11.11.2004

Women's 'active role' and the veil

"Since the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979, many women have looked to islam and chosen to wear the veil. This has not stopped Iranian women playing an active role in all areas of public life," writes the SWP's Elaine Heffernan (Socialist Worker November 6). Moreover, the SWP's prostration before the largely phantom islamic wing of Respect sees it claiming that there is essentially no difference between the oppression of women in Britain and in Iran. Yet there can be no hiding the fact that in Iran women have less freedom. Indeed, sexual apartheid rules. Yassmine Mather of the Iran Bulletin and Middle East Forum puts the record straight

The first part of comrade Heffernan’s statement is at best a partial truth.

In fact, Khomeini’s first fatwa after coming to power in March 1979 was on this very question. This instructed Iranian women (all women, whether Zoroastrians, christians, jews or atheists) that covering their hair was obligatory. In today’s Iran, no woman dares to go without the veil, whatever her personal views on the subject. This has not stopped tens of thousands of women, many as young as 13 or 14, being flogged for wearing a ‘poor’ or ‘bad’ hijab. This can mean a ‘crime’ as trivial as a woman showing a bit of fringe from under a headscarf.

It is certainly true that in the last years of the shah’s rule, some women voluntarily covered their hair as a form of opposition both to US dominance in Iran and the shah’s pro-Israeli stand. This was when some had illusions about what a theocracy might mean for ordinary people. Today, most Iranians consider the islamic regime to be synonymous with clerical corruption and greed. Any illusions people once had in the progressive nature of the religious state quickly disappeared when they saw that the ‘Mercedes-driven mullahs’ were as corrupt and greedy as any of the shah’s courtiers.

We also have to remember the level of hypocrisy of the theocracy. The Iranian leaders even impose the hijab on foreign women visitors to Iran, supposedly in the name of female ‘modesty’. Yet they preside over a country where prostitution is on the rise, where a number of senior clerics who run halfway houses for young girls, face charges of organising prostitution rings. Fundamentalism has actually led to unprecedented levels of moral and social decadence.

As to comrade Heffernan’s second sentence on women’s participation in society, again it tells a certain truth - but in a totally misleading way. For instance, over the last two to three years there have been many news items about the involvement of Iranian women in social and political life. In a way, this is actually an inevitable reaction to the interference of fundamentalism - of religion in general, in fact - in the private lives of women. Women have started to play “an active role in all areas of public life” as an opposition to the theocratic regime. An important and highly visible manifestation of the state’s oppressive interference is of course the hijab. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first large demonstration against the shia state took place in March 1979 when women protested against the imposition of the veil.

Today, women organised in NGOs form an important part of the opposition against the regime. It is true that during the rule of Khatami - Iran’s supposedly reformist president - a number of women were given government or parliamentary posts. However, almost all of these token women were close relatives of senior clerics - the vast majority of Iranians considered their presence in government and the islamic majles with contempt.

Comrade Heffernan’s view of the “active role” of women in a society that practises a strict sexual apartheid is misplaced at best. The theocracy has made a systematic attempt to confine women to their homes through legislation that makes work outside difficult - even going out of the house is cumbersome.

This deliberate policy of gender segregation is characteristic of the regime of the mullahs - it has not been a general feature of Iranian society historically.

This is particularly notable in heath and education. For example, hospitals are segregated according to sex. Given that there are far fewer female doctors than male, this means qualitatively poorer levels of healthcare for women. In education, there is a policy of segregation at all levels, including university - again with obvious detrimental effects on the standards of education for women.

Thus, the private protest of Iranian women has necessarily taken on a political character. But this has nothing to do with postmodernist ideas we hear so much of in UK and US academic circles about islamic feminism, or islamists becoming feminists. Quite the reverse. It is the traditions of secularism in Iran, the levels of female involvement in the economy over decades, not just the last 20 years, that have created the backbone of a women’s movement that will not tolerate this level of segregation, of this sexual apartheid.
For example, it would be wrong to imagine that suddenly in Afghanistan, where women experience far worse levels of oppression, we will see the same kind of struggles. There is a different history of industrial development and the urban-rural distinction is far more accentuated. Iran is a far more urbanised society.

In practice, women’s fate is haggled over by the theocracy over their heads. Women only make their voices heard through protest from below. For example, throughout last year’s elections there was a debate between the two factions of the religious hierarchy over the extent that women’s heads and bodies must be hidden. The point of contention was whether women should cover themselves entirely in an all-enveloping black robe, or if they might be allowed to have a separate headscarf and robe - with the headscarf sufficing for minimal levels of ‘modesty’.

Now this grotesque debate took place against the backdrop of the very clearly expressed demand of Iranian women themselves, made time and time again. They want to be free to decide what they wear. Of course, on one level this is a very mundane issue. But, in fact, it actually reflects the general level of systematic oppression of women that is endemic in that society.

After the election, the reformist faction made a concession that illustrates the idiotic level of petty intrusion into women’s lives. Women delegates would be allowed to come to parliament without the full veil. So a woman could enter the Iranian parliament without the whole islamic regalia suffocating her. However, it was also decreed that all queues must remain strictly segregated - men on one side, women on the other.

These sort of contradictory developments result from pressure from below. In daily life, Iranian women stand up for their rights against the regime established by the 1979 revolution. In truth, it is this rebellion against their oppression - not least the obligation to wear a veil - that is the primary form of women’s “active role” in today’s Iran.