“Death to America:” Rethinking How we See Iran, Through the Eyes of the Women’s Movement
The women’s movement in Iran, has been intertwined with nationalism and also anti-imperialist sentiments from its genesis. Although Iran was never colonized, the strong influence of Russian and British Empires in Iran during the 19th and early 20th centuries has continued to linger in the collective memory of leaders and citizens alike. While more recently, anti-American sentiments and slogans became a part of the national lexicon after the CIA and British Intelligence Service supported the coup in 1953 against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh because of his agenda to nationalize the oil industry.
Within this context, women’s rights advocates and feminists in Iran, have often felt compelled to distance themselves from the the West and prove their loyalty to their country, while at the same time, fighting patriarchal systems within Iran. Because of this constant juxtapositioning, they have become keenly adept at straddling nationalism and Islam on one hand, and the aspiration for individual rights and freedom of choice on the other.
The growing political atmosphere of anti-Westernism during the two years that led up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 facilitated an important transformation of discourse in Iran; language in the context of women shifted from modernity to that of Islamization. Islamic icons such as Fatima and Zeynab, helped to promote Islamic women leaders such as Shariati with a new duality, one that wove together traditional duties and social responsibility. This new discourse not only accommodated women’s presence in the revolution, but with the creation of the constitution and women’s unique place within the Islamic family, it also served as a boon toward women’s continued role as bastions of Islam in post-revolutionary politics. “Once the Islamic family was legally constructed, its links with the Islamic nation had to be strengthened. Women, the creators of the Islamic family, had to nurture the Islamic nation as well as secure its survival and make it prosper. Despite pressures by conventional clerics who were in favor of the separation of family from society and women’s confinement to housekeeping and child rearing tasks, Ayatollah Khomaini adopted a policy of women’s participation in national processes (Paidar 303).” was mass participation of women through spontaneous response to Islamization.
With Islamization, the role of women shifted, as did their rights and responsibilities to the nation. Women were granted social and political rights because they were mothers (or potential mothers), yet still constructed within a historically patriarchal gender relationship. Policies were developed to Islamize the Iranian home, as well as formulated to ensure the Islamic nation would continue to benefit from the ‘maternalistic’ qualities of female citizens. Both of these factors affected women’s participation in national processes involving politics, education, and employment.
The link between nationalism and Islam also played a large part in determining the state policies as well. Women’s nationalism was integral in the national processes of policy-making; whether secular or religious, nationalism was a vehicle for women’s political action in Iran throughout the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. Women mobilized in order to maintain political participation through either Islamic nationalist groups or secular nationalist groups. There was mass participation of women through spontaneous response to Islamization.
Contrary to the common misconception that Islam establishes an inflexible set of guidelines to live by and that women are prisoners under those canons in Muslim societies, Shi’ism in Iran underwent a variety of transformations with regard to its relationship to policy making, as well as its construction of women during and after the Iranian Revolution. This relative fluidity allowed Shi’ism to be responsive and interactive with other societal factors but also at many times contradictory with regard to women’s place within private and social spheres.
After a decade of economic growth, the explosion of oil income effectively halted Iran’s economy by the end of the 1970s. Although oil had helped to transform Iran from a rural agrarian society into an industrial, urban one, the country experienced inflation, food shortages, rural migration that led to overpopulated shantytowns and unemployment. These societal tensions had largely come to be associated with the unmet promises of Westernization. The religious clergy was not the only group who had grown wary of the West, many Iranian intellectuals also began to associate the Shah’s emulation of the West as a threat to Iran’s cultural, religious and national identity. “One of the most influential books of the period was the 1962 Occidentosis (in Persian, Gharbzadegi) by the important modern Iranian author Jalal al-Ahmad. “Gharbzadegi” is a made-up word usually translated as ‘Westoxication.’ Al-Ahmad’s theme was how Iranians are abandoning their traditions to ape the West, at the cost of losing their culture and history (Clawson 88).”
This discontent rippled throughout many facets of society, but was most evident in the shift of women’s role. Women had come to be seen as ‘victims’ of the lures of imperialist exploitation and the epitome of Iran’s dependence on the West. The reversion to a more pious society began to reverberate throughout Iran in 1977. Political repression by the one party system meant that the state controlled traditional means for airing grievances such as radio and television. This led to political protest finding a home behind the pulpit. However, with pressure from human rights groups and the Carter Administration, there was a slight relaxing of the strict media policing and in the fall of 1977 the opposition found its voice.
Leading up to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, women were very active in campaigning against the monarchy. However, with the seizure of leadership by the Shi’i clergy, they most surely did not expect that the revolution would reverse the rights they had worked so hard to gain. Even though, as Haleh Esfandiari noted in Reconstructed Lives, Ayatollah Khomeini responded to questions regarding the position of women in the future Islamic Republic, saying that women would be fully respected within the framework of the Islamic law (38), as the political discourses quickly changed with regard to the West, so did the roles of women. Under this new framework, where women were now associated with imperialist exploitation, their connection to the idea of nationhood and construction of their citizenship was altered dramatically.
One of the strongest forces affecting gender politics during the revolutionary period of 1979 was the development of Shi’ism as a political force. With the increasing power of the revolutionaries, there was an undercutting of any political forces that would have been able to reestablish more secular government institutions. And therefore, the revolutionary period saw a full shift in political discourse from modernization to revolutionary radicalism.
As the tide swiftly turned toward piety during the nascence of the revolution, the government took advantage during this period to implement measures that directly affected women. With the construction of a new constitution, Islamization became a strong factor in the socio-political context of the Islamic Republic, affecting the development of legal institutions and women’s social and political rights revolving around marriage, divorce, and family. This new discourse aimed to achieve national independence by creating a ‘modern’ Muslim nation, through what was presented to Iranians as the antithesis of Western ideas of family and sexuality. However, women would soon come to find that the new ‘modern Muslim’ woman, had far fewer rights than the pre-revolutionary one.
“The new constitution, ratified in December 1979, devoted only four of 175 articles to women and these spoke only of woman’s role within the context of the family and within the framework of Islamic law and principles. Women kept their right to vote, to be elected to parliament, and to hold cabinet positions. But the constitution barred women from becoming judges or being elected to the position of supreme leader, a prerogative reserved for the country’s leading male clerics (Esfandiari 39–40).” It also framed women’s rights within the Islamic family and Islamic nation, while posturing this new concept of ‘Islamic modernity’ with the characteristic of national independence.
Women’s participation in national processes during this time reflected the new role they held within the Islamic family. Their activities in the areas of politics, education and employment were crucial to strengthening the burgeoning Islamic state. Not only did their participation in state policy-making and employment legitimize the country internationally, but as the creators of the Islamic family, educating and laying foundation for the future was imperative to the nation’s survival.
Unfortunately, policies on women suffered during the post-Revolutionary period due to debate between political factions and the Islamic elite, resulting in ad hoc policies. “Although strongly encouraged in official rhetoric, in reality women’s education and employment suffered from contradictory policies, the imposition of gender quotas and support for male dominance, combined with lack of co-ordination between the multiple centers of decision-making and lack of financial resources (Paidar 61).”
Even amidst inhibitions to education and employment, women continued to use opportunities open to them to support themselves and their families and contribute to the state economically. But with the reality that the rights they had been promised prior to the revolution not coming to fruition and instead, an escalation of problems facing Iranian women and their rights within the Islamic family, a transformation began to take shape; the idealism of the post-Revolutionary women’s movement started to shed its ideological differences that had hindered its unity during the revolution and a new political alliance began to focus on pragmatism across varied religious, political and economic backgrounds.
Today, “most women activists have adopted non-confrontational, non-ideological, non-sectarian, and reform-oriented strategies. Deploying the ‘power of presence’, they have entered into a strategic engagement not only with the civil society at large, but also with some members of the ruling elite. They engage the political reformers inside and outside the government, the intelligentsia, the media, the law and lawmakers in the parliament, the clerics, various social institutions, and ordinary people (Tohidi 6).”
For Iranian women, the paradox of nationalism and Islam, as well as individual rights and freedom of choice, has not diminished. Yet the women’s movement has remained robust and authentic to its Iranian roots. In doing so, ‘the power of presence,’ has become a model for those aspiring for equal rights under repressive and authoritarian regimes across the region. The multifaceted nature of the new women’s movement, built on cleavages of the past, now strategically engaged together, gives strength to the movement. The long history of Iranian women as active participants in social movements, despite intense repression at the state and societal levels, shows the courage and resilience needed to create a new history as equal actors in Iran’s vibrant civil society.
Sources:
Paidar, Parvin. “Feminism and Islam in Iran.” Gendering the Middle East. Ed. Deniz Kandiyoti. 1st. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996. 60. Print.
Clawson, Patrick. Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos . Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan , 2005. eBook.
Esfandiari, Haleh. Reconstructed Lives: Women & Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997. Print.
Tohidi, Nayereh. “Women’s Rights and Feminist Movements in Iran.” (2016). Web. 21 May. 2017.
