"Before the Islamic revolution of 1979, the majority of women chose to cover their heads in public in some way and the requirement that women wear Islamic covering may have helped some of them to gain an education and emancipation, especially in traditional families, as they did not need to go through a drastic cultural makeover to enter the work force. In 1975, women's illiteracy in rural areas was 90% and more than 45% in towns. Now, the nationwide literacy rate for girls aged between 15 and 24 has risen to 97%; while female students in state universities outnumber male ones.
Women have transformed Iran since the revolution. A third of all doctors, 60% of civil servants and 80% of all teachers in Iran are women. Some people believe the regime is immune to change, but many others, especially women, are experts at finding ways round the constraints of the patriarchal system. These women activists are less interested in whether or not to wear the veil and more concerned with gaining access to education, wider employment opportunities, equality at work and better health care for their families.
Iranian women's advances have not come about overnight; they represent a long history of hard-fought grassroots struggle. Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, one of the women under arrest tonight, writes in the March 2007 issue of the New Internationalist about a day spent going door to door in Tehran in a campaign to get a million signatures in support of women's rights, and about her apprehension of ringing the first doorbell in her old neighbourhood:
"What crime am I about to commit that I feel so scared. Why should I be scared when I'm not doing anything wrong? When my government defends its ‘inalienable rights' [to nuclear power], why shouldn't I defend my own inalienable rights?"
opendemocracy.net |
