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Gender discrimination as a major obstacle to
promote civil society and democracy
in Iran
Leila Piran
December 8, 2004
iranian.com
While Iranian women lost many of their rights in
the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, they fought back to gain
social, political,
and legal rights. Instead of accepting traditional roles as mothers
and housewives, they decided to don the compulsory hejab and go
to work. Many organized women's rights groups: Others published
various articles and editorials under anonymous names, criticizing
the Islamic regime's authoritarian and male dominated interpretations
of the Shari'a or Islamic Law.
In the eyes of the international community, Islamist and secular
activists have drawn considerable attention to the plight of ordinary
Iranian women.
For example, Robin Wright, a Washington Post correspondent,
recognized Iranian women as leaders of "the most energetic
movement to emerge since 1979, which is shattering the starkest
stereotype of the Islamic Republic: the chador-clad female." She
goes on to say that Iranian women are by far the most politically
active in the Persian Gulf and are among the most empowered in
the Islamic world. In 1996, 200 women ran for the 270 seat parliament,
and 14 won. In 1997, four women registered to run for the presidency.
While excited about the women's active and substantial role
in Khatmai's landslide election in 1997, Wright states that Iranian
women still face serious discrimination. However, she does not
address the nature of gender discrimination and the sources of
it. Although her views are balanced and informative, many questions
are left unanswered since it is debatable as to whether a women's
movement exists in Iran at all, and if it does who leads it and
what are its objectives.
It is important to view women as active participants in the discourse
on their role and status vis-à-vis the Islamic regime. The
place of Iranian women is complex and does not allow for simple
characterization, according to Farhad Kazemi. Meanwhile, current
social problems such as the rise of prostitution, drug addiction,
and teen girls' escape from home have resulted from the ever-widening
gender disparity in Iranian society.
I maintain that there is a direct relationship between gender
discrimination or disparity and a weak civil society in Iran. I
use Neera Chandhoke's definition of civil society that sees it
as a site that connects a society and state and is indispensable
for democracy. It is not merely the presence of this site, but
the fact that this site has been historically connected with democratic
values of participation, accountability, and the construction of
a public discourse through associational life, which makes civil
society indispensable.
But instead of seeing civil society as the
solution to all problems, Chandhoke argues that before this sphere
can play a role in democratizing the state, it must interrogate
itself, and it must democratize itself. For the purpose of this
study, I contend that as long as the gender gap is not taken
seriously, neither a tolerant and active civil society would exist
in Iran
nor democracy.
Therefore, I disagree with the notion shared by
many male reformists who believe that when Iranian society
is reformed and democratized, women's status is improved automatically
or their
needs can only be addressed after implementation of reforms.
In an imperfectly modernized society such as Iran, women and
men are not defined as individuals; instead, they derive their
roles and positions within the framework of family, tribe, or clan.
As for women, the Islamic regime's interpretations of the Quran
and the Shari'a as reflected in the legal codes has managed to
socially construct them to view men as "protectors," especially
since women's decision-making power in regards to their personal
lives is quite limited. Basically, Iranian women cannot make decisions
single-handedly without the influence of their father, husbands,
or male guardians regardless of their access to economic resources.
While I believe that education and employment would help women
catch up, the creation of locally-based networks and alliances
throughout towns and cities led by women who have been marginalized
remains more necessary than ever before since the Iranian government's
efforts are limited and the root of gender disparity is cultural.
The three groups of Iranian women who are most vulnerable share
something in common: Prostitutes, run-away girls, and drug addicts
are not born, but they are socially constructed because of poverty,
illiteracy, and lack of awareness of the most basic rights that
have been recognized by many countries along with deep-rooted patriarchal
values and attitudes present in the family structure. Therefore,
the analysis of family structure is quite relevant to this discussion
though the family needs to be viewed relative to the structure
of society as a whole.
In other words, in Iranian society, there
is hardly any organization that monitors the quality of families'
conduct let alone an organization that adequately responds
to the needs of those affected directly or indirectly by family
abuse and malfunction. Unfortunately, the gap between the rich
and the
poor exacerbates the affects of weakening family structure
in
Iran.
According to recent data, the Iranian law enforcement agencies
found 4,000 teens who had ran away from home. 3.14% of them were
girls. Mehranghiz Kar and Nayereh Tavokoli agree that low self-esteem,
unsuitable relations between parents and their teenage daughters,
poverty, illiteracy, and physical and sexual abuse, specifically
fear of honor killings have led to young girls' self-estrangement
from their families.
 Fatimeh Tondghoyan of the National Organization
of Welfare states that 25% of 300 girls who were turned to this
organization expressed that their fathers or other male relatives
abused them. Cultural poverty plays an important role in making
the family sphere unsafe for teen girls, specifically the type
of culture that instead of finding the wrongdoer and punishing
him or her, punishes the victim instead. As a result, educating
Iranian families, monitoring their conduct, and the quality
of their attitude towards their daughters appear to be substantially
important.
But in any case, even if a young girl leaves her
home
for the dangerous streets, prior education in school about
survival skills come in handy since there is direct link between
their
escape from home and prostitution. 8.94% of those who escape
from home
turn to prostitution within 48 hours. Consequently, teaching
girls about prevention measures go hand in hand with monitoring
families'
attitudes toward their daughters. Also, emphasizing the role
of education hints at Iranian Students' Press or ISNA's recent
statistics
that 94% of run-away girls are illiterate.
As for prostitution, the official sources report that 84,000
prostitutes live in Tehran, and 300,000 throughout the country.
These are not figures that can be ignored easily in a country where
prostitution
and sexual relations outside of marriage are condemned by law and
punished by stoning. So it is essential to find the roots of this
social ill and its recent increase.
According to studies done in Iran and abroad, the majority of
these women have been deprived of family affection and attention
because of divorce, parents' early death, drug addiction, unemployment,
etc. But overall, we should search these women's plight in their
illiteracy and lack of support from family and society in general.
Since Iranian women's right to education and employment in addition
to her personal well-being lie in the hands of their husbands
and fathers, when these safety nets are vanished or lost for
various
reasons, how can we expect women to live independently after
being raised according to cultural norms that tolerate a drug
addict
father who sells his daughter for couple of grams of heroin or
for a very small bride price to a suitor?
This type of attitude
and the regime's tolerance for it only comodifies women. Therefore,
Tavakoli believes that those who insist on women's limited
participation in society tell them that being a woman means only
having a female
body, so being a woman does not equal being human, getting
a job, having dreams of being independent of everyone else, etc...
Contrary
to the traditional way of thinking among older generations of
Iranians
that marriage is the solution to all social ills, women who
leave their parents unhappy and unsafe homes for a refuge at
their husbands' are more likely to end up divorced, abused, or
abandoned.
As for drug addiction, there are between 2 to 6 million addicts
from which at least 1/3 are women. There is a direct relationship
between drug addiction and prostitution. According to the Fist
Conference of Social Issues' Report, 2/3 of prostitutes have used
drugs before or after joining the sex industry. In fact, 54% of
them expressed that either their fathers of both of their parents
were drug addicts or involved in drug smuggling.
 These statistics
show that addiction affects the attitude of parents towards their
children who in turn would go on to treat their wives and children
in the same negative manner. In addition, the three mentioned
problems are linked directly to one another in a sense that one
leads to
the other or intensifies its influence.
About
Leila Piran is a Ph.D.
student in Political Science at Catholic University of America
in Washington, DC. She intends to writeher dissertation on this
topic; any feedback would
be helpful. This paper was presented at the 2004 Society for Iranian
Studies conference.
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