Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran

by Nina Ansary

  8Ibid., 27.

  9Ibid., 194.

  10Ibid., 195.

  11Ibid., 205.

  12Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921, 219; A. Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001).

  13Nashat, Women and Revolution, 1.

  14In 1979, Khomeini referred to the veil as “the flag of the revolution,” cited in Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, E. Sciolino (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 134; F. Azari, “Islam’s Appeal to Women in Iran: Illusions and Reality,” in Women of Iran: The Conflict with Fundamentalist Islam, ed. F. Azari (London: Ithaca Press, 1983); Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921, 222–223.

  15Ansari, Modern Iran Since 1921, 219–221.

  16M. K. Shavarini, “The Feminization of Iranian Higher Education,” Review of Education 51 (2005): 329–347.

  17Ayatollah Khomeini, Der Spiegel, interview conducted in Paris, November 7, 1979.

  18Ayatollah Khomeini, Guardian, interview In Paris, November 6, 1978.

  19Orianna Fallaci, “Iran: Khomeini and the Veiled Lady,” Time, October 22, 1979.

  20Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, “Precepts of a Permanent Contract,” in A Clarification of Questions, unabridged trans. J. Boroujerdi (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1984), 318.

  21S. Ebadi and A. Moaveni, Iran Awakening—From Prison to Peace Prize: One Woman’s Struggle at the Crossroads of History (Canada: Random House, 2006), 38, 43.

  22D. Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2001), 154; Hamid Algar, translator and annotator, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1941–1980) (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981); S. Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 64-166; R. Takeyh and N. K. Gvosdev, The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Radical Islam (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 24.

  23Bakhash, Reign of the Ayatollahs.

  24On November 5, 1979, Khomeini referred to the United States as the “great satan … the wounded snake,” cited in “1979: Iran’s Islamic Revolution,” New York Times, May 27, 2007; R. De Zoysa, “America’s Foreign Policy: Manifest Destiny or Great Satan,” Contemporary Politics 11, nos. 2–3 (2005): 133–156.

  25L. Halper, “Law and Women’s Agency in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 28 (2005): 85–138; H. Moghissi, “Public Life and Women’s Resistance,” in Iran after the Revolution: Crisis of an Islamic State, eds. S. Rahnema and S. Behdad (New York and London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 251–267; Z. Mir-Hosseini, “Women and Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran: Divorce, Veiling and Emerging Voices,” in Women and Politics in the Third World, ed. H. Afshar (London: Routledge, 1996), 145–173; N. Ramazani, “Women in Iran: The Revolutionary Ebb and Flow,” Middle East Journal 47, no. 3 (1993): 409–428; S. Haeri, “Temporary Marriage: An Islamic Discourse on Female Sexuality in Iran,” in Women and Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology, ed. H. Moghissi (New York: Routledge, 2005), 166–183.

  26Elaine Sciolino, “Love Finds a Way in Iran: Temporary Marriage,” New York Times, October 4, 2000.

  27Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  28Ibid.

  29Mohammad Hossein Nayyeri, Gender Inequality and Discrimination: The Case of Iranian Women (New Haven, CT: IHRDC Iran Human Rights Documentation Center).

  30Ibid.

  31In 1980, veiling was enforced in the public domain, with any deviation punishable by seventy-four lashes. For additional information regarding this mandate, consult Nashat, Women in Revolution, 121–123. The quotation appears in Nashat, Women and Revolution, 195; Z. Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 61; Vakili, Women and Politics, 51–52.

  32Ebadi and Moaveni, Iran Awakening, 106.

  33Ibid., 109.

  34M. Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003), 5.

  35A. Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House, 2003), 101, 165.

  36F. El-Guindi, Veil: Modesty and Resistance (New York and Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1999), 176, 176.

  37S. Behdad, “The Islamization of Economics in Iranian Universities,” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 27 (1995): 193.

  38J. Al-i Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1984), 64, 70.

  39Ayatollah Khomeini, Keyhan Newspaper, December 18, 1980, Interview.

  40Article 30, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  41K. Sobhe, “Education in Review: Iran’s Cultural Revolution Duplicating the Chinese Cultural Revolution?” Comparative Education 18, no. 3 (1982): 271–280; Rebecca Barlow, “Women’s Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The Contribution of Secular-Oriented Feminism,” in Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives Across the Ummah, eds. S. Akbarzadeh and B. Macqueen (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 42.

  42H. Godagzar, “Islamic Ideology and Its Formative Influence on Education in Contemporary Iran,” Economia, Sociedad y Territorio 3, numero 10 (2001), 321–326; Bakhash, Reign of the Ayatollahs, 110–114.

  43R. Sedgewick, “Education in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” World Education News and Reviews 13, no. 3 (2000): 128–139; B. Mohsendouri, “Philosophy of Education in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Comparative Educational Review 23, no.1 (1988): 76-86; N. Entessar, “Educational Reform in Iran: Cultural Revolution or Anti-Intellectualism?” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1984): 47–64.

  44“Ayatollah Khomeini in an Interview with Committee Members of the Ettela’at newspaper,” Ettela’at, October, 1979, interview (Ayatollah Khomeini Dar Molaghat Ba Azaye Komiteh-ye Rooznameh-ye Ettela’at).

  45D. Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 319; A. M. Riazi, “The Four Language Stages in the History of Iran,” in Decolonization, Globalization, Language in Education Policy and Practice, eds. Angel M. Y Lin and P. W. Martin (U.K. and Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005), 100–116; H. Farhady, H. Sajadi, and H. Hedayati, “Reflections on Foreign Language Education in Iran,” The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language 13, no. 4 (2010): 1–18.

  46J. Amuzegar, Iran’s Economy Under The Islamic Republic (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 125.

  47Literacy Movement of Iran, The Activities of the Literacy Movement (Fa’aliyatha-ye Nehazat-e Savad-e Amuzi) (Tehran: Office of Planning and Statistics, 1987); G. Mehran, “The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity in Female Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Comparative Education Review 47, no. 3 (2003): 269–286.

  48The First Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1983–1988) (Barname-ye Aval Tose’eh-e Eqtesadi-ye Ejtemai’i-e Farhangi Jomhuri-ye Islami-ye Iran) (Teheran: Planning and Budget Organization, 1983).

  49“Objectives of the SCCR.”

  50Paidar, Women and the Political Process, 320–321; SCCR: Goals and Duties/Principles of the Cultural Policies.

  51K. Aryan, “The Boom in Women’s Education,” in Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century Iran, eds. T. Povey and E. R. Povey (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2012), 41; IRI Ministry of Culture and Higher Education—Guide for the Selection of Fields in Higher Education (Rahname-ye Reshteha-ye Tahseelee Baraye Daneshgaha va Moassesate Aliyeye Keshvar), 1986.

  52IRI—The General Plan of the System of Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1988.

  53Tehran Ministry of Education, 1988; The First Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1983–1988) Barnameye Avaaliye To’she Eqtesadi Ejtemai va Farhangi-ye Iran), 277, 37, 66, 72.

  54UNESCO—World Survey of Education V: Educational Policy, Legislation and Administration, 1971.

  55Ibid.

  56Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran, 302.

  57P. Paidar, “Feminism and Islam in Iran,�
�� in Gendering the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives, ed. D. Kandiyoti (London: L. B. Tauris, 1996), 51–68.

  58Ayatollah Khomeini, speech cited in F. Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View: Khomeini on Man, the State, and International Politics, Vol. XIII, (Lanham: University Press of America, 1984), 36.

  59J. M. Henslin, Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach, 11th edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2010), 85, 373.

  60J. W. Santrock, Adolescence, 14th edition (New York: McGraw Hill, 2010), 162–182; C. E. Bidwell, “School as Context and Construction: A Social Psychological Approach to the Study of Schooling,” in Handbook of the Sociology of Education, ed. M. T. Hallinan (New York: Springer Science and Business Media, 2006), 15–35; E. H. McEneaney and J. W. Meyer, “The Content of the Curriculum: An Institutionalist Perspective,” in Handbook of the Sociology of Education, M. T. Hallinan, ed., 189–211; B. Schneider, “Social Systems and Norms: A Coleman Approach,” in Handbook of Sociology of Education, ed. M. T. Hallinan, 365–386.

  61J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey, Power and Ideology in Education (US: Oxford University Press, 1977), 551.

  62Ibid; J. Shepard, Sociology, 10th edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 2010), 345–356.

  63E. Durkheim, Les Regles de la Monde Sociologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1992), 95; E. Durkheim, Education et Sociologie (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1922), 51; E. Durkheim, Moral Education (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002), 223–251.

  64A. Kroska, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Ideology as an Identity,” Gender and Society 14, no. 3 (June 2000): 368–394; G. Ritzer and J. M. Ryan, The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology (Hoboken, NJ and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 2011, 249.

  65S. N. Davis, “Gender Ideology: Components, Predictions and Consequences,” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (August 2009): 87–105; G. Kaufman, “Do Gender Role Attitudes Matter? Family Formation and Dissolution Among Traditional and Egalitarian Men and Women,” Journal of Family Issues 21, no. 1 (January 2000): 128–144; J. E Cameron and R. L. Lalonde, “Social Identification and Gender Related Ideology in Men and Women,” British Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 1 (March 2001): 59–77; L. Kramer, The Sociology of Gender: A Brief Introduction (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

  66IRI, Reading and Writing Farsi (Khandan va Neveshtan-e Farsi) Grade 1, Tehran Ministry of Education, 1986, 3, 13, 39; Reading Farsi —Grade 2, Tehran Ministry of Education, 1988, 68.

  67IRI, Reading and Writing Farsi (Khandan va Neveshtan-e Farsi) Grade 5, Tehran Ministry of Education, 1988, 155, 199.

  68IRI, Reading Farsi—Grade 2, Tehran Ministry of Education, 1988, 157.

  69Ibid., Grade 1, pages 2, 4, 38, 49, 68, 76; Ibid., Grade 2, pages 25, 31; Ibid., Grade 3, page 14.

  70Ibid., Grade 1, pages 27, 46, 83; Ibid., Grade 2, page 5.

  71Ibid., Grade 2, pages 155, 157.

  72Ibid., Grade 1, page 24; Ibid., Grade 3, page 72.

  73Ibid., Grade 2, page 10; Ibid., Grade 3, page 14.

  74Ibid., 71.

  75Ibid., 6.

  76Ibid., 26.

  77Ibid., cover page, 63, 64, 119; Ibid., Grade 5, page 147.

  78Ibid., Grade 2, page 23.

  79Ibid., 154.

  80IRI, Science (Ulum-e Tajrobi) Grade 1, Tehran, Ministry of Education, 1988, 8, 35.

  81Ibid., 12.

  82IRI, Gifts From Heaven (Hediye-hay-e Asemani) Grade 4, Tehran Ministry of Education, 1988, 2.

  83Ibid., Grade 4, pages 108, 109.

  84Ibid., 111, 112.

  85IRI, Reading and Writing Farsi, Grade 5, Tehran, Ministry of Education, 1974, 18.

  86IRI, Reading and Writing Farsi, Grade 1, Tehran, Ministry of Education, 1988, 37; Farsi Grade 2, Tehran, Ministry of Education, 1974, 53.

  87J. M. Henslin, Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach, 11th edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2010), 85, 373.

  88N. C. Chesler and M. A. Chesler, “Gender-Informed Mentoring Strategies for Women Engineering Scholars: On Establishing a Caring Community,” Journal of Engineering Education (January 2002): 49–55.

  89G. Mehran, “The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity,” Comparative Education Review 47, no. 3 (2003): 269–286.

  90Vakili, Women and Politics, 111.

  91H. Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling and Re-veiling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 225.

  92Ibid.

  93J. Brooks-Gunn and A. Peterson, Girls at Puberty (New York: Plenum Press, 1983), 110.

  94R. Simmons and D. Blyth, Moving into Adolescence: The Impact of Pubertal Change and the School Context (Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 1987), 72–125.

  95AAUW Report (Washington, DC: American Association of University Women, 1990), 32, 147.

  96B. M. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

  97M. Sadker and D. Sadker, Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls (New York: Touchstone, 1994), 18.

  98Ibid.

  99Ibid.

  100Ibid., 51.

  101Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness; AAUW Report, 1990.

  102Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness ; C. Riordan, Boys and Girls in School: Together or Separate? (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1990); AAUW Report, How Schools Shortchange Girls (New York: Marlowe & Co., 1992).

  103Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness, 233.

  104L. M. Brown and C. Gilligan, Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992); C. Gilligan, “Teaching Shakespeare’s Sister,” in Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, eds. C. Gilligan, N. Lyons, and T. Hammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 10; S. J. Hekman, Moral Voices, Moral Selves: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Moral Theory (Hoboken, NJ, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 12.

  105Interview with Carol Gilligan, “Restoring Lost Voices,” The Phi Delta Kappan 81, no. 9 (May 2000): 701–704.

  106C. Gilligan, Joining the Resistance (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2011), 109.

  107Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness.

  108Ibid.

  109Ibid.

  110Ibid., 1

  111Ibid.

  112Ibid., 235

  113Ibid.

  114AAUW, How Schools Shortchange Girls: The AAUW Report: A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education (New York: Marlowe & Co., 1995).

  115Ibid.

  116Riordan, Boys and Girls in School.

  117C. Riordan, “Early Implementation of Public Single-Sex Schools: Perceptions and Characteristics,” prepared for The United States Department of Education: Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, 2008, 21, 24, 27.

  118Gilligan, Joining the Resistance; Gilligan, Joining the Resistance; Sadker and Sadker, Failing at Fairness.; AAUW, 1990; C. Riordan, “What Do We Know about the Effects of Single-Sex Schooling in the Private Sector? Implications for Public Schools,” in Gender in Policy and Practice: Perspectives on Single-Sex and Coeducational Schooling, A. Datnow and L. Hubbard (New York: RoutldgeFalmer, 2002), 10–30; L. Sax, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about The Emerging Science and Sex Differences (New York: Random House, 2005).

  119UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UNESCO Statistical Yearbook and World Survey of Education (Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics).

  120Statistical Center of Iran, 2007.

  121M. K. Shavarini, “The Feminization of Iranian Higher Education,” Review of Education 51 (2005): 329–347; World Bank, “The Road Travelled: Education Reform in the Middle East and North Africa,” 2008.

  122F. Harrison, “Women Graduates Challenge Iran,” BBC News, September 19, 2006.

  123P. Paidar, “Gender of Democracy: The Encounter Between Feminism and Reformism in Contemporary Iran,” Program Paper No. 6, Democracy, Governance and Human Rights, U.N. Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), October 20
01, 1–47; G. Mehran, “Doing and Undoing Gender: Female Higher Education in The Islamic Republic of Iran,” International Review of Education 55 (2009): 541–599; G. Mehran, “The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity,” Comparative Education Review 47, no. 3 (2003): 269–286; G. Mehran, “Lifelong Learning: New Opportunities for Women in a Muslim Country,” Comparative Education 35, no. 2 (1999): 201–215.

  124Sedghi, Women and Politics, 222.

  125A. Rabassa, M. Waxman, E. Larson, and C. Y. Marcum, The Muslim War after 9/11 (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Group), 2004, 226.

  126Vakili, Women and Politics, 85

  127Elaheh Rostami-Povey, “Women and Work in Iran (Part 1),” State of Nature: An Online Journal of Radical Ideas (September 19, 2005): 7, http://www.stateofnature.org/?p=5243.

  128Ibid., 8.

  129“Rosie the Riveter,” History.com, 2010, http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/rosie-the-riveter.

  130M. Kar, “Women’s Strategies in Iran from the 1979 Revolution to 1999,” in Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women’s Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts, eds. J. Bayes and N. Tohidi (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 177–203.

  131M. Kar, “Women’s Strategies,” 96.

  132Note: “Popular class” is not an American term. It refers to religious conservative women of the middle class who constitute the majority of women in Iran.

  133L. Halper, “Law and Women’s Agency in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 28 (2005): 117.

  134Z. Mir-Hosseini, “Islam, Women and Civil Rights: The Religious Debate in the Iran of the 1990’s,” in Women, Religion and Culture in Iran, eds. S. Ansari and V. Martin (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002), 169–188.

  CHAPTER Five

  1P. Paidar, “Gender and Democracy: The Encounter Between Feminism and Reformism in Contemporary Iran,” U.N. Research Institute for Social Development, Program Paper 6 (October 2001): 64.

  2Iranian State Television, February 18, 1988.

  3“Conservative or Conservative? A Pitiful Narrowing of Choice for Iranians and the World,” The Economist, March 19, 2008; Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 327–330.

  4M. Poya, Women, Work & Islamism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); P. Paidar, Women and the Political Process; V. Moghadam, “Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents: Toward a Resolution and Debate,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 4 (2002); V. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, 2nd edition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003); J. Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.); Vakili, Women and Politics.