From DEBRA@oln.comlink.apc.orgTue Sep 5 09:08:55 1995 Date: Sun, 03 Sep 1995 06:12:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org, beijing95-l@netcom.com Subject: WCW: Pushing Back the Veil [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## 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