In her survey on Iranian women`s history, Massoume Price writes that women`s documented
struggle for emancipation starts in the 19th century, where Fátimih Baraghání also known by her
titles Tahirih or Quaratun`l-`Ayn, a master in Persian, Arabic and Islamic literature managed to
reach high excellence in theology. In 1828, she met Seyyed Kazem Rashti and his successor
Seyyed Mohamad Bab, the founder of the Babi movement in Iraq, where she had gone to further
her religious studies. She eventually ended in the top leadership of the Babi movement.
Quaratun`l-`Ayn`s presence often without veil in public gatherings angered many people, even
those among Babis. In 1852, after the massive persecution of the Babis, she was executed for her
radical views and her fight for women`s rights.
On January 7th 1936 Reza Shah “declared the abolition of the veil and made modern education
available to women on a mass scale”. Emancipation of women was officially born then. On that
day, at the (men`s) Teacher Training College (now the Faculty of Education of Teheran
University) all female teachers of the capital had been invited to attend without their veils
together with wives of the ministers and generals. Reza Shah next to his unveiled wife and
daughters delivered a historic speech reading:
“Ladies, know that this is a great day, use the opportunities which are now yours to help the
country advance.”
This was part of a series of actions taken by Reza Shah in an effort to "modernize" Iran. The
strict enforcement of the unveiling of women caused much uproar and distress among various
communities.
Technically hejab means covering Islam desires for the preservation of social tranquility, hence
it asks women to cover themselves in their interactions with men whom they are not related.
For many women wearing the veil represented tradition, honor, femininity, and some times even
comfort; hence most women, along with their husbands, passionately opposed the royal decree.
Some women refused to leave their houses for months, some others ventured out into the streets
in full cover and risked being beaten and having the veil violently pulled off of their heads.
Despite the rigorous efforts of the government to enforce the ban on veil, the resistance of
women proved to be much stronger than what the government had predicted. Many women
continued to observe a modest Hejab. When Mohammed Reza Pahlavi became the Shah
following the abdication of his father in 1941, the ban on the veil was lifted.
According to Farzaneh Milani in Veils and Words, it was not long before that there was a
"renewed interest in the veil". This time the traditional and religious women were not the only
ones who observed some degree of Islamic Hejab; some of the more liberal and non-traditional
women of middle and upper classes also took up the scarf and the observance of the Hejab.
This "renewed interest in the veil" coincided with the implementation of reforms in Mohammad
Reza Shah's White Revolution. As Zohreh Sullivan states in Eluding the Feminist, these reforms,
which were generally seen as a move toward Westernization and industrialization, "resulted in
poverty and chaos that followed mass migration from country to city."
The masses of people, who were already concerned about the growing gap between the rich and
the poor, became more alarmed and an opposition movement slowly began to take shape. As the
media and the press were controlled by the government, university campuses and religious
venues, mainly mosques, became the major outlets for the outcry against the pro-Capitalist, pro-
Imperialist, and generally pro-American policies of the Shah's government.
That in turn encouraged a move towards more traditional values and ways of living, which
included dressing more modestly for both men and women and even wearing the scarf or the veil
for some women. For many women making the decision to wear the chador was not based on
religious grounds, but it was a conscious effort to make a statement against the Pahlavi regime. It
was against this backdrop that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 took place; a revolution, which
one could argue, could not have taken place without the active involvement of women.
Ironically, Khomeini's decree, requiring women to wear the chador, came on March 7th, 1979, a
month after his return to Iran and one day before International Women's Day. Energized and
excited that they had achieved what they had fought so hard for, various women's organizations
in Tehran and all across Iran, had planned celebrations for marking International Women's Day.
As Parvin Paidar notes, those celebrations quickly morphed into massive protests and
demonstrations; "the protesters included young and old, rich and poor, veiled and unveiled", just
as women from all walks of life had marched in support of the revolution and Khomeini, they
now were protesting against his policies on women's rights. Thousands of women participated in
spontaneous and massive protests against the Hejab.
Once again women were demanding their rights, only this time they were demanding it from the
very government that they had hoped (and had promised) would ensure the protection of their
rights. Despite the numerous meetings and protests that were held on Tehran University campus,
the streets, and even at the Ministry of Justice, the women were unsuccessful in reversing the
compulsory veiling decree.
Abolhassan Banisadr, who became the IRI's first president, justified the enforcement of the veil
by stating that in a society such as Iran, "clothing has a social role" and that the goal of the
society should be to establish a "unitarian society" in which the relationship between men and
women would be a "relationship between brains" and in order to achieve such a society, people
"must inevitably minimize those relations that are engendered between bodies. [People] must
choose clothing appropriate to such aims." Another Banisadr`s famous confirmation is that “the
female hair radiates something which acts on the male brain” was inspired from mythological,
misogynous old stories older than Islam.
To make matters worse, most of the political action groups, which many of the women were
members of, failed to fully support the women in their opposition to the compulsory veil.
Although some of the political parties condemned compulsory veiling in writing, they failed to
support their words with action.
During the revolution women were encouraged to participate in demonstrations against the
regime. Women, who had been actively opposing the regime in various ways, became an integral
part of the anti-Shah movement. They had many of the same ideals as their male counterparts.
They believed in equal rights for men and women, in freedom of speech and expression, and in
"abolishment of all discrimination in law against women, particularly in relation to the family".
None of these ideals became reality after the revolution. As Haleh Esfandiari notes, almost all
the women she interviewed for her book, Reconstructed Lives, felt a sense of betrayal and loss.
Almost all said that "they had felt profoundly the humiliations visited on them by the regime's
policies and actions regarding women."
Some of the women Esfandiari interviewed kept their hopes alive for a year or two after the
revolution; for some the dream died almost immediately after the IRP took over. Mari, one of the
women interviewed by Esfandiari, says:
Like many others, I was also swept off my feet by the revolution... I remember the night Ayatollah
Khomeini returned to Iran. I was excited and agitated... I never considered this [wearing the
chador] a social movement, but rather a show of defiance against the system. I was too worried
about communism to pay much attention to Islam.
As Akram S. Pari suggested in an interview, there was another purpose for the observance of
Hejab during the revolution. Many middle and upper class women saw the scarf and chador as
unifying factors among women.
This is a view that was shared by many women during the revolution. This is one of the reasons
for the advocacy for modesty. Also, as Afsaneh Najmabadi suggests, "Westoxification" was
quite a taboo concept and every effort was made by women and men alike to avoid looking like a
Westoxificated (gharbzadeh). This further encouraged the need for modesty in clothing and
behavior.
Millions of women took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They saw the revolution as a means
to achieve the rights they thought they deserved to have. Many of the women did indeed wear the
chador voluntarily during the revolution, but for them the revolution was a political movement
rather than a religious one. They resented the Pahlavi regime and every thing that it stood for and
in the 1970's Hejab represented what the Pahlavi's had rejected. As Sullivan states, "the chador is
used by opposing camps for opposite reasons: the veil as a symbol of liberation from the
dictatorial state and as an instrument for hegemonizing a revolution by those whose only aim
was political power."
It did not take long for the hopes of the women for a democratic society to turn into a nightmare.
Hejab was no more a matter of personal choice. Women had to be draped in banal and
anonymous fold of cloth. Girls in school had to wear navy blue magnaeh ( an Islamic bonnet that
cloaks the entire head) which are hindering them from playing, jumping, running and most
activities. Thus not be able to do what is essential for a growing child to do in order to build ones
body structure. Alopecia and skull itch is very common among women and girls who have to
wear veil for long hours. Wearing scarf is particularly uncomfortable for young girls as the scarf
pulls the hair with each movement of the head and irritates the child. In the hot summer days
wearing a scarf means loads of sweating and uneasiness.This will result in premature weariness
and aging. Children are children no matter where they live. At the opening scene of Tahmineh
Milani` s film “The Unwanted women” a school girl at around 12 in navy blue magnaeh reads
her composition demanding answers :
Why they are trying to put us, girls, in cage telling us do not do this, do not do that. I want to
play, laugh and wear colorful dresses like my mother did years ago when she was my age, but I
am not allowed to.”
On the other hand after the 1979 revolution, women who had been held back in Shah`s regime
due to their veil and their social background were now visible in the society and very mobile.
Today`s Iranian women might be veiled but they have found their own way of progressing past
all the limitation and obstacles put in order to hinder them in the name of Islam. Women have
started to literally beat the Islamic regime with its own weapons, attacking the traditional habits
and challenging their chauvinistic views, especially in their writings, as more and more women
are able to read and write now.
The veil became one of the favorite theme in women`s post-revolutionary prose literature. The
veil has found a very significant place in their literature, it has become a symbol of improvement
for some and a retrogressive step for others, its meaning is personal interpretation of what Islam
and the Islamic Republic has meant for Iran. Many women in Iran see the mandatory veil as the
very sign of humiliation and oppression while some see it as a mean to desegregate and a ticket
to the outside world (public places). Veiled women authors such as Zahra Rahnavard who was
not recognized in pre-revolutionary Iran but have now become comprehensible to Iranian
readers. The mandatory veiling has given authors like Zahra Rahnavard empowerment.
Rahnavard in her writing debates that Islam has not only required women to conform to modest
dress and behavior but also men.
Sousan Azadi an exiled female author is one of those many Iranian women who has a negative
attitude towards the veil, in her book “Out of Iran” portrays the veil as a “mobile prison”. She
writes:
“As I pulled the chador over me. I felt a heaviness descending over me. I was hidden in
hiding.Ther was nothing left of Sousan Azadi. I felt like animal of the light suddenly trapped in a
cave. I was another facelss Moslem woman carrying a whole inner world hidden inside the
chador.”
Women working in hospitals, laboratories, school, driving in the heavy traffic of Teheran with
veil which impairs their side vision, constantly fearing it may slip off while they drive. And if it
does what shall they do uphold modesty or prevent an accident? The Iranian woman writer
Farideh Kheradmad (now living in Canada) has a very interesting short story about a woman
whose veil was taken away by the wind when she was driving her Jeep on the highway one hot
summer day. She panics, merely escapes an accident and stops the car, worrying about what to
do, she puts on her head the newspaper she has bought in the morning. Unfortunately, policemen
arrive did not believe her explanations and take her to the police station. Although at the end it
turns that it is a dream or more exactly a nightmare, it is perfectly possible to happen in real life,
as it is shown at the end of the story.
When Ayatollah Khomeini banned women from revealing the shape of their bodies, women
began to feel like “black sacks” as Sepideh Shamloo points out in one of her stories with the
same title. What is the result of the imposed hejab? Azadeh Moaveni describes it very truly in
Lipstick Jihad:
“Iranians were preoccupied with sex in the manner of dieters constantly thinking about food….
The constant exposure to covered flesh – whether it was covered hideously, artfully, or plainly –
brought to mind, well, flesh.”
Besides the damaged hair the veil intensifies the general sadness women were prone to feeling
over all the things that are wrong in their personal lives and in the country at large. Why bother
about your hair, your figure, if it gets lost in the folds of a cloak. As a result before they know
they devolve into a sloppy version of themselves with unkempt hair, alternately clad in chadoroutside
and messy house clothes inside.
This phenomenon afflicted younger women much less dramatically. Cosmetic surgery,
particularly of the face became an investment in feeling modern.
The presidency of Mohamad Khatami made possible to wear roopoosh (a long, loose coat, also
called by the French term manteau). Some women were not so much enthusiastic about it for
them they considered them “just a prettier cage”.
At that time women started wearing lipstick, exposing their toes and curves wearing their veils
half way back. As Azadeh Moaveni states in her book , the changes were modest, but they
made life, compared to the gloomy years of pre Khatami privation, infinitely more livable.
Iranian women, like women everywhere, expressed themselves in part through their physical
appearance. Because the regime tried to take away this right by giving them uniforms, the task
became time-consuming, often obsessive challenge.
In the recent years as summer arrives in boiling and polluted Teheran “ the essentials of Islam “
start shaking with Iranian youth enjoying short sleeves and scarves in every color imaginable,
and in short coat-like tunics called manteau that hugged their curves. Nearly at the same time
starts the so called “mobareze ba bad hejab” The fight with the improper hejab. That meant a
few bad weeks for the Iranians before the Police realizes they are just making people more
enthusiastic in turning the streets of Iran into fashion hall. In the past years the pressure quickly
relaxed and soon head scarves become perched on the back of heads, while fashionable women
in Northern Teheran wear open toe sandals and three quarter length trousers. But in 2007 the
crackdown seemed more serious. The newspapers, Internet sites are full of pictures of women
being arrested for their un-Islamic clothing. Some carry the title ”Women in Hell”, Police and
Hejab etc. But one video film shows only different pictures of police abusing women for “bad
hejab” and the sound is from the speech of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the eve of the 2005
presidential elections:
“Really, is the problem of our people now the youth’s hairstyle? People can style their hair
however they want; this is none of your business or mine! You and I have to think about our
country’s real problems. The government must set the economy in order, restore peace, create a
secure psychological environment, support the public – people have diverse preferences, diverse
traditions, diverse ethnicities, diverse groups, diverse styles – the government is at everyone’s
service. Why do we belittle people? We really belittle people so much so that now the important
problem of our youth is to pick their hairstyle, and the government doesn’t let them?! Is this the
worth of government? Is this the worth of our people? Why do we underestimate people? Our
country’s problem is that some girl wore some dress? Is this our country’s problem? Is this our
people’s problem?”
Though most women in modern day Iran might not consider the veil their highest grievance, they
knew it symbolized the system`s disregard for women`s legal status in general. Mandatory
veiling crushed women`s ability to express themselves, therefore denying them a basic human
right. Today, most women in Iran are of the opinion that the veil and the scarf are not their Hejab
(restriction); they believe that the laws and denying them their rights are their real Hejab.
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Sofia, 18 April 2008
"
As I pulled the chador over me. I felt a heaviness descending over me. "
