Himalayas

That life is not a soft sheet on my bed.

---

 Mt. Mayon

To fight the demons in our mind. 

---

Clavecillas

Passion and conviction are no stranger to Francia C. Clavecillas, community organizer and poet. The two poems featured here are part of a collection of her poetry that will come out later this year. Francia lives and works in the Philippines' Bicol region, home of mountain Mayon of the perfect cone.

(Modernity..., continued from p.41)

Another failure of the Constitutional Movement that had significant ramifications for the woman question was the inability to rid Iran of neo-colonial penetration. As a result, semi-colonial obstacles hindered economic growth based on local capital accumulation and prevented the industrial sector from generating self-sustained growth and domestic decision-making centers.

Forty years later, between 1951 and 1953, Iranian nationalist and progressive forces mobilized people once more in an attempt to democratize the society, develop the economy, and strengthen the national industries. Led by the National Front and Mohammad Mossadeq, the Prime Minister, and with the massive participation of the people, including women, the movement sought nationalization of the oil industry (then under British control), restriction of the monarch's power, establishment of the rule of the law, and enforcement of the constitution and the parliament. However, an American-supported (CIA) coup against Mossadeq returned all power to the Shah, defeating this last promising attempt by Iranian democratic forces.

THE WOMAN QUESTION TODAY

Despite the regressive policies and discriminatory attitudes of the Islamist government toward women, the present situation for Iranian women does not appear as gloomy as it did immediately after the revolution. Certain recent trends are encouraging and hopeful.

The attempt to impose an ideology of domesticity has not been successful despite the initial rhetoric.

Several factors have been offered to explain this: a discrepancy between preindustrial ideological prescriptions and the imperatives of capitalist development in Iran; the eight-year war with Iraq; economic need on the part of some women and resistance to total subjection on the part of others (especially educated women with previous work experience); and the ambiguities in the discourse and policies of the Islamist political elite and the conflicting cultural images of women. These factors have allowed women to participate in the formal economy and to maneuver within the confines of the Islamic system.* Another factor to be added is the enormous brain drain (mostly men) which has left the regime short of skilled and professional "manpower", thus creating a need for the available women professionals.

Another significant factor which has shaped women's status in post-revolutionary Iran has been the growing feminist consciousness and the increasing resistance of both Islamic and secular women against the violations of their rights by the clerical authorities. Relative to the extent of sexist discrimination in present Iran, women have shown a remarkable degree of resilience in maintaining their social presence and agency. The most ironic and unexpected feature of this growing gender-related activism has been the important role of the Islamic women in the reformation of women's rights in an Islamic context. These reformers originally constituted the traditional middle class and ardent supporters of the Islamic Revolution. However, thanks to their social praxis and political engagement during the revolutionary years, their rising consciousness and increasing expectations went beyond a clerical or male controlled veiled constituency The discrepancy between the promised ideals of a just Islamic society and the unjust reality of the Islamic Republic led to a reformist approach and growing activism among the Muslim women who are pushing for reform within an Islamic framework, tentatively called "Islamic feminism".

This trend of Islamic reform constitutes a diverse spectrum, including a sort of moderate state feminists, liberal pragmatists, and independent "radicals" who promote egalitarian and feminist ideas to various degrees. Most of the leading figures among the new Islamic women elite (such as Faezeh and Fatemeh Hashemi, two activist daughters of the President) have been associated with men in state power, representing therefore a state oriented top-down reform agenda. Yet, certain independent strands of Muslim feminism (like the one advocated by the monthly journal, Zanaan, published in Tehran) represents a more genuinely egalitarian, democratic and inclusive approach. These reform -minded women have been influential in the recent small yet positive changes in marriage and family law which provide some restrictions against men's unilateral rights to divorce, child custody, and polygamy similar to those of the Pahlavi state's Family Protection Act.

In the 1980s there were four women out of 286 members in Parliament, but since 1992 nine women were elected, some of them quite vocal in raising women issues and in criticizing government policies. They have successfully intervened in areas such as family and education. It is encouraging to note that the size and popularity of the conservative and extremist Islamist factions opposing women's rights in Iran is shrinking. Strong evidence for this lies in the fascinating, yet less noticed gender dimension of the last (March-April 1996) parliamentary elections and the more obvious role of women in the surprising victory of the modernist and progressive candidate in the recent presidential elections (May 1997). Given the structural confines of the present theocratic regime and the influence of the conservative Islamists inside and outside the state apparatus, the success of the newly elected president in implementing his relatively more egalitarian and progressive programs remains to be seen.

Predictably, these reform-minded women have to grapple with ideological contradictions and conflicts with Quranic injunctions. But their potential for success among many young and old women, the new challenges that they bring into the feminist discourse, and their prospective impact on the woman question in Iran have already become subject for recent studies, debates, and theorizing among feminist scholars of Muslim societies. Some socialist-feminists have already suggested exploring possibilities for dialogue, and strategies of issue-oriented coalitions between Islamic and secular feminists.'' There has been increasing levels of collaborative efforts between Islamic and secular feminists in recent years. Yet, the extent of religious repression on the one hand and the undemocratic, sectarian, and exclusionary approach on the part of some secular left as well as many Muslim women activists on the other have prevented any large scale rapprochement. Certain versions of Islamic feminism, if at all, are based on an essentialistic approach emphasizing gender differences.

Some scholars have endorsed Islamist "veiled activism" in countries like Egypt as feminist, "dignifying" and "humanizing" to women.'" But one should distinguish between women who "choose" it as a mechanism to participate in social and political life, and those in power who impose the veil on women to impart a uniform Islamic identity and utilize a controlled female activism in achieving the political consolidation of a totalitarian state power. It is important to emphasize here that any reformist interpretation or subversive reconstruction efforts towards women's rights within a religious framework (Islamic or otherwise) should be considered not as an alternative or substitute to secular and laic demands but as a component of a more holistic social change.¹¹

*Endnote: It is only for the lack of a better term that I use the terms "fundamentalism and Islamism" despite my awareness of their problems. I use these terms in reference to new political movements that use religion as their main ideological framework or basis of identity.

Notes

1. YY Haddad and E B Findley (cds) Women, Religion and Social Change (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p.275
2. W Ogburn, On Culture and Social Change (University of (Chicago Press, 1964)
3. Estimate is based on Statistics of the Ministry of Higher Education of Iran: Center for Educational Planning' (in Persian)(Tehran 1984). See also G. Mehran, The Education of a New Muslim Woman in Postrevolutionary Iran', Paper presented at VIIth World Congress of Comparative Education, Montreal, Canada (1989)
4. E. Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, Male-Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society (revised edition) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987)
5. N. Tohidi, '(Sender and Islamic Fundamentalism: Feminist Politics in Iran', in C.T Mohanty, A Russo and L. Torres, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
6. For example, usury and any practice of lending money with an interest charge (rebb) is prohibited in Islam. Thus, by principle, there should be an ideological barrier against banking and financial capitalism in an Islamic government. In practice, however, by a virtual stroke of the pen of the ayatollahs, the interest charged by the Iranian banks has been pronounced as legitimate commission or service fee.
7. The issue of women's suffrage was raised once during the Majlis debates with vehement opposition from the clergy. See Elliz Sanasarian, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982) .
8. See V. Moghadam, "Women, Work and Ideology in the Islamic Republic', pp. 221243 in International journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20 (1988), p221.
9. Yeganeh, op.cit., and Moghadam, op. cit. (1988).Tohidi, Nayereh, "(Conclusion: "The Issues at Hand" in H.Bodman & N.Tohidi (EDS.) Diversity Within Unity: Gender Dynamics and Change in Muslim Societies, Boulder:Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1997
10. FEI Guindi, 'Veiled Activism: Egyptian Women in the Contemporary Islamic Movement', Femmes de la Mediterranee Peuples / Mediterraneens 22-23 (January- June 1983).
11. See Kar, Mehranguiz, interviewed by Homa Hoodafar in Middle fast Report, (January-March, 1996), 38.

Nayereh Tohidi holds a PhD. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has written extensively on women and development, gender, religion and identity politics in the greater Middle East, especially Iran and post-Soviet Azerbaijan. Presently, she teaches Sociology and Women's Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She can be contacted at: Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, 276 Kinsey Hall Box 951504, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1504,USA fax: 310-641-3170 E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.