Most Recent Update 8.1.09
Look closely at the pictures of demonstrations taking place in Iran this week and you will see them: thousands of women taking to the streets to peacefully protest an election they say was stolen. "We feel cheated, frustrated and betrayed," said an Iranian woman in a message widely circulated on Facebook.
For these brave wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, their march to oust Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has everything to do with their desire for equal rights. These women invested their hopes in Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate who pledged to reform laws that treat women unfairly. As it stands now, an Iranian woman's testimony in court carries only half the weight of a man's. Women do not have equal divorce, child custody, or inheritance rights either.
Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard, Iran's top-ranking female college professor, is a crowd-pleaser at political events, where she is not afraid to speak her mind about women's rights. For example, when Ahmadinejad accused Rahnavard of skirting government rules to earn her advanced degrees (she has a masters in art, and a masters and a doctorate in political science), Rahnavard publicly reprimanded him. The Los Angeles Times reported her I-won't-back-down rebuttal:
Either [Ahmadinejad] cannot tolerate highly educated women, or he's discouraging women from playing an active role in society.
Thousands of women have observed Rahnavard's call to climb up on their rooftops and chant "Allah-o-Akbar" -- a rallying cry of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In this unforgettable video that captures the late-night chanting, the woman speaking is saying, "Take our phones, our internet...take all our communications away, but we are showing that by saying Allah-o-Akbar we can find each other."
The regime in Iran obviously feels threatened by peaceful female activism. They branded as illegal the One Million Signatures Campaign initiated by women's rights groups in Iran, a campaign to change discriminatory laws against women in that country. Dozens of women involved in the effort have been harassed or jailed by the government.
One of Iran's leading women's rights activists Sussan Tahmasebi told NPR that this election marks the first time women's rights have been addressed in a detailed way. "Candidates have moved beyond vague slogans that emphasize the high cultural and religious value placed on women, to addressing specifically the demands voiced by women's right activists. This shift demonstrates the importance and vitality of the Iranian women's movement, and in particular the achievements of the One Million Signatures Campaign."
Before the Iranian government's internet blackout, women were a force in the country's blogosphere -- the largest in the Middle East. This protest photo posted as a TwitPic on Twitter has received more than 82,788 views on just one of the numerous sites it has been posted on:
The courage of these women to confront Iran's patriarchal theocracy (in which the morality police still prowl the streets looking for women wearing make-up) may have been "a big reason why the regime rigged the vote count -- and why supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was forced to make a show of ordering a probe of the fraud," said the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor in their op/ed posted on Monday. "Eventually," said the editors, "Iran's women will not be denied."
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Huffington Post's Nico Pitney is liveblogging events in Iran.
Update 6.23.09
On Saturday a young Iranian woman named Neda Soltani was shot to death while talking on her cell phone. She wasn't actively protesting; she was a quiet sympathizer. Now Soltani has become the face of Iran's struggle. Read more.
Update 6.25.09
For a different perspective on the election, I interviewed an Iranian-American who believes Ahmadinejad won fair and square. The post includes comments made by Russian journalist Eugene Pozhidaev, who says "The revolution will not be -- yet. The protesters number in the thousands, not the millions. The new Iranian middle class is not sufficiently strong." Read more.
Update 7.14.09
Iranian expats around the world are signing a Green Scroll that is two kilometers in length -- the world's longest petition -- proclaiming "Ahmadinejad is not Iran's president." Read more and watch the slideshow.
Update 8.01.09
Today Iranian authorities opened a mass trial against more than 100 election protesters, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution. Leading opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi issued a call on his Web site, Ghalam News, for Iranians to resume their nightly protest chants of "God is great" more intensely than ever. Those protests have infuriated the country's ruling ayatollahs. Read more.
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I can't do much else. But I can send good positive vibes out.
And you just did.
What else can I do? I want to know what else a woman in Texas can do for her sisters in Iran other than pray and keep informed.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-26/will-michael-jackson-doom-iran/
http://travelbookinfo.com
http://houseproperty.org
"...women's participation in the Lebanese parliament is 2.3 percent, far less than 9.6 percent in Syria and 5.4 percent in Jordan."
In Lebanon, "...not one woman has been appointed to a ministerial post", and " even at the municipal level of government, the 140 women elected in 1998--as council members of 708 cities across the country--hold less than 1 percent of the available seats"
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1648
Cmon women, revolt ! Do you think if men were treated like you are it would be tolerated.
No way, they would have revolted.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/political-climate-elections-iran-forbes-woman-power-feminism.html
Iran Muzzles and Executes Dissenters Under Sharia Law
http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=4085.2276.0.0
According to Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri, the public executions ordered by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are part of a terror campaign to clamp down on an increasingly restive population.
Ahmadinejad does not want peace; he wants Iranian-enforced Sharia law to cover the world.
Go, Iran! We support you!
Until the Iran rids itself of being a "theocracy", nothing will change.
In fact, the US is probably the least secular "Western" country in existence today.
I think it is hypocritical of the US to look to elect a president that is a man/woman of faith. Should that matter at all? So if I run for president should I now join a church? Wouldn't that make me an impostor? In reality, how often in the private world has our current and previous presidents attended church? Once a month? Once a year? Rarely?
I will have good thoughts for the Iranian women that need to be treated equal to men. I would caution them to be realistic about those that are leading them, because in that capacity those leaders end up behaving just like any other organized religion. My point being that causes tend to take on the very religious aspects we all find oppressive.
As common with American imperiousness, the message of Iranian women is coopted by feminists who seek to advocate THEIR OWN vision of society in far away lands despite their failure to solve the problems and resolve the conflicts in their VISION at home.
If Saudi women were advocating and funding and propagating the cause for women to give up driving, to cover themselves head to toe, and to stay at home to raise families, women and men of America would attack them as enemies.
In Iran, women make up between 65 and 70% of university students, and yet women only make up about 15% of the workforce. It's not "family values" that keeps them home, it's the inability to get work in a male-dominated society with rampant unemployment. Men always come first.
As for Saudi Arabia, find me a young, educated Saudi woman who would not like to be able to drive a car legally in the streets of Ryadh. And find me a Saudi man who agrees with the ban on female driving who isn't repressing some unhealthy form of sexual anger that has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
Don't try to put statistics out there without context. It's dishonest. More than 43% of American women above the age of 16 were not part of the work force up till 2008.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat2.pdf
The real statistics that are harder to get is whether or not Iranian women actually desire to be part of the work force or not.
Secondly don't lump the women in the middle east as though they are being treated as "second class" citizens. The middle east is vast and includes Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, UAE and some northern african countries including Tunisia and Morroco. Women in most of those countries are treated as "second class" citizens almost as much as they are in the US.
“To live under Islamic Sharia law is to live in the world’s largest maximum-security prison, and I for one don’t want to be incarcerated again,” writes Darwish in her new book, "Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law."
Execution of a teenage girl
A television documentary team has pieced together details surrounding the case of a 16-year-old girl, executed two years ago in Iran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5217424.stm
Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.
On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka.
Her death sentence was imposed for "crimes against chastity".
The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old.
But she was not married - and she was just 16.
Former revolutionary guard, 51-year-old Ali Darabi - a married man with children - raped her several times.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International says it is concerned that executions are becoming more common again under President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, who advocates a return to the pure values of the revolution.
I hope that our government is taking their desire and need to have their human rights recognized into consideration during all negotiations.
The situations of women in such countries is the main reason that I felt some hope and relief when Clinton became Secretary of State.