Women Are Eliminated to Make Decisions About Women

Rooz Online

Iranian women were the focus of attention in the Persian year that will end on March 20th. Such attention is routine by officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran who make decisions about women without any consideration for their most basic human and citizen rights. They decide whether women should have children or not; whether they should go to university and work, or not; how they should dress and where they should go, etc. This trend continued with an administration that confronted the conservative hardline Principlists. The Majlis too displayed more efforts in this sphere.

When president Hassan Rouhani appointed Ms. Shahindokht Molaverdi to his cabinet to be responsible for women’s affairs, it brought hope among reformist and progressive women. But today there is growing criticism. She widely spread the word about the problems while also complaining about inattention to them. She explained her predicament in these words: “I feel as if I am tied to a cross while I am expected to have a race with a person standing in front of me.”

Here are the headlines of some of the most important events of the year that is almost gone.

Parliamentary Decisions For the Bedroom

The bill to curtail family planning and increase the country’s population growth passed in the Majlis.

Women’s rights activists protested but when the supreme leader publicly announced the need for increasing the population, agencies followed up with various plans and programs that aim at eliminating the presence of women in society. They define women’s roles in terms of being a housewife and a mother. Among these programs are those for reducing the work hours of women, increasing leave hours for women, and a family plan.

By the middle of 2014 the Majlis passed a law making women’s sterilization a criminal offense.

Women Remain Outside Sports Stadiums

On June 20th women rushed to Azadi stadium to celebrate the accent of Iran’s football team, but were refused entry.

A woman spoke to Rooz Online about another incident when women were denied entry into a stadium. “What hurt was that as we were prevented from entering a busload of Brazilian women passed right by us and went straight in,” she said. “When we complained they said: “They had Brazilian passports and you do not.” Women made another attempt five days later, but this time there was violence and authorities arrested 17 of them. One victim described to Rooz how she was treated. “I was beaten, dragged, insulted, and frisked. They asked us to respond in writing to three questions: Why did we go to the sports stadium; which satellite network had encourage them to go; and, how do you support your responses?” Ghonche Ghavami, an Iranian-British national, was also among those initially arrested and then released. When she returned to the police station to pick up her belongings she was arrested and charged with state security violations.

One consequence of these new pressures was that the International Volleyball Federation withdrew its decision to hold a volleyball tournament in Iran in 2015. Officials initially accused Zionists for the decision but later allowed women to go to sports complexes if they followed religious norms. In February, 190 Iranian women wrote to the International Football Association Federation, FIFA asking for support in their efforts to lift the ban on Iranian women’s presence in sports stadium. And FIFA responded that the ban was unacceptable. The final decision has now been relegated to the national security council.

Gender Segregation at the Municipality

In the summer of 2014, Tehran’s municipality enforced gender segregation in its offices and buildings, something that was supported by a majority in the Majlis, Friday Imams and religious extremist organizations and groups. But Ms. Molaverdi, the president’s deputy on women’s affairs, announced that the government was against such gender segregation.

Marriage of Underage Girls

The problem of underage marriages and their pregnancies has a long history of social harm in Iran. According to official statistics, in the first nine months of the Persian calendar (March 2014 to December 2014) 1,277 babies were born to girls less than 15 years of age. Two years earlier there were 110,000 pregnancies were registered for girls under the age of 19 and of these 1,635 births were among girls between the ages of 10 and 14. Official statistics show that in Iran thousands of girls under the age of 15 are married to older men or men of about the same age. In the first nine months of last year (March to December) 31,000 girls under the age of 15 were married. And these are only the official figures.

According to Sima Ghooshe, a woman attorney the age of 15 is not contrary to the Sharia law and even civil law in Iran which is based on the Sharia. According to her, the law even allows 9 year old girls to be married under certain conditions. Some clerics have publicly and on TV even quoted Prophet Mohammad to have allowed such marriages.

Women in the Eyes of the Islamic Republic

The month of March coincides with mother’s day in Iran, which is an opportunity for officials of the Islamic Republic to express their views on women, and for others to hear them. On one occasion the head of Iran’s judiciary Sadegh Larijani, said that the world should be told of the special position that women enjoy in Islam and the Islamic republic. He of course claims that no injustice is done to women in Iran. He bombasted the West and its claims on pursuing human rights. He said the best Western could do was to run competitions for Miss Universe and produce lewd magazines and movies.

Soon after that, his words were echoed by ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s leader who said “the equality of men and women” was a fundamentally wrong concept. He threw in his support for segregation at the universities. He concluded that Iranians should distance themselves from Western notions of women’s equality.

President Hassan Rouhani tried to soften these remarks a few days later and said that he neither viewed men as the first sex nor women as the second, adding that neither was above the other. He said his government came to office because of women’s activism and participation at eh polls and in society. “As a jurisprudent and as the chief of the executive branch profess that there are many shortcomings in the area of women’s rights and gender fairness,” he said.

Fiery Posters

Despite all the criticism against the billboards that encourage larger families, this year witnessed wide propaganda to promote families with more children. Billboards around Tehran and in the virtual world promote the hijab. One poster for example wrote that a woman without a hijab was like a chair with three legs. Another one shows images of a candy piece that was covered and one that was not. The poster emphasized that the one that was covered had remained clear of the flies that attacked the one without the cover. Women activists have said that this emphasis on imposing the hijab on women simply turns them into mere superficial objects. “Is this not turning women into a consumer product for men,” one activist asked.