From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgTue Sep  5 09:08:55 1995
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 1995 06:12:00 +0100
From: Debra Guzman <DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.org>
Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org, beijing95-l@netcom.com
Subject: WCW: Pushing Back the Veil

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## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN
## author     : DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org
## date       : 03.09.95

[This article has been excerpted.]

Newsweek
4 September 1995

----------------------------------------------------------------------
PUSHING BACK THE VEIL

Can the conference help Iran's feminists?

The daughter of the Ayatollah Khomeini is about the last
person in the world you'd expect to hear spouting feminist
rhetoric. A Western visitor sipping tea in her formal little
office...hardly knows what to make of Zahra Mustafavi and
her Women's Society of Iran. Mrs. Mustafavi...says she feels
enraged when Iranian TV commercials use women to advertise
vacuum cleaners and men to promote computers... She
complained to state-run television, she says - and wraps a
black chador more tightly around her face as the
photographer moves in for a picture. She's not going to the
Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, she says. As
Iran's antigovernment feminists like to point out, the
delegates in Beijing would probably stone her if she did.

Can a U.N. gabfest, ...attracting tens of thousands of
participants from around the globe, really do anything to
improve women's lives in a country like Iran? Ever since the
1979 revolution enshrined Islamic theology as state law,
women have...been barred from initiating divorces, banned
from serving as judges, relegated to such second-class
status that "blood money" for killing a women is only half
that for killing a man. The most visible sign of women's
subjection - the...veil - is also the most powerful sign of
the regime's power, and therefore about the last thing it
would give up.

Yet within these limits, the role of women engenders lively
debate in the Iranian Parliament. "This event in Beijing has
made things a lot hotter," says Ziba Jalali, who helped
coordinate nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Iran has
not submitted a "national report" on progress since the last
U.N. women's conference in 1985. (A spokesman for Iran's
mission to the U.N. says it's because of "disorganization.")

Iranian women say the very process of drafting documents for
the conference has boosted their profile. The regime
established a Women's NGO Coordinating Office a year ago and
invited a few dozen foundations to participate. The women
approved a democratic charter for themselves, including the
right to choose their own board of directors. Since then,
says one women involved in the process, conservatives have
stifled any...initiatives and the charter never went into
effect. But, if nothing else, the NGOs now have valuable
experience. "A women who can make a brochure for her
organization before Beijing can do it after Beijing..." says
one woman from an Iranian NGO.

To the outside world, these nudges forward may seem
pitifully small. But tiny breakthroughs may take on huge
significance. The Iranian Parliament now contains nine
female representatives, out of 270. "We've got a lot of
clout," insists Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, a Teheran
gynecologist who's been in Parliament for three and a half
years. ... In recent months the Parliament has approved laws
ensuring...some men who are divorcing their wives must pay
them the equivalent of wages for a 24-hour-a-day servant for
the duration of their marriage. ...

In the eyes of many Iranian women, no real progress is
possible as long as the regime sticks to a conservative
interpretation of Islamic law. Khomeini's daughter, by this
logic, cannot be a true promoter of women's rights. "Does
she say...women are the equal of men?" asks one Teheran
intellectual, who then points to her head scarf. "Does she
say we can take off this damn thing?"

...the veil has not kept Iranian women out of public view.
The poor economy is drawing more women into the workplace,
and a higher percentage of women can read and write than in
the shah's time. ... All Iranian women want fairer
treatment, no matter what their political views, and as one
female professional put it, Even Rafsanjani's daughter
wouldn't like it if her husband took a second wife."
Building...female solidarity is harder than holding a U.N.
conference about it.

-Carroll Bogert in Teheran