When Samira Makhmalbaf's first film The Apple made waves in the West, people were confused. How could Iran – the land of female oppression and Shari'a law, where women could be stoned to death for adultery and flogged for going out in public with a man they weren't married to – produce an 18-year-old female film-maker of such outspoken vision? Samira Makhmalbaf's answer was simple: 'Iran is a country where these two contrasts coexist.'
Nowhere are the contradictions in Iranian society more apparent than in the position of women. Historically, women in Iran have had some of the most progressive rights in the region and even now, they experience more equality and freedom than their neighbours in some Arab states such as Saudi. In Iran women are able to sit in parliament, to drive, to vote, to buy property and to work.
There is a long precedence for this. In pre-Islamic Iran, archaeological evidence suggests that ordinary women were able to work, own, sell and lease property and that they paid taxes. Women managers were mentioned at work sites and women were also known to have held higher level military positions. By the Sassanian period though, women's rights, much as they may have existed, were not formally enshrined and it is possible that they were open to abuse.
The Prophet Mohammad was the first to specifically address women's rights, recognising men and women as having different (rather than unequal) rights and responsibilities. Men are expected to provide financially, so women are not seen as needing legal rights as men are there to protect and maintain them.
In reality, for Persian women, the post-Islamic era saw a decline in their position at every level. Most of their rights evaporated, and they were almost never included in any form of government or civic leadership. They literally disappeared behind a curtain as the Islamic dress code was imposed (hejab came from a word meaning 'curtain' in Arabic) and they were forced to wear a veil. Polygamy was practiced and family laws were exclusively to the advantage of the male.
Reza Shah started legislating for women when in 1931 the Majlis approved a bill which gave women the right to seek divorce. The marriage age was raised to 15 for girls. In 1936, a system of education was formed for boys and girls equally and in the same year, legislation to abolish veiling was passed, forbidding women from wearing the hejab. Reza Shah also made it his policy to encourage women to work outside homes.
The last Shah gave women the vote in 1962 and six years later the Family Protection Law was ratified, the most progressive family law in the Middle East. Divorce laws and polygamy became more stringent with the latter being almost entirely discouraged and a rarity. Marriage age now stood at 18.
Many Iranian women were active in the Revolution that overthrew the Shah but it's safe to say that those women could not have foreseen how the adoption of Shari'a law and the Islamic Republic would impact their rights. Within a couple of years of the Revolution women were back in the hejab - and this time it was compulsory. The legal age of marriage for girls had plummeted to 9 (15 for boys), and society was strictly segregated. Women were not allowed to appear in public with a man who was not a husband or a direct relation, they could be flogged for displaying 'incorrect' hejab or showing strands of hair or scraps of make up. Travel was not possible without a husband or father's permission and a woman could be stoned to death for adultery, which, incidentally, includes being raped. Family law again fell under the jurisdiction of the religious courts and it became almost impossible for a woman to divorce her husband without his agreement, and in any case of divorce, she was almost certain to lose custody of her children. Women holding high positions - such as Shirin Ebadi who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and was a judge in 1979 - lost their jobs and many gave up promising careers.
However, women did not disappear behind a curtain this time. Iranian women had been emancipated, and they resisted a total return to the home. There was too much precedence and the educated classes continued to work and function outside the home. There were many rights that women did not lose - such as the right to vote and the right to hold on to property and financial independence on marriage. In fact, the rates of education and literacy for women have shot up since the Revolution for the simple reason that many traditional families finally felt safe sending their daughters to go to school once Iran had adopted the veil. More than half of Iran's army of young people are female and women made up 63% of university entrants in 2002/2003 - though their subsequent employment rate was only 11%. Although women's importance in the workforce is acknowledged – maternity leave for example is given for three months at 67% of salary – there is still wide-spread discrimination.
In 1997 reformist President Khatami was voted in by mostly women and young people, promising change. By 2000, there were 11 women in the Majlis and many MPs speaking out for women's rights. One of Iran's most prolific Islamic feminists is Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of he ex-president who herself was a member of parliament, a magazine proprietess, an academic, a mother and an Olympic horse rider.
In the last few years there have been a series of hard fought minor victories. The reformists managed to win the right for single women to study abroad, to raise the legal age for marriage from 9 to 13 for girls (though they had proposed 15), to defeat an attempt to limit the percentage of female students entering university and to improve custody provisions for divorced mothers. However, a woman's testimony is still only worth half that of a man in court (so where one man could appear as a witness, two women would have to testify) and in the case of the blood money that a murderer's family is obliged to pay to the family of the victim, females are estimated at half the value of a man. Sigheh (the Islamic practice of temporary marriage) is seen by many as a sort of legalised prostitution.
On the street you will see that superficially the dress code has eased and the sea of black chadors are offset by shorter, tighter, brightly-coloured coats and headscarves worn far back on elaborate hairstyles. Young girls have lost the fear of being seen outside the home with unrelated men, and many defy the regular clamp-downs. Activists such as Shirin Ebadi, who works as a lawyer and champions human rights, are insistent that within Islam is enshrined all human rights, all that is needed is more intelligent interpretation.
Any visit to an Iranian home will leave you in doubt as to who is really in charge in the home - and family life is the most important institution in Iran. Iranian women are feisty and powerful and they continue to educate themselves. Most women in Iran will tell you that the hejab is the least of their worries, what is more important is to change the institutional discrimination inherent in Iranian society and the law. As ex-reformist MP Elaheh Koulaie says: 'We have to change the perceptions that Iranians have of themselves, the perception of the role of men and women.'
In 2004 religious right-wingers once more took control of the Majlis after banning many reformist members from standing for elections. The population stayed away from the polls in droves, but it remains to be seen what path Iran will now follow. What is certain, however, is that Iranian women will continue to assert their rights and slowly chip away at the repressive system, be it with a defiant splash of red lipstick, making visionary movies or becoming expert at interpreting the law and winning the Nobel Prize for Peace.
© Kamin Mohammadi 2004