small provincial town and here in
Tehran I can be myself — that is, conceal the false identity imposed
on me by a patriarchal society,” confides another student, Afsaneh
Hedayati.
Razaee’s and Hedayati’s sentiments are shared by many Iranian
women, who were born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and have taken
advantage of social restrictions — even the Islamic dress codes —
to carve out more space for themselves than many women in other Islamic
countries in the Middle East. In some of these countries, women cannot
drive or do not have full suffrage.
Education has been the ticket to freedom for many women and comments such
as, “If I can pass the entrance examinations of universities, I will
keep on studying, or otherwise I will have to marry” is by no means
unusual.
“Going for further education in universities is a means for girls
to not accept unwanted marriages,” confirms Masserat Amirebrahimi,
who has been analyzing the results of a field survey of young men and
women with an average age of 17.6 years in both well-off and lower-income
districts in Tehran.
Men are also giving more importance to the education of their future spouses.
But there is a difference, Amirebrahimi says: “In today’s Iran,
education is an important part of a sense of identity for the majority
of Iranian women. In contrast, for the men, their identity is job-oriented.”
Women make up the majority of students in key universities — in one
class in the sociology faculty of Tehran University, there were but four
male students and 51 women.
Women comprise over one-third of the 2.6 million students in the state’s
semi-open and private and non-profit universities across the country,
according to Feridoun Khadem, a demographer.
Going by the latest demographic studies, some one million Iranian women
holding bachelor of arts or science and higher degrees are between 27
and 38 years of age.
Iranian women are not preoccupied only with their classes, but have been
among the key groups pushing for political reform and more openness in
this society caught between the tussle between conservative and reformist
clerics in the political leadership.
During the protests of over four nights near Tehran University earlier
in June, the participation of women students in them prompted debates
within families.
In the vicinity of Amirabad and Gayshah areas near the university hostels,
reporters witnessed arguments between mothers in their mid-forties and
fifties and their daughters, who wanted to take to the streets to vent
their frustration about the lack of press freedom and to call for a more
open society.
The mothers said the pro-government vigilantes were brutal and told them
not to join the protests. But the daughters said they wanted, like their
parents did in the Islamic Revolution 24 years ago, to bring about drastic
change.
“You and your generation took to the streets 24 years ago and made
revolution, now you and your generation have no right to prevent me to
go for another change,” one female student was heard arguing.
Clearly, “Here, education has played the role of liberator for Iranian
women in the post-Islamic Revolution era,” said Fairedh Zonozi, an
obstetrician.
Indeed, education, together with the backlash against political and social
suppression and the Islamic veil, have prodded women to assert their own
identities.
“In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, women from middle-class
and low-income [backgrounds] were denied access to work outside their
homes,” commented an analyst doing cultural and social research for
the Goft-o-Gu (Dialogue) quarterly.
But many figured that if they had to wear the veil to step out of their
homes, then they would. “Submitting to Islamic codes of dress [“hijab”],
they have managed to get passports to become educated, employed, and economically
independent, en route to emancipation,” added the analyst, who did
not want to be named.
At the same time, Iranian women have been testing the rules on Islamic
dress. Once women get the passport to enter social life, that is by observing
the Islamic code of dress, they try to water down the code. Many young
women show locks of hair out of the veil, in a way that here is called
“body politics” or “dress politics.”
Another sign of change can be seen in rising divorce rates, which official
figures say reached 27 percent last year, according to Maryam Khodadadian,
editor of the Khanevadeh (Family) monthly magazine.
She adds that their field polls have also shown that around 50 percent
of couples are suffering from “emotional divorce,” the term
experts use to refer to couples who stay together but no longer have a
relationship.
Sociologist Ali Kadkhdozah draws a correlation between the rates of divorce
— and even suicide among women in provinces like Eilam and Kermanshah
— and the “soaring number of educated women and broadening their
minds and aspirations.”
“The women are undergoing transformation far more quickly than the
men, and are widening their gap with their mothers,” he explained.
“For that reason divorce and suicide rates among women should be
interpreted in light of the painful modernisation of our society.”
“Women increasingly resist pressures and tyranny in family and society
and divorce and even suicides are their last resort,” he added.
Mitra Naemi, a sophomore in the medical faculty of Azad University said
that, in truth, “Educated women are in limbo, a sort of cultural
dichotomy. On one side they want to be like their mother’s generation
and to be respected housewives and on the other, they also want equal
rights.”
Many say there is no doubt that women are at the forefront of social change.
“Any observer in today’s Iran cannot help but appreciate the
assertiveness of Iranian women in universities, private and governmental
sectors, though they observe different codes of dress and are from different
walks of life,” said Akhbar Hussaini, a lecturer in linguistics at
Azad University.
“Assume that Iran had no problems — no high unemployment rate,
no hyperinflation, and others,” Kadkhodazadeh explained. “The
very fact of the increasing number of educated women and young population
would be difficult challenges for any given government — regardless
of whether it is secular, a theocracy, or a monarchy.”
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