Iranian Women: We Feel Cheated, Frustrated, And Betrayed (UPDATES)

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."

* * *

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.

Follow Diane Tucker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dianetucker

Comments

[gallimaufry03]

Okay, this is what I'm going to do. Tonight after the sun goes down, I'm going to go out on my patio and chant "Alloho Akbar" and "God Bless Neda" for a few minutes. Now, I doubt anyone in my neighborhood will have any idea what it means but that's what I'm going to do tonight and every night so long as those women are fighting for freedom.

I can't do much else. But I can send good positive vibes out.

[Diane Tucker - Huffpost Blogger]

Do you remember Vaclav Havel, one of the leaders of the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia? Asked about Iran recently, Havel said that we should exhibit solidarity.

And you just did.

[okeefep1]

thank you, HuffP, for bringing more awareness to women's rights and dedicating a section to it.

[gallimaufry03]

I comment on huffpost a lot.

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.

[Diane Tucker - Huffpost Blogger]

Are you on Twitter? "#iranelection" fell off the list of trending topics tonight. At least one national security expert is worried about the lack of public pressure on the regime, and what it might mean next week. Here's the link to "How Jacko Helps the Mullahs" --

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-26/will-michael-jackson-doom-iran/

[zailjav]

I agree if women have the freedom in iran, coz they have the right to freedom.
http://travelbookinfo.com
http://houseproperty.org

[atcrossroads]

Further to some bloggers' assertions that in some Middle Eastern countries women are not 2nd class citizens:

"...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

[Doomestic]

Parliaments is the worst way to imply "equality", mainly due to the fact that most women do elect men to represent them, because in countries like Lebanon, Sectarian politics trump feminist politics.

[QuietLightTraveler]

Religion has no place in government in the modern world. The Mullahs have got to go.
Cmon women, revolt ! Do you think if men were treated like you are it would be tolerated.
No way, they would have revolted.

[mergina]

How about a mass exodus of women out of Iran, indeed out of every country in the Muslim world where they are treated as less than equal and less than zero, depending which country you are in. Leave the oppressive men to their hands and their genitals.

[atcrossroads]

Sadly, in some of these countries, like Saudi, women are only allowed to leave the country with the permission of a father or a husband.

[misaacm]

The only country in the middle east which respects women is Israel.

[Doomestic]

You clearly never visited Lebanon.

[mergina]

Can they do something as innocent and FREE as walking down the street with their hair flowing in the breeze?

[MDH82]

check this out as well:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/political-climate-elections-iran-forbes-woman-power-feminism.html

[ruhaba]

You are so right , but i think with this one Iranian have some freedom rather than none at all, to the day that our country is FREE.

[mergina]

That day may be closer than you think. It's in the air, everywhere.

[mergina]

Merci.

[OswegoKayaker]

We are only now getting a glimpse of millions of people in Iran who want change and want more freedom. But there can be no reform as long as the mullahs are in charge. They pick the candidates allowed to run in the first place. There were 470 candidates running and four were allowed on the ballots by the ayatollahs. Until these people are ready to overthrow the men really in charge -- nothing will change. They make the rules. Mirhossein Mousavi is no liberal savior -- he was a hardliner when he was prime minister under the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That he was allowed on the ballot at all tells us that he got the stamp of approval from the men really in charge.

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.

[Emerald1943]

I am in awe of the Iranian women who risk injury and possibly death to make their voices heard!!

Go, Iran! We support you!

[Travis bdboy]

I learned many years ago.....NEVER ARGUE WITH A WOMAN.....you lose

[iluvsam]

Does one expect anything else but repression from a theocracy? Religion is used as a brainwashing tool and then used as a tool to oppress. It has been like this since the inception of religion. Knowing this, the Founders of U.S. were brilliant for ensuring that the U.S. would be a SECULAR society.

Until the Iran rids itself of being a "theocracy", nothing will change.

[Doomestic]

Yes, the US is so secular today, when one of the primary factors for any president to be elected is his "faith", when support for a Zionism and Israel to the extent we saw lately can only be explained by Religious fanaticism, rather than American interest, which is being devastated by such support.

In fact, the US is probably the least secular "Western" country in existence today.

[CJWebber]

I couldn't agree more. The U.S. is a borderline theocracy.

[Usama]

This is a common fallacy of feminists: 'a woman's testimony in court carries only half the weight of a man".. A woman's testimony as a defendent, suspect, owner, and expert is accepted singularly. As an expert includes the mother's insight into her family and children, a woman doctor, etc.

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.

[Nathan Gonzalez - Huffpost Blogger]

Usama, I understand where you're coming from in the sense that oftentimes in the West we fetishize over how oppressive Islamic societies are. However, we would be blind not to recognize that in the Middle East (as in many other male-dominated societies, irrespective of religion) women ARE treated as second class citizens.

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.

[Doomestic]

"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."

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.

[gracie99]

I'm afraid for these Iranian women and also in awe of their courage.

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.