Women Unveiled

Women Unveiled

One image often seen as a dominant symbol in Iran is the ‘roosary,’ the garment that covers a woman’s hair in order to hide the hair’s sexual radiance. The roosary, many believe, symbolizes the patriarchy of a society that oppresses and subjugates its women.

A spokesman in President Ahmadinejad’s office, Mohammed, defended his country’s government in light of the belief that Iran oppresses its women.

“The way we live is the way of the people, and we are the people of [the 12th and final prophet]. We are governing this society so that when the last [prophet] comes, we are preserved and the other countries will perish,” Mohammed said in an interview with City on a Hill Press.

According to the Shi’ite sect of Islam, Imam al-Mahdi, or “Imam Zamaan,” is the 12th and final prophet. He has been granted prolonged life, hidden from the view of humans by Allah. When he reappears, according to Shi’ites, he will fill the world with justice and equity and instigate the apocalypse.

Mohammed, a Shi’ite Muslim, believes that Imam Zamaan will come. He asserted that the messages he was conveying were the messages of “the people of Iran, the president of Iran, the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Qur’an, the words of everybody.”

“If we wanted to be comfortable, we’d live sinfully. But we are persevering. We have learned from our mothers and fathers, we are going to stick with [the traditions and tenets of the Qu’ran], and Ahmadinejad will stick with it,” Mohammed said.

Journalist Ali said that gender equality is a very slow process. Women are attaining their rights in Iran “one nanometer at a time,” he said, explaining that women are showing their hair more and more with every passing day.

“The roosary has become a symbol more than anything else,” Ali said. “The pictures you see from Iran, [the roosary] is just barely hanging on.”

The year 2003 marked a milestone for Iranian women when the Nobel Peace Prize in Iran was awarded to Shirin Ebadi for her pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights.
According to the National Portal of Statistics, woman make up 62 percent of students who have obtained Bachelor’s degrees and 54 percent of students who have obtained professional doctorates in Iran.

“I went back to Iran and in my family all the girls were working, but the guys were not,” Ali said with a chuckle. “There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but I think that’s one area that is a global issue, not something unique to Iran.”

Fareedeh, a 25-year-old woman, lives in Tehran and has a Ph.D in biology. On hearing Ahmadinejad’s spokesman Mohammed’s statements about women’s rights, Fareedeh objected.

“I have gotten my Ph.D, and the government of Iran has given me money monthly to go get an education from anywhere in the world—even America—for finishing up my thesis, and they even give [graduate students] wages for our education,” she said. “The government of Iran doesn’t discriminate between males and females in this sense.”

Fareedeh explained that the status of modern Iranian women is not very restricted, as women have become deans, professors, lawyers, and even politicians.
She also disagreed with Mohammed’s assertion that women would never have the chance to become president.

“If a woman has enough inspiration, aspiration, and motivation, she can get aligned with a party, she can grow, she can become a mayor or representative, she can show she is able, then she can become president,” Fareedeh said.

In fact, 90—about 10 percent—of the candidates in Iran’s 2005 presidential election were women. As long as the candidates are approved by the Guardian Council, Iran’s version of the Supreme Court, they can run in the elections.

Fareedeh explained that she wears her roosary to maintain her “hijab,” or modesty, privacy, and morality as defined by the Qur’an.

Nader Sadeghi of CASMII explained that the image of the veil is exploited by American media as a form of propaganda depicting a false image of the country’s civil rights.

“One must be careful to not reduce women to how they are dressed up based on the unwarranted, useless and imposed dress code in Iran,” Sadeghi said. “Women gain power not through how they dress up, but through education and occupation of all kinds of jobs…that give economic power and economic independence within the family structure…The women voters of Iran are just as important as the men. And they are just as educated if not more [so] than men.”

Women currently comprise 30 percent of the work force in Iran, and even a larger segment of civil workers.

Fareedeh believes that the women’s rights debate is universal and should not be either restricted or limited to her country.

“Iran is not close to being ideal,” she said. “We have far to go. But to me, every society is like this. I was in Canada for six months, the women there were oppressed too, but their oppression had a different color.”