Iran Women Say No to Polygamy

Women adjusting hair on streets of Tehran to comply with public dress code. Image: Farshad Ebrahimi April 23, 2007

The Family Protection Bill imposing even stricter penalties upon women who marry foreigners, stipulates a harsh sentence, up to 9 months in detention, for women who marry foreign nationals prior to getting government permission.

Family and reproductive laws are very important global issues for gender equality activists. Women in Iran, as well as other women living under Moslem laws, are particularly focused on family law, as these laws define and redefine the position of women in society.

Religious fundamentalists/extremists of all religions often focus on gender as they construct and maintain gender differences as the core policies of their political identities.

Whether it is the Family Protection Bill in Iran, or debates related to reproductive rights in the US, religious extremists actions have resulted in taking away what women human rights activists have gained. Fundamentalist Iranian women in favor of easing polygamy laws in Iran, and US presidential candidate Sarah Palin, on the US Republican ticket for the 2008 presidential election, have a lot in common. Both parties rely on the most regressive religious interpretations of women’s issues within their faith.

In a country where there is a significant gap between the demands for rights and the regressive laws imposed upon women related to polygamy and other discriminatory legislation, denial of rights will not go unchallenged. More than 60% of higher education students are female, yet their testimony in court counts for only half of a man’s testimony. Human rights defenders and women activists in Iran demand equality and dignity – nothing more and nothing less.

Where more than 500,000 Iranian bloggers, many of them women, are active in cyberspace recording narratives of their lives, while at the same time needing their husbands’ permission for obtaining passports, they face institutionalized discrimination that makes them second class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody and other aspects of life.

Iranian women activists and their male allies are well aware of the fact that they need to keep their guard up and keep moving forward until all discriminatory laws against women in Iran are eliminated.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2ZjuvURy4]
US media journalists, Matt Lauer and Richard Engel (with NBC news) outline current conditions for Iranian women, September 2007.

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For more information on this topic go to:

Change4Equality (english)

One Million Signatures Campaign (Wikipedia english)

Meydaan Zanan (farsi)

Kanoon Zanan Irani (farsi)

The Feminist School (farsi)

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Special correspondent for Women News Network – WNN, Elahe Amani, is director of Technology for Student Affairs at California State University. She is also a 2007 Lillian Robles Award winner for her outstanding community service, social education efforts and feminist activism and is chair of Women Intercultural Network (WIN).