Women rising in Iran
Supporters of Mir Hossen Mousavi protst in Tehran on June 17 (Getty)
Claire and I have been in San Francisco for our Womenomics book tour and I feel very far away from the events in Tehran but I can’t stop thinking about those pictures out of Iran. It’s not just the crowds, and the thrill of people demanding their democratic rights, it’s who’s in those crowds – it’s the thousands of women taking part that amaze and excite me.
I know, many are dressed head to foot in black covering and, to a Western eye, that makes them look repressed and inaccessible. It’s easy to write off a society that forces it’s women to dress like that as backward and hopelessly sexist – and there is some truth to that argument – but that makes the fact that these women are out on the streets, womaning the baricades, as it were, even more extraordinary.
I grew up in the Middle East, in the mostly sunni countries of the Persian Gulf. In Saudi Arabia, my mother was banned from driving. She sometimes disguised herself in a man’s checkered headdress and drove anyway. But it could get us into hairy scrapes. I vividly remember sitting in the back of my parent’s car as a 12 year old, driving from Jeddah up the steep mountain escarpment to Taif, and another car trying to force us over the edge of the cliff because the driver had realized the “man” at our wheel was not all he seemed to be. Despite that narrow escape my mother still insisted on driving, out on the flat, unpopulated desert tracks, just to feel the independence of being at the wheel again.
Mum worked as a journalist in Jeddah for the Arab news and would sometimes turn up for interviews in government ministries only to be told that she was the first woman ever to have set foot in the office – even the cleaners were all men.
If life was tough for my educated, career minded mother, it was much tougher for her female Arab friends. They were often confined to a life of seclusion at home, surrounded by children and other women but with almost no contact with the outside, male world. In Saudi Arabia, women still can’t even travel in a car that isn’t driven by a male family member.
So, to see all those women, taking part in this mass demonstration of power and freedom of expression, even if they are dressed in black covering, is remarkable. In fact all the more remarkable because of the constraints those coverings can imply. I have my doubts about Mousavi’s real reformist credentials, but the sight of his wife standing by his side on the car in the middle of the demonstration yesterday suggested that at least in the field of gender equality, his heart is in the right place. And she has been a strong supporter of his campaign. So, don’t get sidetracked by what these women are wearing (and many after all are in simple headscarves, pushed back in that sassy Iranian fashion to allow as much hair uncovered as the religious authorities will tolerate), just seeing them out there, marching alongside men in this protest, is a huge step and suggests a culture very different from that of other nations in the region.
We always hear that Iran has one of the most pro Western populations in the Middle East. When I see the picture on the frontpage of T/S today – that is all the evidence I need.
Womenomics translated into Farsi – coming next!
Katty
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I really appreciate those stories about your mother. Frankly I’m kind of dumbfounded by her bravery.
However I have to caution against evaluating the status of Iranian women by comparing them to the status of Arab women, specifically, women in Saudi Arabia. Those societies are just not comparable. I am not certain about this but I read some figures which showed that by percentage more Iranian women are in higher education in Iran than in the U.S. In other words: I am not sure if Iran qualifies as “the region.”
Having said that there are considerable institutional and patriarchal pressures upon Iranian women — the current regime brought back the stoning penalty in 2002 — and I definitely agree with the overall thesis of your post.
I was reminded of my mother in your story of your brave mother driving. In the rural country of Ontario Canada when I was a child few women drove cars, had their own money or bank accounts. My mother not only drove but took us children on holidays to visit her friends without my father along. I recall some people saying she was too free for her own good and others admiring her confidence. When she would drive with my father in the car some men made comments to him about not being man enough to keep his wife in control. This still happens in parts of North America today.
I constantly hear that Muslim women are oppression because they are forced to wear a veil, but few will admit that the submission and oppression of these women is the same as Western women, they are just a generation or so behind. I have many Muslim friends, some even in arranged marriage and when one told me wyears ago that her husband could say “I divorce you, I divorce you” take her children and throw her out onto the street with nothing I thought “how horrible to live in a society like that.” The paradox here is that is exactly what happened to me, an American in Spain. Two years ago my ex-husband threatened to take away my children and throw me out on the street to prostitute myself if I dared to seek financial independence from him. I did not believe he could do it but he did, and even though I “legally” in Spain have apx. $1 million in assets, I was thrown out on the street with the judge telling ME that I have to pay my ex-husband support. Google my name, Quenby Wilcox, for more information. Some laws may have changed in Spain, but I can assure you the social norms and traditions have not.