Compulsory Chador for the Staff of the Ministry of Education

Roozonline - The guard in front of the ministry of education screens the visitors to the building, allowing men and chador-wearing women (those wearing the full top to heel veil) to enter the premises while turning away women who wear the common manto, a woman’s overcoat. “Sisters cannot enter without the chador,” he hollers. The chador is the long veil that woman wear to fully cover themselves head to toe. A woman wearing a knee-length manto, pants and a black scarf, takes her hand to her scarf but remains dumfounded. She stares the guard in the face. The guard then gives her a black wrinkled chador and asks her to wear it. The woman complies and walks in. Wearing the chador was made compulsory for visitors to the ministry of education’s offices in the town of Baharestan in Tehran province three months ago.

Ministry of education officials have been unilaterally imposing their own rules and the recent chador requirement was instituted on orders from the head of the office’s security (herasat) official. Some women teachers view this requirement insulting and consequently hide their chador in their carrying bags, taking it out only when they arrive at the entrance of the offices. Parents of students however openly complain and sarcastically ask, “Is this a religious temple?” and “What is wrong with our attire?”

The guard who hears such complaints all day long simply tells the visitors that this has been ordered from the higher ups. Another guard says, “Women who do not follow the hijab properly distract the employees.” A woman responds, “That employee or manager who cannot control himself for five minutes because of a visitor who has come to get his work done is a lost case. These practices and reasons are merely pretexts. Those who initiate them are doing it to get promotions.”

Another academic says, “The new director of the education district who has been on this job for only three months is a good person and does not believe in such strictness but he does not dare stop this. The person who initiated this has already been promoted to head the violations department of the province. The director is afraid he would be fired if he ended the practice. The education offices of the department here are run tribally and the atmosphere is strongly politicized.”

Sixty percent of the 1.03 million people who work for the education department (mostly teachers) in this province are women. But the share of this 618,000 people is a small office called “The Office of Women’s and Family Affairs.” Even in Tehran, where women constitute 70 percent of the workforce in the ministry, the number of women in management positions is meagre. The atmosphere of education department is completely male oriented. In the administrative offices, women mostly occupy secretarial and typing positions who are usually lumped into a small isolated room with a tiny window, as if they are lepers. At the higher senior management levels, women constitute less than one percent of the force.

The official dress code of the ministry is manto, chador, pants and a scarf. And while even officially the preference has always on the chador, the manto is an acceptable form of hijab and the chador is not officially or legally obligatory. But women who wear the chador are favored and receive preferential treatment. One requirement for getting a managerial position is the chador. The employees of the department are generally viewed to belong to two groups: “with us” (khodi) are those who wear the chador and those who do not “from amongst us”, who wear the manto.

Small towns are usually stricter about the hijab and in many places it is compulsory for women teachers to wear the chador. Women who wear the manto in the provinces get into so many issues with authorities that they prefer to just forego the manto for the chador. In some provincial towns, even young women students are obliged to wear the chador. And while young girls now do wear colorful mantos, women teachers mostly still wear the black, brown or dark blue mantos. Dark colors are encouraged in the ministry of education and are view3ed to represent dignity and commitment.

The atmosphere in girls’ schools is much more restrictive than those in boys schools. Many principles of girls schools are fundamentalists and send teachers who are happy, independent thinking or those who wear some makeup to security offices out of spite and present them as teachers who have violated professional rules. Unfortunately women who are sent to security offices are immediately assumed to have committed some crime or broken some rule and therefore are forced to prove their innocence. And this is done mostly to men.

Such pressures and dogmatic rules have resulted in that the hijab in general is now seen more as a formality. For example, girl students wear the hijab out of fear of being reprimanded even on school premises where there are no men but relax their attire in general once they step out of the school. Some teachers and administrators believe that by making the hijab compulsory, observing it will become second nature and a habit to girls. But the streets show that is absolutely not the case.

Girls schools in the country are now architecturally constructed in a manner that does not allow anyone to view what is inside the school compounds or yards. Tall walls or similar structures have been built around school premises and visitors sections are built completely away from the places where students are present. Even room/class windows in such schools are made off matte and opaque glass to prevent a view of the inside.

And while the practice of wearing the hijab has evolved since its 1979 forced imposition and women now wear colorful mantos and headscarves, battles in the streets continue on a daily basis between the morality police and women who openly and defiantly challenge the officially desired covering.

by Shirzad Abdollahi