IRAN: Lecture discusses Iranian Women

Women in Iran have resisted attempts by the Islamic theocratic regime to render them second-class citizens following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Haleh Esfandiari said in her lecture, “Iran's Indomitable Woman.” Abigail McGowan, a history professor at the University of Vermont, followed with a discussion about the instability in Kashmir on Wednesday morning in Spaulding Auditorium.

Esfandiari, who was held in an Iranian prison for four months after refusing to confess to engaging in anti-government activities, said that Iranian women expected liberation after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Following the revolution, women aspired to equality under the law and instead became second-class citizens,” she said.

Laws dictated where women could travel, what they could wear, where they could be educated and how they could interact with men under the new regime, Esfandiari said. Leaders of the revolution also reintroduced harsh medieval punishments for moral crimes such as adultery, she added.

“Since 1979, over 100 women have been stoned to death for ‘allegedly' committing adultery, and women are flogged for simply not wearing traditional Islamic headdresses,” Esfandiari said.

Despite opposition from conservatives, women have managed to enter professions traditionally reserved for men including such fields as family protection law and publishing. Iran now has several hundred female publishers and annually hosts one of the largest book fairs for women publishers in the world, according to Esfandiari. One of the biggest supporters of women in Iran is former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, Esfandiari said. He was the first Iranian president to place women in senior decision-making positions. He appointed a woman to be his vice president of environmental affairs and named prominent female writer and activist Zahra Rahnavard the first female chancellor at Alzahra University in Tehran, according to Esfandiari.

Various women's rights campaigns, such as One Million Signatures Campaign for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws — an organization that encourages volunteers to travel door-to-door to get people to sign their petition — have made Iran's security ministry far more “paranoid” about women's activist movements, Esfandiari said.

“They were petrified that the One Million Signatures campaign was part of a plot to promote soft revolution,” she said. “They clearly felt that such protests would snowball into something bigger.”

Tensions between women and the government's security ministry increased in the aftermath of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed 2009 electoral victory over opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. For the first time, Iranian citizens witnessed a woman play a key role during the election as Mousavi's wife campaigned heavily for her husband, Esfandiari said.

The election caused a “profound transformation” in the minds of Iranian women, Esfandiari said. As they witnessed fellow women sacrifice their lives to protest Ahmadinejad's election, a collective spirit of revolution began to develop.

In the second lecture of the morning, McGowan discussed the importance of the disputed Kashmir region when considering the stability of the Middle East. The conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir — located between the two nations — has fueled terrorism throughout the region since 1989 and represents South Asia's prime impetus for nuclear conflict, she said.

“The problem in Kashmir is the one conflict most likely to turn into nuclear war in South Asia,” McGowan said.

Since 1948, India and Pakistan have fought over Kashmir because both countries view the region as “vital to their national identity,” McGowan said. While Pakistan wants Kashmir to continue to serve as a safe haven for South Asian Muslims, India views the disputed territory as an example of a secular progressive state.

“For Pakistan, how can you abandon a Muslim majority province without thinking that you left major work unfinished?” she said. “On the other hand, the whole premise of India is that it was going to be a secular nation and by having Muslim volunteers fight for them against Pakistani insurgents only proved their rightness.”

The lectures were the fifth installment of the seven-part summer lecture series, “Perilous Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran,” sponsored by the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth.