Iranian women have fought for the equivalent protection under the law throughout the 20th century. Within this paper I plan to argue about feminism in today's urban communities in Iran. Iran is an enormous country and talking about women situation in the rural areas makes this article totally different. The women's movement in Iran has both expanded and transformed because the revolution. Before the revolution the liberation of women was linked to the process of secularisation. Under the Islamic Republic, however, women are progressively making quarrels for the development of their rights by pointing to protections under the constitution, while others are reinterpreting Shari'ah rules. Some scholars have referred to the emergence of 'Islamic feminism, ' a term that shows the difference of techniques that coexist within the women's activity in Iran. As a result, the ground of women's protection under the law is one of unprecedented co-operation among disparate teams on the one side and severe ideological and political problems on the other.
In speaking about these approaches in present cities of Iran, it is of essential importance to tell apart between three groups of women who I will talk about them. The first group is women who identify themselves as Secular feminists and are consuming women activity in american societies. The next group are women who make an effort to reach equal privileges for men and women but as they make an effort to achieve this task under the information of Islam and nationwide personality, they make a difference between themselves and western feminism that they consider will lead to problem as there is currently in the Western world. They could be named condition feminists or Islamist feminists in Islamic Republic of Iran. Minoo Moallem writes about one of these women, Zahra Rahnavard who is one of the equal privileges activists and the partner of opposition head Mir Hossein Musavi in the recent demonstrations against government after the 2009 presidential election in Iran:
Zahra Rahnavard. . . costed the Western with being truly a system where women are created into "decorative items. " She phone calls after her Muslim sisters to question what the "sham civilizations" have manufactured from women, never to become dolls, and not to show a debilitated will. She asks women to refuse to participate the harems of the rulers and the communal harems of the roads. Her allusion to the collective appropriation of women in the streets and her rejection of unveiling have made it easy for her to think about contractual composition of the Muslim family and veiling as sites of women's agency. For Rahnavard, it is through unveiling and Westernization that Muslim women have been turned into things to be possessed by all men in the general public sphere. To avoid capitalist rulers and challenge intimate objectification, she asks women to return to veiling and the Muslim family, where women are considered subjects alternatively than things of the relationship agreement. (2005; 185)
The third group includes generally secular knowledgeable women who are not familiar with the notions of european feminism but consequently of modernisation in Iran and consuming global mass Media know about women situation in other countries and make an effort to simulate a modern life like the ideal kind of a western woman for themselves. They have got combined some traditional values of your Iranian woman and some modern values of your western woman. As Reza Ghasemi in his acclaimed book, The Nocturnal Harmony of the Lumber Orchestra, describes Iranian women in their move to modernity:
The record of technology of Modern Iranian women is similar to the technology of car. The difference is the fact that the car was first a carriage with adjusted content (They removed the horses and substituted the engine unit) and then gradually the appearance altered but the modern Iranian women first changed the looks and when they had been looking for appropriate content, they faced the trouble. . . So everyone concerning their personal likes and their mental needs made a mixture of traditional feminine with modern female which may be stand in a range of a female using Chador to miniskirt. This girl asks to share in every decisions, but asks all the tasks from man. . . She asks man to work evenly in home but at the same time considers the person who works in home of poor identity and weakness. (1996; 86)
Considering the distinction between these organizations, I will argue about feminism as a political movement to get equality and to free women from oppression in Islamic republic of Iran and the role that every group takes on in obtaining this goal.
Liberal Feminism:
Actually in today's Iran, liberal feminism is really the only point of view that can barely breathe under the pressure of the Islamic government. This feminism always has two aspects which are against the government's will in Islamic republic of Iran. Abdee Kalantari is convinced that in a political theology that divides the political sphere into good and bad and perceives the western world as opponent (evil), feminism as today's western movement is a threat to the complete existence of the theology (2007). In other palm, fighting with each other for the similar rights in legislations usually opposes Islamic rules which are not easy to handle. Hence, women movement not only must struggle with the profound traditions of Islam in the culture but also to protect itself from the fundamentalist federal government which obtains its legitimacy from these practices.
The Islamist ideology denies women individuality, autonomy and freedom and this is inside this Ideology that the key goal of Iranian's women's privileges activists, both secular and Islamic, became the modernization of family laws and women's identical rights in issues of relationship, divorce, and infant custody. Other concerned concern is domestic violence, numerous articles in the feminist press explaining domestic assault as both a cultural problem and a violation of women's protection under the law. A third matter was women's under-representation in formal politics and the necessity for greater participation in parliament, the neighborhood councils, and the highest political offices. They are the reforms that both Islamist and Secular activists are still fighting to reach them.
The Islamist feminist do not seek to refuse the guidelines of law and they insist upon the preservation of Islam, family and relationship even when it will come in opposition of equal rights. Their target is to suggest a far more versatile interpretation of Islam as opposed to the one that the government presents. This group can be criticized in the same way that Zillah R. Eisenstein's has criticized the liberalism because of feminizing the private sphere and the parting they make between general public and private spheres. She argues that this separation could be the basis to liberalism's downfall. As it becomes clear that liberalism is incompatible with equivalent rights for women, feminism will search for alternative grounds to develop its plan. This gendered parting of spheres will lead liberalism to a lack of nervous about the forms of oppression that take place in the private sphere(1981) and that is the same concern that secular feminist in have in Iran.
In comparison, the secular feminists sort out small-scale Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) and make an effort to develop some analyses of women's collective hobbies and their oppression in private as well as public life. They have noticed the problems which may have been argued in the history of feminism in the western world. They write about equal privileges as well as body, sexuality, power, homosexuality, assault, pornography etc. The thing is that they cannot release their ideas and normally internet is the sole media they may use to improve their tone of voice to be noticed. There are several feminist websites that stand for this group and they keep working regardless of the filtering of the government. (e. g. http://www. irwomen. com, http://www. meydaan. com, http://www. feministschool. com ). Hence, the middle class metropolitan women are the most common audiences of these activists, since the other groups usage of the internet is bound. This lack of audience urges this question that whether there is a feminist women motion in Iran? If there is, will it stand against Repression, censorship and disorders of the fundamentalist authorities and even the practices of a religious based world? As Ahmadi argues that secular feminism faces two obstacles in its way, first is the framework associated with an Islamic republic where fundamentalists carry absolute vitality over certain status organizations and the other is an "inside make, " a "from within" point of view which has been had a need to alter the dominant fundamentalist discourse"(2006). Hence, in obtaining liberal needs of women motion in Iran is of vital importance for secular feminism to keep its unity with the Islamist feminists, since as Ahmadi elaborates it is the group that not only can grow the area of dialogue with clerical scholars, but also are able to beat long-term hatred toward american feminism in Cultural context of Iran (2006)
These activists could has been labelled as several urban middle class ladies who cannot be regarded as speaking for everyone ladies in Iran until the August 27th of 2006, when they launched a advertising campaign named "One Million Signatures for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws". Desire to was to accumulate one million signatures to get changing discriminatory laws and regulations against women in their country, but what made this effort important and a good danger for the government, though the organizers of the advertising campaign considered that its demands conform to Islamic principles, was the way they used to accumulate these signatures. The concept is easy and revolutionary, melding education, consciousness-raising and peaceful protest. Starting last year, women equipped with petitions started to go to wherever other women gathered: schools, mane salons, doctors' office buildings and private homes. Every female is asked to hint. But whatever a woman decides, she will get a leaflet explaining how Iran's interpretation of Islamic regulation denies women full privileges. The material clarifies how Iran's divorce legislation makes it easy for men, and incredibly difficult for women, to leave a relationship, and how guardianship laws give divorced fathers bottom rights to children above age 7.
The One Million Signatures Plan is a fresh and innovative movement because it hasn't taken shape around one progressive and famous central physique, rather it is a broad movement, where activists visit with other women, take part in face to face conversations with them, each goes home to home, and clarify to each female about women's privileges. Any personal is equal to conscious these activists attempted to make for women from any background and any school. Their main goal is to create a dialogue among people and instruct them about their privileges and it makes women to be sensitive to their status under regulations and in culture. It appears that the Consciousness raising groups will be the inspiring idea of this campaign. THE THEORY that ladies should accumulate in small organizations and present accounts of their own lives and how they 'became' a 'girl' and then they will understand to which extent, they talk about similar problems with other women with different backgrounds and age ranges and these problems produce by interpersonal relations and companies. As Pilcher and Whelehan argue we can consider the key success of the groups in uplifting many women to turn to feminism (2004) and that is the same success that Iranian secular feminists make an effort to reach. They hope to involve women, not absolutely all of whom were positively involved with feminism, but all caught up in the debates of the time and seized by the desire to fight for their equal privileges in regulation and make the procedure of 1 woman's appearing out of false consciousness into enlightenment, possible.
The plan success in changing the laws and regulations is comparable with NOW, (Country wide Organization for girls) founded by betty Friedan in 1966, as both portrayed not as a self-conscious political theory, but as a 'common sense' request of pre-existing worth to women's situation. As Bryson argues NOW's campaigns gained some early legal victories changing laws and could amend the United States constitution to provide women equal protection under the law which very nearly succeeded, and it has been a major push in changing attitudes to ladies in education, work and the multimedia. Despite the criticisms that later feminists made about identical rights promotions such as NOW for concentrating narrowly on formal legal and politics privileges which ignores monetary (2003), social and sexual exploitation and oppression of women, I think that such campaigns will be the basic steps of opening debates about other forms of oppression in the traditional and religious contemporary society and fundamentalist federal of Iran that will need a position against such debates in that level.
Marxism Feminism vs. Post Feminism:
Since Russia has been the most effective neighbour of Iran in the modern-day history, this country has had a great affect on the history of Iran. That is why Marxism as an ideology gets the greatest influence on the history of modern Iran after Islam. Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Classical Marxists worked well within the conceptual notions laid out by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other nineteenth-century thinkers and dreamed of a contemporary society without classes as they believed that existed in USSR. These organizations were an undeniable element in the triumph of trend, but scheduled to great suppressions and executions of the new Islamic authorities in 80s, these categories lost their power and prevalence within the population, however the Marxism discourse has still an unavoidable effect on the Iranian intellectual potential client.
The secular feminist as part of Iranian intellectual discourse aren't an exception. This group besides the equal rights motions has always tried out to theorize the origins of patriarchy in Iran and Marxism feminism has been one of the very most useful perspectives for them to do that work. Many of these theories respect classism and capitalism as an integral factor which work parallel with patriarchy in women's oppression (Take a look at Afshar; 1983). This research advises women to struggle with all the shows of capitalism to free them from oppression. They criticize the new Iranian woman in her support of capitalism and just how that Iranian women present their systems which is one of the main areas they see as capitalism system uses to oppress girl. As Shahidi suggests a practical consequence of this method of the "woman question" was the de-sexing of woman, clearly visible in the baggy clothes and lack of cosmetics among female activists. These women oppose the compulsory veil but assume that with or with out a headscarf, a woman-doll will remain the same (1994).
In the contemporary record of Iran, the girl body has been the key indication of political change. It really is a fascinating point that the binary of brain/body which is traceable in european thought, present itself in Iran with the beginning of the job of modernization. Reza shah noticed unveiling as one of the main markers of Westernizing and the Islamic republic made veiling compulsory to make an anti-western culture and in every these fundamental changes women's body has been the object of change. In the event the Reza shah job made a lot of women to stay in home and even quit going to class the veiling did not make the modern Iranian female who I identified them as the third group of women who make work having equality with men, to leave the general public sphere. They prolonged to work and examine alongside men and they used their body especially their faces to object compulsory veiling which experienced tried to disregard their body. Young and more mature, the Iranian women defy the Islamic hijab publicly, and confront the state's Islamic body politics with a body politics of their own. The young ones mock the Islamic hijab, deconstruct it, reform it, and make it succumb with their modern dreams. They disclose their hair in public areas by pushing back their mandated headscarf, transforming it into a garment used for their beautification. Against all cultural mandates of the Islamic point out, they reveal their body curves under their remodeled and modernized "Islamic" garb. They wear noisy makeup, walk elegantly, and bring their sexuality to the general public. They reject the control of their body by the state, and remember their womanhood by defying the Islamic hijab. Since eyes, nasal and hands are the only features on show, eye make-up is applied with scientific detail and Tehran has become the nose-job capital of the world. Iranian women spend one million dollar in make-up industry every year
Oppressing by the federal government and morality police, these women have been always criticised by a huge group of secular feminists who believe that wearing make-up and delivering the sexual body are the representation of objectifying girl by capitalism. Ezzat Goushegir in his reward of Ariel Levy's reserve; Female Chauvinist Pigs, creates in his personal weblog that is the same raunch culture in Iran that in the universal capitalist system, uses the ideas of feminism about equality and emerge women to appear as a face of capitalism in the world and by this way marginalizes the true requirements of women movements. He considers Marxism as a perspective that troubles this objectification and Commodification. (2007)
Marxist feminists believe that plastic surgeries and make-up industry are two effective tools of capitalism which not only objectify women, but also make sure they are to pay money for fixing their body image in to the Ideal body of Capitalist world. They deny these things as Levy denies those to be liberating and rebellious. Levy argues that how women decide to give so this means to making love industry by producing the imitation idea that showing their sexuality would empower them (2006). I am not heading to criticize this booklet and even I trust Levy somewhat. The problem is that how Iranian feminists use the reserve and translate european feminists' ideas to apply them on the completely different context. Levy in this publication make reference to sexist TV shows which deliver the illusion of liberation among women, demonstrates means the pornoization of culture for Levy (2006). It is the culture that benefits Capitalism, but think about Iran? As I mentioned the history of Iran is not the history of capitalism, it's the history of religious ideology. In Iran vitality is not within the bourgeois' school but at least in modern Iran in the hands of clerics (Mullahs) who do not necessarily own cost-effective capital. Essentially the most obvious reason for this claim is usually that the opposition in Iran never could blame the leaders of Islamic republic for having prosperity. This is religious capital that constructions the power in Iran and ironically this power will abide by secular feminists in the issue of objectification of women and two different thoughts causes same implications in the cultural context of Islamic Iran.
If Levy talks about shows such as Ladies Gone Wild in the us, Iranian Women showing up in television set programs will not be permitted to wear make-up since it is against Islamic rules, "repulsive jokes" between women and men on television or radio is also prohibited No Newspaper has the to submit a woman's face on the cover and using cheap female models with head (despite having hijab) in clothing retailers is forbidden. On this cultural context a fresh reality has surfaced in Iran, a reality created by women. The Iranian women are playing an instrumental role in the grassroots struggle to the Islamic Republic through their deconstruction of the hijab and their direct concern of the state's body politics. Challenging the Islamic dress code, they use the everyday living as the site for gaining rights and value from the society and the state. They demand the right to live as free women. Humiliated, assaulted, and caught randomly for being women, they have gained resilience, lost their fears of confronting their state, and battled the repressive communal and social Islamic rules of carry out. Using deviance as a tool, these are creating possible unimagined by the architects of the Islamic Republic.
Naomi Wolf in her publication beauty myth gets the similar idea as Levi and argues that girls can adorn themselves with attractive objects when there is absolutely no question that people are not things. She is convinced that they can not be free of the beauty myth unless they can opt for their encounters and clothes and bodies as one form of self-expression out of a full range of others. She boasts that public affinity for a woman's virginity has been substituted by public involvement in the condition of her body (1991). We cannot disregard that Iranian women still are in a society that virginity is more than a public interest; this is a religious and legal guideline. The rule that has been ignored by these women using alternatives such as Hymenoplasty which is a remarkably hot matter in Iran. It really is of essential importance to consider if any great theory which we have confidence in is applicable in other contexts. Wearing make-up and plastic surgery is kind of self-expression for Iranian female, a home who express itself position against the essential laws of disregarding her. It is some sort of resistance resistant to the discourse of fundamentalism.
Hence, Body and sexuality is the battlefield of first and third groupings. Two secular organizations which must be united in opposition with fundamentalism that will not have confidence in basic rights for ladies, while both these categories somewhat believe in equivalent rights for women and men. The ironic side of this challenge is the fact how secular Marxist feminism and Islamist feminism with two different methods to women concern; blame the 3rd group which is the main potential push of fighting patriarchy, to objectification of women or in their phrase for acting like dolls. It really is true that strong root base of tradition still exist in the 3rd group. They do not identify themselves as feminist because what they have learnt about feminism is women who make an effort to work and wear like men; women who make them misunderstand feminism when there isn't a long history of feminism in Iran to make the idea clear for them. Although they do not identify themselves as feminists they may have almost same ideas with the new era of feminists in west: the 3rd generation or wave, which its life powerfully has shaped by popular culture, particularly music, tv, film and literature as they believe to battle with women oppression. Multimedia figures symbolize third wave symbols in their tendency to won't adhere to a feminist party brand, but also in their level of resistance to adhere to the types of 'feminine' behaviour deemed compatible with multimedia and mainstream success. (Pilcher& Whelehan; 2004) Quite simply these women as Genz and Brabon reveal are merging notions of personal empowerment with the visible screen of sexuality. These women does not manipulate the look of them 'to get a guy on the old terms' but 'has ideas about her life and being in control which clearly come from feminism' (2009; 93). Although these Iranian women do not identify themselves as feminist but their notions of erotic freedom come straight from the Iranian feminism that has fought for women liberty and equality during the last 100 years.
Secular feminism has two ways to walk in. The foremost is to stand against this group and blame them of objectifying their femininity and the other is to stand beside them to fight against fundamentalism which is the greater make of oppression for both communities than patriarchy. In the second solution I believe Secular feminism should try to make other women familiar with basic notions of feminism such as economical independence and equal obligations' and other non-radical ideas that is bearable for a population in changeover to modernity rather than completely modern. Secular feminist must observe that Islam as an ideaology has a great vitality in the life span of even most of secular women. Mohanty in her article on the situation of western feminism on theorizing women issues in producing coutries, discussing Modares, criticizes feminist writings which treat Islam as an ideology independent from and outside social relations and procedures, rather than a discourse which includes rules for economic, interpersonal and power relations within modern culture (1988; 70). Hence secular feminism which is damaged by the western must look over the feminism history and experience in the western world and try to match them with the ethnical framework of Iran. I really do not believe feminism in Iran and west has to go to the same manner. Although the 3rd wave feminism can be an idea that employs the long background of first and second influx feminism in western, the Idea of sexual power that technology emerge is the actual fact that young ladies in Iran practice against the government every day. This practice's impact is apparent by the number of morality polices that the federal government use to regulate these women. Hence, post feminism is a perspective that worth applying not only dreamed as a chronological difference between second and third wave feminism in the ethnic framework of Iran. This attitude in Iran should never consider as backlash but as a conjunct to the first group to be influent in Iran. Secular feminism has to gratify these women who object feminist ideas which failed to addresses their problems.
Conclusion:
In this essay I recognized three sets of women who are a good idea to reach equality and liberty from oppression in today's cultural framework of urban middle class women in Iran. The conjunction between secular feminists and Islamist feminists who look for liberation through the prepared motion for constitution amendment and consciousness increasing is traceable. I see this trend as the utmost relevant point of view for Iranian contemporary society that benefits both metropolitan and rural areas in Iran. In the second part I tried out to criticize the orthodox Marxism that has a deep root in the annals of Iranian intellectualism and its affect on secular feminism in Iran as well. I think that this craze will lead to a separation between secular feminist and secular women who both are fighting up against the fundamentalism in Iran. Secular feminism, using the postfeminist idea of sexual electric power can examine the practice of the women instead of blaming those to objectifying their sexuality. If feminists take a look at postfeminism as a use cultural differences and not as a chronological event in the west, they can move ahead faster and easier in the form of liberty from fundamentalism and patriarchy as well.
