insideIRAN.org | Iranian Women Poised to Benefit from Crisis

Iranian Women Poised to Benefit from Crisis

January 5th, 2010 Filed Under : Domestic Relations, News Features

Lili Mansouri

BERLIN—The election on June 12 will always be remembered in Iran as the day of a coup d’état to alter Iran’s politics, but it should also be remembered as coup for women. Four years earlier, on June 12, 2005, thousands of people who had participated in a demonstration asking for the elimination of all discrimination against women. That year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was running for president for the first time. He was the only candidate who did not have any campaign slogans regarding women and their affairs. Once he took office, it became apparent that he did not have any plans for women either.

One of the first moves made by the new administration was to cut funding for women’s issues to as low as one-third of the amount of appropriation. The office of women’s affairs, located in the presidential compound, became the focal point of all women related activities and soon, the name of this office changed from “Office of Women’s Participation” to the “Office of Women and Family Affairs.”

Since then, the government of Ahmadinejad brought forth various pieces of legislation increasing restrictions on women, such as setting gender-based quotas for university admissions in order to cap the number of women going to college each year. These laws also made it easier for men to practice polygamy.

Women activist tried to stay involved in order to campaign for their rights by holding workshops, publishing articles, and using the cyberspace. They insisted on being able to enjoy basic rights such as the right to file for divorce, the right to guardianship of their children, the right to leave the country without their husbands’ permission. They also demanded banning the practice of stoning and being able to enter athletic stadiums like men are.

 

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