Today the New York Times published a fascinating article about the (very slowly) changing status of women in Iran, in part precipitated by women there who have access to the Internet and see how lucky we women in the West are. Did you know that by law in Iran, women may inherit from their parents only half the shares of
their brothers? Their court testimony is worth half that of a man.
Although the state has taken steps to discourage stoning, it remains in
the penal code as the punishment for women who commit adultery. A woman
who refuses to cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes. Women are now refusing to put up with this kind of treatment or, at least (and in the face of a lot of resistance, unfortunately), are trying to change it.
As reported:
TEHRAN — In a year of marriage, Razieh Qassemi, 19, says she was
beaten repeatedly by her husband and his father. Her husband, she says,
is addicted to methamphetamine and has threatened to marry another
woman to “torture” her.
Rather than endure the abuse, Ms.
Qassemi took a step that might never have occurred to an earlier
generation of Iranian women: she filed for divorce.
Women’s
rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing
determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim
theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code.
One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data,
a fourfold increase in the past 15 years.
And it is not just
women from the wealthy, Westernized elites. The family court building
in Vanak Square here is filled with women, like Ms. Qassemi, who are
not privileged. Women from lower classes and even the religious are
among those marching up and down the stairs to fight for divorces and
custody of their children.
Increasing educational levels and
the information revolution have contributed to creating a generation of
women determined to gain more control over their lives, rights
advocates say.
Confronted with new cultural and legal
restrictions after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some young women
turned to higher education as a way to get away from home, postpone
marriage and earn social respect, advocates say. Religious women, who
had refused to sit in classes with men, returned to universities after
they were resegregated.
Today, more than 60 percent of
university students are women, compared with just over 30 percent in
1982, even though classes are no longer segregated. Read on . . .
