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."