“I saw many photos of my grandmother from before the revolution, her in the veil and my mother in a miniskirt, living in harmony, side by side.”
What Rana Rahimpour, an Iranian-British presenter for the BBC’s Persian service, remembers is not confined solely to her family.
In Iran, prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there was no strict dress code that currently requires women, by law, to wear the headscarf and modest “Islamic” clothing.
“Iran was a liberal country. Women were allowed to wear what they wanted,” she says.
His testimony is relevant while protests are taking place in dozens of Iranian cities over the recent death of a 22-year-old girl who had been detained by “the morality police”, which is in charge of enforcing Islamic dress codes.
Rahimpour was born after the revolution, but the experience of his parents and relatives and his journalistic work They have allowed him to delve into the transformation that his country experienced after the fall of the Shah.
A transformation that, in the early years, went beyond clothing, as Iranian journalist Feranak Amidi, Women’s Affairs reporter for the Near East region of the BBC World Service, also tells BBC Mundo.
“We didn’t have gender segregation before the revolution. But after 1979, schools were segregated and unrelated men and women were arrested if they were caught socializing with each other.”
“When I was a teenager in Iran, I was arrested by the moral police for being at a pizzeria with a group of friends.”
“Before 1979, there were nightclubs and entertainment venues and people were free to socialize however they wanted.”
Pre-revolution movies also bear witness to a time when women could choose whether to wear Western or more conservative attire.
“You saw a variety of ways to dress. Some wore the black veil or chador, but not in the way that the government currently requires.”
a dynasty
Before the 1979 revolution, Iran was ruled by the Pahlavi dynasty, which began after a coup.
In 1926, the leader of the coup, Reza Khan, was crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohamed Reza Pahlavi was crowned prince.. Later, he would become the last Shah.
In a 1997 article, the Wilson Center think tank reproduced an interview from its Dialogue radio show with Haleh Esfandiari, author of Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution. ).
Esfandiari left Iran in 1978 and returned 14 years later to investigate the impact of the revolution on women.
In that interview, the journalist recounted that “the women’s movement in Iran began at the end of the 19th century, when women took to the streets during the constitutional revolution.”
After that, many of them started social projects like opening girls’ schools and publishing women’s magazines.
They tried to link other provinces to this network, which began in the capital, Tehran, and this led “to the development of the women’s movement.”
The veil
Women’s clothing had already been a topic on the agenda of the country’s leadership at the beginning of the 20th century.
“The headscarf was not officially abolished in Iran until 1936, during the era of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the father of modern Iran,” the author said.
Years earlier, the leader had encouraged women not to wear the veil in public or “to wear a headscarf instead of the traditional long veil.”
“When the veil was finally officially abolished, it was certainly a victory for women, but also a tragedy, because their right to choose was taken away, just as it happened during the Islamic Republic when the veil was officially reintroduced in 1979.”
Many women “were forced to abandon their headscarves and go out into the streets feeling humiliated and exposed.”
Still, Esfandiari acknowledges that the father of the last shah undertook some changes that had a positive impact on women.
the white revolution
In 1941, his son, Mohamed Reza, assumed power.
During that reign, “the modernization of the country began,” says Amidi.
That process became known as the White Revolution, and it gave women the right to vote in 1963 and the same political rights as men.
In addition, an attempt was made to improve access to education in the peripheral provinces.
In his reign, the law for the protection of the family was approved, which dealt with different areas, including marriage and divorce.
The legislation, Amidi explains, expanded women’s rights.
“The family protection law raised the minimum age for marriage for girls from 13 to 18, and also gave women more leverage to file for divorce.”
It also limited the fact that men could only have one wife.
“This was all quite progressive compared to other countries in the region.”
And it is that the Shah, although autocratic, was a progressive leader and liked Western culture.
Thus, he established a secularization program.
the day to day
Women came to occupy positions of power. “We had women ministers, judges,” recalls Rahimpour.
However, despite the promises of the White Revolution, “women were still confined to traditional roles,” says Amidi.
And although he points out that “there were women in Parliament”, he considers that “women did not have a great participation in the political sphere.
But we have to keep in mind that that was almost half a century ago and women around the world at that time didn’t have much political power.”
Even so, he acknowledges that his compatriots were beginning to play an increasingly social role: “They had a vibrant presence in society.”
women concern
Amidi highlights “the great impact” that Queen Farah Pahlavi, wife of Mohamed Reza, had on the arts and culture.
In fact, an essay by Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney of the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York addresses “the artistic flowering in Iran,” which began in the 1950s and continued into the 1960s and 1970s.
“These decades saw the opening of Iran to the international art scene.”
Much of this growing artistic activity was due to the economic prosperity that the country was experiencing.
And it is that Iran had a lot of oil, but the vast majority of Iranians were not benefiting from that wealth.
Despite the Shah’s and his wife’s support of the arts, artists were not blind to that reality and not blind to the regime’s repression of those who opposed it.
Nahid Hagigat, the authors indicate, “was one of the few artists who expressed the concerns of women during the years before the revolution.”
“In her prints, she captured the feeling of tension and fear in a male-dominated society under government scrutiny.”
Elbow to elbow
By 1971, Mohammad Reza, who had declared himself “shahanshah”, “the King of Kings”, was not only one of the richest men in the world but also the absolute leader of Iran.
His regime was increasingly repressive against political dissidents.
“In the previous regime (to the revolution) people had social liberties, but zero political liberties,” recalls Rahimpour.
“That was a big problem. All the parties were controlled by the king, it was a surveillance society, there was no freedom of the press, any kind of political activism could end up in prison.”
Social discontent took to the streets and in 1978 there were massive protests against the Shah’s regime.
According to Esfandiari, the progress achieved by women during her reign destabilized towards the end.
“In reaction to increasingly vocal traditionalist elements in society, the Shah slashed back his support for greater participation of women in decision-making positions.”
The Islamic Revolution was supported by many Iranians who “were not necessarily religious,” Rahimpour explains. Many only clamored for a “true democracy.”
“He had the support of all groups, with the liberals, the communists and the religious.”
Women, regardless of what they wanted to wear or their degree of religiosity, were part of that force that ended up causing the fall of the Shah in 1979.
“In the marches that led to the revolution, there were professional women without headscarves and women from a conservative background in the traditional black headscarf; there were women from lower- and middle-class families with their children.
All these women walked shoulder to shoulder, hoping that the revolution would bring them an improvement in their economic status and an improvement in their social status. And above all an improvement in their legal status,” recalled Esfandiari.
different visions
Amidi does not believe that women “necessarily felt more independent” before the Islamic Revolution.
“Iran was still a very conservative religious society. But back then there was the political will to break out of that traditional, conservative mold, and allow women to flourish and occupy more space in society.”
Said flowering, he clarifies, never fully happened.
According to Rahimpour, there are conflicting ideas about whether women felt more independent and empowered before the Islamic Revolution.
“Religious women would say they felt more comfortable dating after the revolution, but liberal women would disagree with them.”
“We must not forget that there is a part of Iranian society that is very religious.”
Hence, there are women who agree with aspects of the system.
Seeing archive photos of women in Iran in Western clothing and without veils, an Iranian lady pointed out to me that these images are not representative of women’s lives in general before the revolution.
Many women, of different ages, chose to wear the hijab or headscarf and more conservative clothing because “society was possibly much more conservative and religious compared to today.”
protests
Many Iranians entered the revolution with the idea of freedom, but, says Rahimpour, they quickly saw their illusions dashed.
“After the revolution, we realized that many religious people were uncomfortable with miniskirts and with the freedoms that men and women had, and that’s why they also agreed with the revolution.”
However, he says that many people who are “deeply religious” in Iran think that wearing the headscarf “has to be a choice.”
“It ceases to be religion when forced.”
Iran is experiencing an outbreak of protests across the country after the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old woman for allegedly not complying with the hijab rules.
Authorities say Mahsa Amini died of underlying health reasons, but her family and many Iranians believe she died after being beaten.
The protests appear to be the most serious challenge Iran’s leaders have faced in recent years.
And a new chapter of popular mobilizations in Iran.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-63015281, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-09-25 11:20:05
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