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Backlash in Iran
Bronze statues of naked females are now OK, but live women face ever more restrictions

BY KAREN MAZURKEWICH
U.S. News & World Report
December 7, 1998

TEHRAN­She was so nervous she could not sleep the night before the exhibit opened. But when Sholeh Hojabr Ebrahimi's sculptures went on display at Tehran's municipal art gallery last month, they were a sensation: the first female nudes to be shown publicly in Iran since the Islamic revolution nearly 20 years ago.

In a country where women must cover themselves from head to toe, the exhibit was also a political statement, one of the fruits of the liberalization begun by President Mohammed Khatami since his election last year. The plaster and bronze figures are such a novelty that even Ebrahimi cannot bring herself to say "nudes." She calls them "female anatomy sculptures." But the Iranian public is apparently not so prudish: Of the 25 sculptures, a half-dozen that were the most risqué were snapped up quickly at prices ranging from $100 to $250, about half a month's salary for an average Iranian.

Yet the news from Iran's political front is decidedly mixed. Islamic clerics may be giving ground on art, but not on real life. In a backlash against Khatami's reforms, the conservatives who dominate parliament are pushing for tighter restrictions on women. Their latest proposal would prohibit male doctors from treating female patients, paving the way for segregation of hospitals for men and women.

The Council of Guardians, an oversight body, rejected the bill on a technicality­lack of funding. But an amended version, with financing, has been resubmitted. If it goes ahead, Iran may rival Afghanistan for the most egregious discrimination in health care.

Iranian doctors have no doubt that the proposal would result in unequal treatment. "If you want to go back to the Stone Age, it can be done. But this is the modern age," says Sadegh Mahboobin, an orthopedist who treats women for osteoporosis at the Tehran Clinic Hospital. Of the 33 doctors there, only five are women.

"We know Khatami would not have succeeded in the election without the support of women. This is the price [his opponents may force] women to pay for electing Khatami," adds Shirin Ebadi, a human-rights lawyer in Tehran. "Lots of women will die behind the closed doors of hospitals."

The backlash is also being felt in other areas. In September, Khatami tried to distance Iran from the religious death sentence placed on British author Salman Rushdie. Iranian hard-liners responded by increasing the bounty on Rushdie's head. The conservative judiciary also has shut down pro-reform newspapers. And most ominous, a leading dissident couple, Dariush and Parvaneh Foruhar, were found stabbed to death last week.

All this leaves the curator of the municipal art gallery, 33-year-old Ladan Baradaran, rather worried. She knows she could lose her job for her bold decision to exhibit Ebrahimi's sculptures. But "I felt our viewpoint should change to match the viewpoint of Mr. Khatami," she says. "This is a step that I'd like to think artists will take together."


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