Iranian leftists thought it was a good idea to support Khomeini because they knew that they were far outnumbered by Khomeini supporters, that a large majority of the Iranian masses were deeply religious at that time, and that, relatively speaking, they actually agreed more with Khomeini on economy as well as foreign policy than with liberals, because by then Khomeini had already made his populist and republican turn (see <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060828/045172.html>).
For many leftists in the West, the history of Iran ended with Iranian leftists' defeat by Khomeini supporters. But it didn't end with that for the people of Iran. Women in Iran, for instance, have continued to press for their rights and won many, and they will win more if Iran doesn't come under economic sanctions or worse.
<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> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>