Published Sunday, March 07, 2010
International Women's Rights Day campaign launched two months after beatings of the 'Mourning Mothers'
Iranian women's activists have launched a campaign for gender equality to mark International Women's Rights Day.
The campaign, Call for Solidarity: Freedom and Gender Equality in Iran, targets gender-based discrimination against women and what campaigners describe as state-led violence.
Launched on International Women's Rights Day (March 8), the campaign comes two months after 32 women known as the 'Mourning Mothers' were beaten and arrested at a weekly vigil for their sons and daughters who have been missing since protests began after the disputed June 2009 national elections.
One of the 32 women remains in detention and 6 female supporters of the 'Mourning Mothers' have since been arrested. The women are believed to be detained in the notorious Section 209 of Evin prison, which is administered by Iran's Intelligence Ministry. Rights groups say none of the women have been charged with any offense or granted access to lawyers hired by their families.
"There have been many infringement on women's rights since the elections," Nadya Khalife, the women's rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. "Women are being detained imprisoned and harassed just like anyone else, so this campaign is not looking only at gender discrimination but positioning the women's rights movement as a component of the larger protest movement."
“Iranian women have bravely sought over and over to end gender-based discrimination, only to be met with threats, arrests, and imprisonment of activists,” Khalife said. “Human Rights Watch calls on the Iranian government to allow women’s rights groups to operate freely, without harassment, or worse.”
"There have been various campaigns over the past few years and there may be some provisions which have improved women's rights along the way but there are still many that are discriminatory and there remains a lot more to be done," she added.
Dr Eldad Pardo, an expert in Iranian gender issues at the Harry Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, said that while conditions for women in Iran have improved, women's rights issues are increasingly prominent in mainstream Iranian political culture.
”Things have improved since the 1980s, when there was pretty extreme gender apartheid in Iran," he told The Media Line. "But the general picture is that the Islamic Shiite legal system is still extremely anti-women. Women are still discriminated against, harassed by police patrols, forced to give away their children when they divorce and you still have stonings of women."
"As a result, the status of women has become a symbol of oppression for the Iranian opposition," Dr Pardo said. "The plight of women has become a metaphor for the plight of the Iranian nation and as a result women will continue to present a problem for the regime, because large sections of the Iranian population, particularly in the cities, would like to see straightforward equality, including gender equality and everything else."
Women's rights have seen gradual improvements over recent years in Iran. Efforts are underway to reform gender-based compensation laws, in which a family of a woman who dies is awarded half the amount awarded to a dead man. Iranian parliamentarians have also discussed reforms to gender-based inheritance rights and introducing laws against the ability of Iranian men to marry many wives.
But President Ahmadinejad's administration began strengthening sex segregation laws in his first term, beginning with a ban on women being present in government ministry offices after working hours. This was followed by a program to replace male teachers in girls' high schools with female teachers. Shortly thereafter the country's Science Ministry launched a plan to create separate entrances for men and women at the country's universities and segregate some of the classes.
Only a portion of the segregation programs have been implemented, but symbols of unrest in Iranian gender relations were apparent early in the election campaigns last year, as presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi openly asserted the need for greater rights for women, an end to legalized gender discrimination, an increase in women's participation in Iranian workplaces and politics and a curb in the powers of religious police.
The candidate attacked the various barriers faced by women's rights activists and pledged to review "all discriminatory and unjust regulations against women's legal and judicial security", to devise "comprehensive plans for the promotion of women's rights at the country's social, economic, and political stage" and to work towards "eliminating violence against women by adopting legal supportive measures."
Moussavi also promised to repeal the expansive powers of Iran's religious police, which require women to wear loose-fitting clothing covering the entire body and something covering the hair. Some Iranian women completely cover their hair, but most do not.
To differing degrees, the other opposition candidates followed suit and for the first time since the Islamic revolution, women's rights entered public discourse and women have been at the forefront of Iran's burgeoning protest movement since the disputed elections.
Following Ahmadinejad's reelection, the government has made various moves to further segregate office buildings, hospitals, public parks and primary schools, and in the half year since the president was reelected a number of Iranian ministers and religious leaders have called for a more strict adherence to sex segregation in various aspects of public life.
Most notably, the former speaker of the Iranian parliament Haddad Adel, who is close to both President Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme religious figure Ayatollah Khamenei, called on the country's new science minister Kamran Daneshjoo to segregate Iranian universities.
"Islamization of universities is a long awaited task for the new minister of science and we hope to accomplish it soon with the help of theology centers around the country and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution," Adel was quoted as saying.
Late last month the minister seemed to comply, stating that Iran "shall segregate students on sexual lines as the Islamic worldview requires."
The Legal and Judicial Commission of Iran's parliament has also been pushing a new Family Support Bill, which includes an amendment legalizing polygamy.
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