On 9/2/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I wrote:
> > with one sex controlling the state and the economy, who do you think
> > will dominate? being relegated to domestic labor has a tendency to
> > "divide and rule."

Doyle:
> True but beside the point.  There is still gender inequality in
> Socialist States.  What exactly is the way out?  What is the work
> process of equality that resolves the issue?

Yoshie wasn't talking about socialist states (or state socialism) or
the way out. She was hoping that somehow -- without struggle?? -- the
Iranian system of gender segregation (homosocial society = gender
apartheid?) would develop toward being a "gender-egalitarian society."

but while we're on the subject, I think the only way that women's
equality can be gained is via feminist struggle of the sort we've seen
(with partial success) in the US. That's why independent organizations
of, by, and for women are so important, so needed. Equality is not
handed down by those in power, who benefit from inequality.

Feminist struggle exists in Iran, and you can learn about it if you
pay attention to it, and Iran has moved toward a gender-egalitarian
society to the extent it has in part because of that and in part
because of the impacts of the Iran-Iraq War, changing political
economy, etc..

<blockquote>The contending discourses on women in Iran
By: Farideh Farhi, 1998

The first stage: Gender and the politics of revolution

This is the immediate post-revolutionary period and the stage in which
the central role of women in the unfolding of the revolutionary drama
becomes clearly and forcefully inscribed. During this period of power
contestation and reproduction, and state building, the representation
of the proper Muslim woman assumes much significance as the veiled
domesticated woman symbolises the search for authenticity and cultural
revival. Accordingly, women's behaviour, appearance, and range of
activities come to be defined and regulated by the political or
cultural objectives of various political movements, the state, and
leadership.[1] It was in this period that compulsory veiling was
legislated, co-education banned, segregation imposed in many public
areas, a general assault on day-care instituted, and female judgeship
not recognised.

Most significant was the 1979 abrogation of the Family Protection Law
(legislated in 1967 and amended in 1974), effectively denying women
the right to divorce and re-establishing men's unlimited right of
divorce.[2] In addition, women's voices were banned from radio and
female singers barred from television.

A campaign was waged to tie women to home and family. Women were
restricted from certain professions, such as law, and women university
students were not allowed into programmes such as agricultural
engineering and veterinary sciences. The state assumed a pronatalist
stance, banning abortion and distribution of contraceptives, extolling
the Muslim family, and lowering the age of consent.

Women's responses to new gender codes varied by class and
political/ideological orientation, and from enthusiastic support to
acquiescence to outright hostility. The common ground upon which
almost all women stood, however, was that of a bystander; most if not
all of the changes were effectively promulgated irrespective of the
multiplicity of the women voices present. Indeed, the model of Islamic
womanhood the consolidating state sought to impose on the population
was an integral part of the political-cultural project of Islamisation
as the transformation of Iran was seen as incumbent upon the
transformation of women, defined in singular and extremely homogeneous
terms. As has been repeatedly noted, (re)definitions of gender are
frequently central to political and cultural change and the Islamic
state in Iran took this task very seriously.[3]

Despite the renunciation of many rights previously held by women,
however, it is important to note that the Constitution of the Islamic
Republic, ratified during this period of intense political struggles,
reaffirmed the basic and fundamental political right of women, 15
years or above, to elect their representatives. According to Article
62 of the Constitution, the deputies of the Majlis as well as the
president are elected by the direct vote of the people, so are the
representatives of councils of provinces, towns, cities, districts,
villages, and productive and industrial units (Article 100). Women
have also been vested with the constitutional right to get elected or
appointed to the highest political and administrative offices of the
land. The only exception to this rule involves the office of
presidency which carries an interpretative clause (Article 115 of the
Constitution), stipulating that the candidate for the office must be
among the 'distinguished political and religious personalities' (so
far interpreted to be men).[4]

The interpretive or fluid character of the Iranian Constitution is
evident in many other areas. For instance, the Constitution provides
for 'the rights of the people' and guarantees the rights of women, but
'in all areas according to Islamic standards.' This explicit
qualification regarding the laws of Islam clearly locates women's
rights along with many other rights in the category of interpretive
rather than inalienable, hence assuring that debates concerning their
interpretation will remain part of the struggles and conflicts within
the political process. This is especially the case since the general
and clear constitutional acknowledgment of equal political rights for
women are often in contradiction with the situational civil
restrictions and unequal social, economic, and criminal rights (some
of which were mentioned above) that have been imposed on women.

The second stage: One step forward or two steps backwards?

As mentioned, the policy choices of the immediate post-revolutionary
period, affecting the daily lives of women in fundamental ways, were
made in haste and had more to do with the construction of a new
national and Islamic identity than the concrete experiences and
problems of women. As such, it was only after the new state builders
came to experience all the dimensions of their roles as distributors
and guarantors of justice that different aspects of their policy
choices regarding women began to become slowly manifest (a process
that continues to this day). During this stage, which can generally be
identified with the eight-year war with Iraq, a variety of women not
generally involved in the public domain became mobilised in a whole
series of activities. For instance, they staffed the mass laundries
and kitchens servicing the war front, served as nurses in the military
hospitals, and were given more pronounced civilian profile in many
government offices.

More importantly, however, many problems particularly regarding the
families of those killed in the war came to the fore. This is not to
say that these problems did not exist in regards to other families;
rather it simply suggests that because of the devastating impact and
heavy toll of the war as well as the important social basis the
families of those serving in the war constituted for the Islamic
state, the new leadership in Iran could not ignore the problems posed.
For instance, one of the particularly difficult problems created by
the war was the question of mother's guardianship of the children
which was taken away in absolute terms by the new laws.[5] The right
to absolute guardianship given to the husband and the paternal family
led to many abuses as many young children were, in some cases,
forcefully taken away from the wives of those killed in the war as a
way to collect the funds given to these children by the Foundation for
the Martyred or other governmental agencies.

After many complaints by the martyrs' wives, and quite a bit of
discussion and debate in the parliament, a new law was passed in 1985
giving the right of fostership of a minor to the mother unless the
courts reject her competence. This allowed her to collect governmental
funds for their children even after she wedded another man. Although
this practical legislative manoeuvre did not bring into question the
legal and religious foundations of absolute paternal guardianship
(since it only pertained to funds distributed by the government and
not inherited property), nevertheless it can be seen as a progressive
attempt to deal with a concrete problem articulated by women
themselves.

Although a clearly articulated solution to the problem has yet to be
found, the state and the judicial system went through a similar
process as many problems became manifest in regards to women's
inability to divorce and men's right to enter into several temporary
and permanent marriages. Increasingly the courts have begun to show
flexibility in regards to the women's right to divorce and to a
certain amount of marital wealth after a man-initiated divorce, even
if the question of women's economic well-being after a woman-initiated
divorce has yet to be addressed in a satisfactory way.

Measures such as paying women for services rendered in the house in
case of divorce or adjusting women's mehr to inflation again in case
of a man-initiated divorce, although passed by the parliament in the
years after the war, can also be put into the category of pragmatic
steps dealing with women's immediate grievances. The common point for
all these steps has been the reaction registered to the grievances of
a particular base of support through attempts to reform the existing
laws. Hence, it is clear that the legal arena has been identified as
the main terrain of struggle. But these steps also reflect an
unwillingness or at least hesitance to deal with the deeper and more
fundamental inequalities that exist within the family arena regarding
divorce and marital rights (e.g., Article 1133 of the Civil Code
stating that a man can divorce his wife whenever he wants) as well as
in other spheres of law (e.g., inheritance laws and laws regarding
blood money). As such, those engaged in the reinterpretation of
Islamic jurisprudence have been willing to manoeuvre within the
existing categories but have so far not been able to question the
categories themselves.[6]

The third stage: Gender and the Islamic developmentalist state

If the second stage and the accompanying discourse of pragmatism can
be identified as a period of coming face to face with the concrete
realities in women's daily lives in the legal arena, the third stage
is the period in which the economic role of women takes on
significance and becomes reiterated. And this should not come as a
surprise. In a situation of declining oil revenues and state income,
growing poverty, and indebtedness from the huge expenditures of war
with Iraq, the government was faced with the compelling need to change
the course of social and economic development. This entailed new
economic policies towards foreign investments and industrial exports,
and strategies to reduce the rate of population growth which by now
had become one of the highest in the world (around 3.7%). And it is in
this period that a new and clearly discourse emerges and advocates of
equality and efficiency alike began to call attention to women as
'agents of development' and 'invaluable human resources', urging an
end to discriminatory practices and legislation in areas of education
and employment.

The Islamic Republic's first five-year plan, which went into effect on
21 March 1990, in a vein similar to other structural adjustment
programmes throughout the world, called upon the government to adopt a
policy of privatisation, deregulation of economic activity and banking
and financial services, activation, expansion and modernisation of the
Teheran stock exchange, and reintegration in the world economy.[7] The
plan also called for a shift from the earlier reliance on the
agricultural sector to the expansion of manufacturing for export. An
impediment to realisation of this plan was seen as the scarcity of
managerial and skilled resources; thus the government began actively
to encourage expatriate entrepreneurs, technicians, and engineers to
return to the country. Also seen as necessary were investments in
skills upgrading, educational attainment, and productive employment
for the underutilised female human resource base.

As pointed out by Valentine Moghadam, who has done one of the most
comprehensive and up-to-date studies of women's employment issues in
Iran, these major shifts at the macro level also had implications for
women and the gender system.[8] For instance, some restrictive
barriers to women's achievements, such as limiting women's enrolment
in a number of fields of study, had to be removed. The state also had
to alter its pronatalist policy to a pro-family one. The ban on
contraceptives at state hospitals and clinics was lifted and family
benefits for the fourth child were suspended. Maternity leaves were
also mandated to conform to the number of children, with the leave for
the first and second child being three months, the third child only
one month and none for the fourth and subsequent children. Family
planning clinics began to distribute contraceptives and family
planning advice free of charge throughout the country.[9] The clear
message throughout the bureaucracy began to be: balanced economic
growth and national development cannot take place in a situation of
uncontrolled population growth and economic, social, and cultural
marginalisation of women.[10]

Shifts in gender policy also began to occur in areas of women and law
and women and agriculture. After a decade of discouraging women from
entering the law profession, the Iranian state reversed itself and
deemed it advantageous to draw upon their experience and education.
Slowly but surely all positions in the judicial system except that of
the courtroom judge have become open to women and they now perform a
host of roles including that of an investigative judge. Important
changes in agricultural gender policy can also be mentioned as
previous prohibitions in fields such as veterinary science, animal
science, and agrarian affairs were lifted. Acknowledging the important
role played by women in the agricultural sector (with some claiming
that as high as 40% of the farm work was performed by women), calls
were also made for arrangements to be made to train female farmers
alongside men.

The list of policy shifts can go on but I think the point is
sufficiently made that the shift from a war economy to an era of
reconstruction guided by a developmentalist state brought forth major
policy shifts in regards to women. Although women continued to be far
from the commanding heights of politics and economy, an Iranian
version of affirmative action policies began to take root, and policy
shifts indicated a trend towards greater advocacy for women. Included
in this trend were a women's bureau in the office of the president
with the express purpose of examining and enhancing the status of
women, and women's affairs offices in each ministry and government
agency. In 1987 the High Council of the Cultural Revolution also set
up the Women's Social and Cultural Council, charged with studying the
legal, social, and economic problems of women. Although the 1992
directive of this council still emphasised the importance of family
roles and rules out certain occupations and professions as religiously
inappropriate, it also encouraged the integration of women in the
labour force and attention to their interests and needs. Whether or
not these changes of policy were necessitated by the exigencies of the
shift to the developmentalist state is difficult to tell. What is
important to note for our purposes is the rise of another set of
discursive practices concerning gender issues along with other
discourses identifying women as the defenders of Islamic values,
culture, and purity, last bastions against imperialism, and so on.
Indeed the rise of this parallel discourse on women as 'human
resources' has set the stage for a contested terrain within which both
women and the state itself have to manoeuvre.

The fourth stage: A contested terrain

A combination of pragmatic steps, developmentalist politics, and
cultural/Islamic identity politics marks this contested stage in which
Iranian women's issues and lives are now firmly located. Added to this
combination are signs that women, or at least a section of them, are
finally beginning to come to their own politically and articulate
certain needs for women's presence in all public arenas and
decision-making positions. Also articulated is the need for higher
rates of female participation in the political process and overcoming
barriers to paid labour and high rates of female unemployment,
reproductive support and public daycare, reform of rape, abuse,
marriage, and family laws or at least acknowledgment of their
deficiencies and creation of institutions such as safe houses to give
support to victims.

The first signs of a visible shift in women's political assertiveness
came in the fifth parliamentary election held in 1996. A female
candidate who was solidly identified with a host of women's issues
received the second highest number of votes in Tehran (by far the most
important contested district) and was one of the two candidates that
were elected to the parliament in Tehran in the first round of
elections.[11] Several other female candidates who had committed
themselves to women's issues were also elected from Tehran and other
cities and those who were not elected certainly made an impact. In two
other cities, where the election of women candidates was nullified by
the Council of Guardians, people re-elected the same female candidates
with a higher percentage of votes in substitute elections held later.
Even though the number of female deputies is still comparatively
small( now there are 14, up from the previous 9, from among 276
deputies), there is a general agreement that a space has been opened
up for the newly elected women to become more influential within the
Majlis as well as the society in general.

What made the last parliamentary election more interesting was that
the favourable showing of women was noted in print by political
pundits, creating an environment in which much discussion was
generated regarding the reasons for such a showing at least in the
first round of elections.[12] Indeed if there were any doubts about
women's emerging political clout, they were all swept away in the May
1977 presidential election in which a candidate clearly banking on the
women's votes won in a stunning manner, garnering close to 80% across
the political and social spectrum. In the same election, several
women's groups as well as an influential women's journal, Zanan,
actively took part in the election, promoting the candidacy of one
presidential candidate.[13] Furthermore, nine women apparently
attempted to become presidential candidates and although their
candidacy was rejected by the Guardian Council(along with the
candidacy of a couple of hundred other candidates), a debate ensued on
whether this ruling was because they were women or not 'distinguished
political and religious personalities'. Clearly the end of this debate
is no- where near and, given the trends, it will also end in favour of
women's participation.

Finally, the outcome of the election has also brought some good news
for women. For the first time, a woman was appointed as the
vice-president for environmental affairs and several other women have
been appointed as deputy ministers (previously there was only one in
the Health Ministry). All this does not mean that the path for women's
progress has been paved and no obstacles stand on the way. As
mentioned before, the Islamic state, throughout its post-revolutionary
evolution, has incorporated developmen-talist and culturalist postures
via-a-vis women. These two postures have by no means been in
opposition to each other all the time. For instance, the strict
application of the Islamic dress code has been used as a mechanism to
break cultural barriers against women's presence in the public domain;
a licence, so to speak, women have so far used very effectively to
enter the public space as wage-earners or in any other capacity. At
the same time, the requirements of a development-oriented
liberalisation policy invariably come into conflict with interests
that justifiably worry about cultural liberalisation as an unintended
consequence of economic liberalisation.

<http://www.iranchamber.com/podium/society/001012_contending_discourses_women_iran1.php>
<http://www.iranchamber.com/podium/society/001012_contending_discourses_women_iran2.php></blockquote>

Women in Iran will no doubt move their country further toward a
gender-egalitarian society.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>

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