Zohreh Nosrat Kharazmi

Introduction

G ender is “one of the modalities through which modernity is imagined and desired” (Rofel, 1999, p. 197); “being modern” cannot be approved as long as one’s position towards gender as a “basic component” of modernity is identified (Deeb, 2006, p. 29). Gender is simultaneously a historical element of the West’s

imperial dominance over the East. As Edward Said proposes in his pivotal work Orientalism (1979), the West’s imperial colonialism has been a “gendered” project: gendering the colonial narratives bestows on the imperial West a “male power fantasy” to dominate the “feminized Orient” as the “Oriental feminine” (Said, 1979, p. 6).

The colonialization of Muslim women, thus, implies the picture of victims of misogynist Islam homogenized under a uniform category of the oppressed “Muslim woman” (Badran, 2008). The “Muslim woman” category today has shifted into an “archetypal paradigm” that reflects the ebb and flow of the political discourse between the West and the Islamic world (Zine, 2002).

The typical evidence for this is the four-decade concentration of the American media and academic circles on the status of women in Iran since the onset of the 1979 Revolution. The long lasting demonization and the stereotypical representation of the Iranian woman by Western media and academics have gone so far that Lila Abu Lughod (2013), a prominent scholar on feminism in Islamic countries, questions,

It is not clear whether and in what ways women have made gains and whether the great increases in literacy, decreases in birthrates, presence of women in the professions and government, and a feminist flourishing in cultural fields like writing and filmmaking are despite or because of the establishment of an Islamic Republic (p. 44).

The present paper assumes the likelihood of achieving an epistemological emancipation and a possibility of thinking about Iranian women in a different mode, this time embedded in the Western neo-imperialism. Some arguments are as follows:

First, as Hamid Algar (2015) asserts:

Iranian women along with Iranian men played a very crucial role in furthering the aims of the revolution. They participated massively in all the important demonstrations. They suffered torture, imprisonment, and abuse. Since the triumph of the revolution, they have continued to play an important role (p. 19).

Second, women’s active participation in national development persists responsibly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic: Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for the social movement for literacy and health was well received by the majority of “not only religious but also middle- upper-class, secular women” (Bahramitash et al., 2018, p. 23).

Third, the Islamic Republic as a political system was established through a national referendum in which both women and men participated, and for which 98.2 percent of those eligible voted. From 1979 to 2022, the Islamic Republic has held 35 elections, presidential, parliamentary, urban and rural councils, and assembly of experts, with high rates of participation of women and men alike.

Fourth, according to UN parameters of development, the empowerment of women (2022) has been a significant achievement in a variety of sectors such as below as national figures indicate:

Over 2390 women serve on the boards of directors of knowledge-based companies, as women make up to 33.3% of faculty members at universities.

When women hold 25.2% of all government positions at all levels, they serve in delicate posts such as 1000 of whom that serve as judges, or presidents of the Environment Organization in four frequent terms.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2022), women’s life expectancy has increased from 63 years in 1991 to more than 79 years in 2019 (vs. men 75).

The proper access to 60 midwives and 2.8 gynecologists has been provided per 100.000 women in different parts of the country.

The mortality rate of children under 5 has decreased by 14.2 per 100.000 lived births.

Today, the Iranian young girls and women access 784 different vocational majors in various sectors including agriculture, industry and services; among them are mechanics, computer sciences, electronics, IT, ICT, etc. (Interactive Dialogue - Commission on the Status of Women (CSW61), 13-24 March 2017, 4th meeting, 2017).

Women make up a great number of ICT users in Iran, e.g. they constitute 45% of the total mobile users, 48% of the computer users, and 48% of the users of the internet.

Getting access to 16.111 gyms, Iranian women have won 3302 medals at recent international sports events.

Iranian Women: The Role Model with Regional Legacy

Despite of such a developing self-portrayal of women in recent decades, still  insufficient depth of knowledge sometimes makes the scholarly works suffer

negligence. However, a very narrow space has been preserved by few Western academicians such as Lara Deeb (2006) whose ethnographic project in Lebanon, Enchanted Modern, indicates a different perception of the Islamic Republic. Here it serves as a role model and its enabling and empowering role for the modern pious women is appreciated by Lebanese Shia women.

As Deeb (2006) suggests, the establishment of an Islamic form of state in Iran is perceived by them as a “powerful worldview” of independence

and self-determination, even an engine to “restructure” the willpower  of Muslim women for the spiritual along with the material development (p. 75).

The Islamic Republic, then, is acknowledged by them to embody “the inseparability of religion, politics”, and Muslim women’s social responsibility to live a pious modern life with a strong sense of leadership and collective self-esteem among Muslims (Deeb, 2006, p. 231).

The success of the Islamic Republic is embedded in the “visibility” and agency of the pious women in modern public spaces and in professional milieus, in other words, the “public piety” (Deeb,2006, p. 180).

To summarize, the Islamic Republic has symbolized Muslim women’s “reason”, “understanding”, and “spiritual progress” against the absolute materialism of Western modernity and its embedded “ignorance, immorality, and emptiness” in Western culture (Deeb, 2006, p. 20 & 23).

Conclusion

During the past four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been represented by the western media and academia as a political system that stands against the “normal” model of secular liberal democracy. It is, thus, perceived as an “unthinkable”, “enigma”, “puzzle”, “paradox”, and “at war with history” (Matin, 2013, p. 1).

The Iranian women’s participation in the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the agency and empowerment it bestows to women, the present paper argues, deserve to be addressed in new terms, at least adrift of the historical simplification and intentional ignorance of the Western observers.

Illustrating some, among many, concrete national achievements in education, health, employment, and decision-making of/by women in Iran, the paper attempts to draw how Muslim Iranian women step forward to highlight various kinds of modernity, a pious modern identity, to be imagined.

Ultimately, Iranian women’s power of dialogue with other cultures is explored in Lara Deeb’s ethnography of the historically marginalized Shia women in Lebanon. Her study is given as an iconic example of epistemological emancipation from the westernized standards of womanhood: it dares to portray the Islamic Republic of Iran as at least a regional role model in Muslim women’s empowerment and inclusiveness.

References

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