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Women in Iran

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A Persian woman depicted during the Safavi period, from wall painting in Chehel-sotoon Palace, Isfahan.
Traditional image of a Persian woman holding a cup of wine, as depicted at Hasht-behesht palace, Isfahan, 17th century Iran.

Iranian women (or Persian women) are women of or from traditional Persian or modern Iranian culture. Although Persian women are often viewed as Iranian, they are not necessarily of any specific nationality or ethnicity.

Persian women in history

It is an indisputable fact that at Persepolis, where stone preserves the ideas and ideals of ancient Persia, women are absent. All the splendid reliefs and noble statues carved at the peak of empire represent bulls, maned lions, winged stallions, and warring men. Even the servants who walk behind the kings swinging fans or swatting flies are men. As a significant part of Persepolis, especially its internal decorations, has been destroyed by Alexander and natural events, some researchers argued that those part possibly contained pictures of women. However there are many other examples, where stone preserved pictures of ancient Persian women.

Some historians in fact argue that it was Cyrus the Great who, ten centuries before Islam, established the custom of covering women to protect their chastity. According to their theory, the veil passed from the Achaemenids to the Hellenistic Seleucids. They, in turn, handed it to the Byzantines, from whom the Arab conquerors inherited it, transmitting it over the vast reaches of the Arab world.[1] But even if one were to accept this theory, it wouldn't change the fact that the view toward women in Iran changed significantly with the arrival of Islam in Iran. The above theory is just a theory with no proven facts.



On the other hand, women played an important role in everyday life in Achaemenid dynasty. They worked beside men in workshops and received the same salary as men. High-born women even exercised an influence on affairs of state. Female members of the Achaemenid royal family possessed their own estates, and documents survive showing their active involvement in management: letters relate to the shipment of grain, wine, and animals to palaces from distant land-holdings. The only limits on the extent of the authority exercised by the King's mother, for instance were set by the monarch himself. [2] Such traditions continued into Sassanid times, however with less extent. Purandokht, who were daughter of king Khosrau II ruled Persian empire for almost two years before resigning, and women can be seen on some Sassanid reliefs as well.

In Shahnameh, the greatest persian poet and Iranologist, Ferdowsi, tried to offer a picture of persian women. More than twenty women appear in Shahnameh, all of them are wise, intelligent and respectable women. Two women, Homai and Gardieh, become kings of Iran in these stories. Ferdowsi himself married an educated and kind woman.

The beauty of Persian girl and Persian mentality can be seen in numerous masterpieces of persian paintings and miniatures. Drawing a Persian girl dressed in colors with Persian wine at hand has been a classic style for portraying love. However nudity can not be seen in these works in contrast to western paintings with religious themes or ancient Greek style.

Gender equality has been one of the basic principles of Persian culture for centuries. Lack of gender prejudice is one of the fundamental tenets of Zoroastrianism.

Iranian woman in modern Iran

Centuries later, at the dawn of the 20th century, many Iranian modernists who had traveled to Europe for higher education, came back to view the Islamic veil as a symbol of backwardness. Its removal, in their view, was essential to the advancement of Iran and its dissociation from Arab-Islamic culture. For the counter-modernists who wanted to uphold the Islamic social and gender orders, the European woman became a scapegoat and a symbol of corruption, immorality, and Westernization. In the Iranian body-politic the imagined European woman provided the subtext for political maneuvers over women's rights and appearance in the public space.

File:Zeta jones ebadi.JPG
Catherine Zeta Jones congradulating Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, December 11, 2003.

Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 became a turning point in the lives of Iranian women. Women participated in huge numbers and gained important positions for expressing their views, including journals, schools, and associations that flourished in the following period (1911-24).[3]

But the defeat of the constitutionalists (1921-5) and the consolidation of power by Reza Shah (1925-41) had two contradictory impacts. Independent women's journals and groups were destroyed, while the state implemented social reforms such as mass education and paid employment for women. Reza Shah also initiated his controversial policy of Kashf-e-Hijab, banning the wearing of the Islamic Hijab in public. But like other sectors of the society in those years under Reza Shah's rule, women lost the right to express themselves and dissent was repressed.

With the advent of Iran's revolution in 1979, women's rights took yet another wild swing toward religious conservatism. Despite the decree of many of Iran's top clerics such as Ayatollah Taleghani, the state, under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini made wearing the Hijab mandatory for all women, implementing strict religious codes for women in society. However, revolution brought many low and middle class women into public sphere. For many years, breaking the barrier of confinement of the private sphere has been a major source of frustration for advocates of women's rights in Iran. The Islamic revolution broke the barrier overnight. When Khomeini called for women to attend public demonstration and ignore the night curfew, millions of women who would otherwise not have dreamt of leaving their homes without their husbands' and fathers' permission or presence, took to the streets. Khomeini's call to rise up against the Shah took away any doubt in the minds of many devoted Muslim women about the propriety of taking to the streets during the day or at night.

The early 1990s witnessed a marked increase of employment for women. This increase was much more than the rate prior to the revolution. Such dramatic change in the pattern of labor force participation might not have been possible if Khomeini had not broken the barriers to women entering into the public sphere. Educational attainment for women, also a product of free education and the literacy campaign, contributed to this increase. In fact, today there are more women in higher education than there are men. The Islamic Republic had adopted certain policies to expand educational levels for women in order to ensure that sexual segregation paid off. These policies were to encourage women to become skilled workers in domains exclusive to women. For example, the government set quotas for female pediatricians and gynecologists and set up barriers against women wanting to become civil engineers.

In May 1997, a large number of women participated in presidential elections and overwhelmingly voted for Hojatolislam Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric who had promised reduction of repression and toleration of civil society institutions. His election opened a period when women could voice their ideas once again, with many becoming increasingly bolder in their demands and in their criticisms. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights and feminist activist, further emboldened Iranian feminists inside Iran and cemented their relationships with Iranian feminist activists abroad.

The Sixth Parliament saw the emergence of some of Iran's strongest advocates of women's rights. Almost all of the 11 female lawmakers of The 190-seat Majles took on the challenge of trying to change some of Iran's more conservative laws amidst a male dominated culture. However, during the elections for the Seventh Majles, all of those representatives were banned to run for office by the all male Council of Guardians, only allowing conservative females to run for election. The new representatives, as expected, upon their arrival into office began reversing many of the laws passed by the reformist 6th Majles.

According to the research ministry of Iran, about 6% of full professors, 8% of associate professors, and 14% of assistant professors were women in the 1998-99 academic year. However, women accounted for 56% of all students in the natural sciences, including one in five Ph.D. students.[1]

Persian women's day

According to Iranian calendar, 29th of Bahman (18 February) is considered Persian women's day. History of the celebration dates back to ancient times and Zoroastrian tradition. Iranians also celebrate International Women's Day and also Islamic women's day (birthday of Prophet's daughter). The latter is the official women's day in Islamic Republic.

Lists and Images of famous Iranian women and female entities

List of famous Iranian women

Images of famous Iranian women

Notes

  1. ^ The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation, by Sandra Mackey. (Penguin Group, 1996).
  2. ^ Arthur Cotterell, From Aristotle to Zoroaster, 1998, ISBN 0-684-85596-8.
  3. ^ J. Afary, The Iranian constitutional revolution, 1906-11. Grassroots democracy, social democracy, and the origins of feminism, New York 1996.

References

  • Piyrnia, Mansoureh. Salar Zanana Iran. 1995. Maryland: Mehran Iran Publishing.
  • Brosius, Maria. Women in Ancient Persia, 559-331 B.C. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford Oxford University Press (UK), 1998.

See also

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