Last updated: Nov. 13, 2022
When many people think of the Iran of today, common images come to mind: veiled women, authoritative leaders, and strict societies. While these images are true, it is just as important to remember the women who came before. As shown in the image below,[1] unveiled Iranian women protesting in 1979 in the Iranian Revolution display stark similarities to the protest movement occurring in the nation today after the death of Mahsa Amini.
Iranian women have fought for their rights before, during, and since the Iranian Revolution. They continue to fight for their rights under present day regimes. While much of the Western world believes these women are a compliant group, they are fighters and do not quit in the face of prejudice. Female academics fought for the Iranian Revolution and believed they would have greater freedoms following the change. However, they experienced a decline in rights including academic oppression which helped catalyze the Revolution.
The Iranian people enjoyed a modern civil society in the early 1970s. However, perspectives on such modernization would quickly change with a new regime. In the early ‘70s under the Pahlavi regime, there were many employment and educational opportunities. The economy was equally prosperous. A push for Westernization under Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi upended religious, societal, and political norms in Iran. While women held many freedoms and were not forced to wear the veil, Iranian religious society began to view the Shah’s attempts at modernization as stretching too far. While many people resented the rule of the Shah because of his extreme affinity for Western views and customs, women had more autonomy under his rule. They were allowed to work, advocate for themselves, divorce, participate in government, and more.
Anti-Westernization blossomed in 1977, and soon a full revolutionary movement against the Shah spread across Iran. As a result, the Shah began to impose bans on aspects of society such as freedom of the press. The Iranian monarchy and Pahlavi dynasty were upended in 1979 when citizens overthrew the government, monumentally changing the future of Iranian and world history.[2] Ayatollah Khomeini and a much more conservative religious clergy asserted authority in the resulting power vacuum.
Women fought for the Iranian Revolution because of the changing ideals in society that promoted Westernization. However, many more freedoms were ultimately restricted after the successful movement’s regime change. Women no longer possessed the ability to divorce, they did not retain child custody despite being mothers, and their husbands dictated when and if they left the house or worked. While women’s pursuit of education had previously been a strong goal in Iran, under Khomeini’s new regime, the push for female education subsided as this concept was viewed as too Western.
As Ayatollah Khomeini began to profess his views on women’s rights under the new Republic, the future of such rights blurred. In an interview by the Wilson Center, Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian author who wrote about and interviewed Iranian women on their professional careers before and after the Iranian Revolution, remarked that no one questioned Khomeini. She noted, “He said women will have a role in the society but within an Islamic framework. Nobody bothered in those days to ask, ‘What is the Islamic framework?’”.[3] Soon after, this ‘Islamic Framework’ became clear as the gains that women had made in the early ‘70s were stripped away.
While Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution destroyed the education system for women at the university level, a surprising increase in girls’ education at the primary and secondary levels occurred.[4] Curriculum across the country was closely examined to ensure it aligned with Islamic principles. Additionally, professors and university faculty whose views did not align with the Cultural Revolution found themselves dismissed.[5] When universities reopened after the examination process, they were shells of their former selves. Not only were the professors less talented and the textbooks of lower quality, but women were also not allowed to study 78 subjects at university, with most in the technical or engineering field, because of so-called “biological reasoning”.[6]
Author and professor Azar Nafisi elaborated on the Cultural Revolution’s impact on universities in her book Reading Lolita in Tehran. The book details her life as a professor at the University of Tehran and describes her life after she left her position because of intense criticism of her views during the Cultural Revolution. However, Nafisi was not entirely deterred. She started a book-study group of female students focused on continuing their studies. Eventually Nafisi left Tehran for the United States because the academic restrictions became too intense. In an interview[7] with Viv Groskop for The Guardian, Nafisi elaborates on her eventual flight from Iran: “It wasn’t a decision taken in haste. There reached a point where I couldn’t do what I did for a living.” Her analysis of the situation in Iran shows how the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution limited female academics to a point beyond repair. She goes on to discuss how her students were infatuated with the West, even though she “wanted them to know that this was an illusion…When I came here [to the US], I realized how the ideal of freedom is being eroded.” Nafisi’s current work continues what Reading Lolita in Tehran began: a personal exploration of her political and cultural challenges during the Iranian Revolution.
The installment of Khomeini universities further aligned with the agenda of the new key players of the regime: the elites. Controlling universities and their subsequent curricula allowed the upper class complete control over what the next generation learned. Using this predicament, university focus was shifted from education to political and ideological propaganda. Debate and dissent within universities increased at the start of the Iranian Revolution and rapidly increased during the Cultural Revolution as the government censored education and the universities. The elites who were able to stoke the fires of debate at universities divided academic society, with one side as maktabi, followers of the school of Islam, and the other ghayr-e maktabi, those not in line with the Islamic leadership.[8] This juxtaposition between scholars who previously studied in harmony only increased the societal divisions resulting from the Iranian Revolution, as freedom of speech quickly dissipated.
University-aged women faced the academic hardships that accompanied the Cultural Revolution; however, younger girls benefitted from some of Khomeini’s reforms. It is important to mention the precedent for the influx of girls into primary and secondary schools. During the beginning of the Revolution, women were no longer allowed access to family planning resources, such as birth control and abortions. There was a subsequent baby boom at the beginning of the Revolution that contributed to the prevalence of primary and secondary-aged girls in the following years. Due to Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution, families saw society and life as safer for young girls. The corruption of the West had been expunged with the Iranian Revolution, and curricula were based on the Islamic religion with a focus on tradition. Families who focused on more traditional and religious ways of life were much more comfortable sending their girls to school. In 1976, three years before the revolution started, only 35.48% of the Iranian female population over age 6 was literate, while the male literacy rate was 47.49% (Elmi). In the decades following the Revolution, the gender literacy gap became considerably smaller. In the 1996 census, when most of the girls beneficially impacted by the Cultural Revolution would have been almost 20, the female literacy rate had risen to a shocking 74.2%. Men were only marginally ahead with 74.7% male Iranian literacy.[9] This data lends concrete evidence to the fact that girls in primary and secondary education benefited from the Cultural Revolution. While cultural and societal events like this generally find themselves to be perceived negatively, there can be benefits, as was seen in Iran. Fortunately, university-aged women were not permanently in their situation and an increase in female higher education would mirror the increase in the education of Iranian girls.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a rise in female enrollment at universities mirrored that of the primary and secondary female enrollment rates, resulting in an overall increase in female education and an improvement of collective female futures. The girls who had been enrolled at primary and secondary schools were now of university age, leading to an influx of female university students. In 1997, 37% of students at universities in Iran were female students. In 2005, less than 10 years ago, women composed 51% of the university student body.[10] This dramatic change is a ripple effect of the increased primary and secondary female enrollment rates in the early years of the Iranian Revolution and Khomeini’s rule. However, Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution does not still influence the subjects women can study. According to the Middle East Institute’s collection of data on education in Iran, female students in the academic year 2006-2007 constituted 70% of university students studying medical sciences and basic sciences.[11] This is a huge increase from Khomeini’s rule and Cultural Revolution which limited women’s access to the sciences. During the Cultural Revolution women were barred from most sciences, especially technical and engineering related subjects. While women are free to study these subjects now, there are still low numbers of women in these fields. Hopefully, the number of women in the technical and engineering fields will increase and mirror the surge in the number of women at universities. Encouragement and further freedoms will help balance out the gender inequities in the technical and engineering fields in Iran, coupled with the changing global tech environment.
While women made gains in the percentage enrollment in universities before and after the revolution, some argue that Iranian society has still not reached gender equality despite continued Iranian feminism efforts. Gender equality was one of the reasons that Iranian women initially pushed for the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Khomeini urged women to push for the revolution because of the common rhetoric that abolishment of the monarchy would lead to increased women’s rights under the new government. As mentioned previously, the new government was not everything that the revolutionaries hoped and planned for, showing the negative sides to the revolution. The religious nature of the new government leaders did not allow gender equality to prevail as they reverted to traditional forms of leadership that oppressed women.
Despite its struggles, Iranian feminism flourished in the face of oppression throughout the 20th century. It is important to note that Iranian feminism had roots in the very early years of this century, long before the Iranian Revolution. The first example of Iranian feminism and a push for women’s rights was during the Constitutional Revolution,[12] which lasted from 1905 to 1925. Women worked with each other to improve literacy rates and advocate against domestic violence.
Women made the most gains in education rates and equality using Iranian feminism when Mohmmad Khatami was president from 1997 to 2005. While an underlying conservative rhetoric persisted, Khatami’s government was reformist and allowed women greater access to higher education resources. While women’s rights were not at the forefront of civil society’s issues because of persistent societal gender inequalities, they gained great momentum and strength during this era nonetheless. In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president under a much more conservative government.[13] His presidency marked a reversal of encouragement of women in university. He also pursued a policy like that of Khomeini and removed professors who were reformist and more liberal, just as Azar Nafisi detailed. Women and political interest groups quickly moved to speak out against these reforms, but their dissent was quickly halted with punishments such as arrests. The persistent shutdown of female advocates by the government demonstrates one way that Iranian society did not reach gender equality. While genders may be balanced in concept, they were not truly balanced in practice.
Iranian feminists continue to push against discrimination and gender equality. International organizations have become involved in Iran’s issues as the organizations continue to unearth more gender-based inequalities present in Iran. Groups like Freedom House work to evaluate countries on their individual levels of freedom. In 2021 Freedom House ranked Iran No. 16 out of 100, a very low score on the Freedom House freedom index.[14] Additionally, Freedom House placed Iran into the “Not Free” category, where it holds one of the lowest scores globally. To answer the question, “[d]o various segments of the population (including ethnic, racial, religious, gender, LGBT+, and other relevant groups) have full political rights and electoral opportunities,” Freedom House gives Iran ¼ points because of the significant underrepresentation of minorities. The 1 point awarded is given primarily because there are five seats in the Iranian parliament reserved for non-Muslims; however, this is heavily restricted, and the representation of non-Persian and non-Shiite minorities remains weak.
While many of these facts about Iranian gender equality and feminism seem bleak, there is hope for the country and its future. Many scholars of Iranian government policies and procedures are optimistic that Iranian women will continue their fight, resulting in even greater advancement of women’s rights. The women who were educated in the primary, secondary, and university levels in the first two decades of the Islamic Republic are now able to advocate for themselves and challenge the practices of the government that bars them from reaching educational equality. According to Winn, “the continued education of women in Iran and the continued commitment of Islamic feminists to agitate for women’s rights appears to be the most effective and practical solution for advancement of women in Iranian society”.[15] It is hard to disagree with this statement. The gains made by Iranian women in civil society show the efficacy of their movement, and continued education and schooling will only aid further in their fight.
The rigged election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president in August 2021 could be the tipping point that allows Iranian women’s rights to fully thrive. Raisi, a 60-year-old religious cleric, is infamous in Iran. In 1988, when Raisi was only 28 years old, he worked as one of the judges who supervised the torture and execution of 5,000 people belonging to an Iranian opposition group, the majority of which were women and children. Raisi’s popularity is minimal and some scholars even hold that Raisi’s rigged election will be remembered as “an authoritarian overreach that destroyed the Islamic Republic’s remaining legitimacy and hastened its demise”.[16] Raisi’s election can be the tipping point that allows Iranian women the freedoms they wish for. Continued efforts and work by the Iranian feminist movement and by Iranian female academics would allow women to thrive in Iran, without having to worry about policies made by persecuting leaders.
After experiencing a rolling back of freedoms in 1979, Iranian women fought back with more intensity, resulting in record-breaking rates of literacy and female university attendance. This initially started with primary and secondary-aged girls, leading to increased university attendance as the girls grew up and pursued the education they deserved. Iranian feminism had begun decades before, but it only intensified during Iran’s Islamic Republic because of the advocacy of women for their deserved rights. While complete gender equality is far from fulfillment in Iran, the current presidency may positively change the future of Iranian women’s rights. Throughout the Iranian Revolution, the human propensity to resist change is clear. It is clear today that Iran is once again on the precipice of change, and Raisi’s presidency may prove the catalyzing factor.
[1] Hoodfar, Homa. “Daughters of the revolution: The Iranian women who risk arrest for protesting against hijab laws and demanding equal rights.” The Independent, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/iran-women-revolution-hijab-protests-ayatollah-khomeini-a8251686.html.
[2] Parsian, Nasrin. Lived Experiences of Iranian Professional Women Considering the Government, Policy Changes, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Pepperdine University, Ann Arbor, 2021. ProQuest, http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/lived-experiences-iranian-professional-women/docview/2562862883/se-2?accountid=11243, page 20.
[3] Seay, George Liston. “Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution.” Wilson Center, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/reconstructed-lives-women-and-irans-islamic-revolution.
[4] Winn, Meredith Katherine. "Women in Higher Education in Iran: How the Islamic Revolution Contributed to an Increase in Female Enrollment," Global Tides: Vol. 10 , Article 10. https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/globaltides/vol10/iss1/10, page 7.
[5] Parsian, Nasrin. Lived Experiences of Iranian Professional Women Considering the Government, Policy Changes, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Pepperdine University, Ann Arbor, 2021. ProQuest, http://proxygw.wrlc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/lived-experiences-iranian-professional-women/docview/2562862883/se-2?accountid=11243.
[6] Winn, 7.
[7] Groskop, Viv. “Azar Nafisi: ‘Books are Representative of the Most Democratic Way of Living’.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/26/meet-the-author-azar-nafisi-interview-viv-groskop.
[8] Winn, 3.
[9] Elmi, Zahra Mila. “Educational Attainment in Iran.” Middle East Institute, https://www.mei.edu/publications/educational-attainment-iran.
[10] Winn, 10.
[11] Elmi
[12] Parsian
[13] Winn, 15.
[14] Freedom House. “Iran.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/iran/freedom-net/2021.
[15] Winn, 17.
[16] Sadjadpour, Karim. “Iran Stops Pretending.” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/iran-president-raisi-biden/619252/.
Eva Schwartz is a current sophomore at The George Washington University where she is pursuing a B.S. in International Affairs and Economics, with a minor in Data Analytics and concentrations in international security policy and international economics; she is particularly interested in non-state threats and hopes to go into intelligence analysis.
