We have gathered in this conference to discuss a very important issue. Everyone knows the terrible situation of women under the Islamic Republic, the system of sexual apartheid and also the struggle of women against it.
Women’s oppression and the sexual apartheid that are in place in Iran have become part of the identity of the Islamic regime. It is impossible to imagine an Islamic Republic in which women are free, have equal rights, who work and live side by side men and are not segregated. Women’s liberation and Islamic Republic are two mutually exclusive things. So the first obstacle in the way of women’s liberation in Iran today is the Islamic Republic.
If women are to have equal rights, if they are to be free, even if the forced Islamic veil is to be pulled back just a little bit, the Islamic Republic must go. The first condition of women’s liberation in Iran today is the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
Women’s liberation is directly tied to the concept of state and government. You can’t achieve women’s liberation and equal rights for women under just any political regime. Only an egalitarian system can safeguard women’s equality and freedom.
Look at the history of Iran. The last 20 years have been some of darkest in people’s lives, especially women’s. The Islamic regime has brought nothing but repression, death, torture, lack of rights and dark reaction. Things weren’t that better before either.
The truth is that the situation of women in Iran is so bad today that some people forget - or want us to forget - how it was under the Shah’s regime. More than half the population is too young to remember those days, to remember that even at that time Islamic laws were in force against women. Women were not free. Their lives were decided by their fathers, brothers and husbands. Even then man was the boss in the household. Women did not have the right to work or travel without the permission of their husband.
At that time too the political system was one of repression, torture and persecution. They say the Shah’s regime was modern. Of course it was more modern than the Islamic regime, but that is not an answer to our problem. They show us the Family Protection Law from those days and want us to lower our expectations down to its level. Presumably since we are women from the “Third World” this is more than enough for us! That piece of legislation may have been more advanced than the reactionary laws in force in Saudi Arabia. So what? Is this what we are aiming for? Is this what the women in Iran want? Is this what the women who took part in the revolution demanded?
The Islamic regime has imposed such a repression on society that it seems we have forgotten that the demand for women’s equality was one of the slogans of the 1979 revolution - albeit in rudimentary forms. The women who took part in the revolution wanted to go much further than the Family Protection Law. But they were pushed into a worse situation. In my view, women should have the same rights all over the world.
Iranian history is a good testimony to the fact that women’s liberation can only be achieved under an egalitarian, progressive and secular form of government. This is the basic prerequisite of women’s liberation in Iran.
Women’s equality and freedom is connected with the problem of state and political regime from two angles: On the one hand, with regard to the kind of legislation the state introduces and the facilities it provides; on the other hand, with respect to the restrictions it imposes. For instance, the Islamic Republic is an misogynist regime in the fullest sense of the word, but the question is under what kind of a regime is a communist activist like me who stands for equal rights for women allowed to speak of women’s rights and women’s liberation, to talk about our party programme, A Better World, where women’s demands have been set out comprehensively? Under what regime would I not be thrown into prison and tortured and exiled for opening my mouth in defence of women’s rights?
There should be a political system in place which respects and ensures unconditional freedom of expression. I emphasise the word unconditional because no excuses should be used - political, national, cultural or
religious - to gag people. So women’s liberation is directly connected with the kind of political regime that is established in Iran. A secular, progressive, egalitarian regime which ensures unconditional freedom of expression is the prerequisite of achieving equal rights for women.
Apart from politics and political power which are important factors, religion and patriarchal culture are serious barriers to women’s liberation. The other speakers here also touched on this issue.
In Iran I think all these patriarchal and misogynist ideas come under a wider outlook, an ideology, called “Easternism”. Easternism is a big obstacle to the struggle for equal rights for women. Let me explain what I mean by Easternism. I speak of Easternism as a concept counterposed to “Westernism, i.e. the ideas that have been peddled in Iran in the last 20, 30 years. An element in Easternism is Islam; its other components include backward cultural traditions, what is termed ‘Iranian culture’.
We have talked about Islam a lot. Now after 20 years’ Islamic rule, Islam has been disgraced. With the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, most signs and symbols of Islam will also come tumbling down. Turbaned mullahs won’t dare roam the streets. Mosques will shut down, and religious beliefs will be private beliefs - as they should be. But Easternism is a menace that has to be challenged. It lurks behind nationalism, national culture, xenophobia and “our sacred traditions”. It is even supposed to have a progressive guise: as part of the populist struggle against imperialism. Opposition to imperialist culture in Iran finds expression as Easternism. East against West. It appears as the worshipping of backward traditions against any idea of freedom.
Let me add another comment here. In Iran, as well as in many countries of the so-called “Third World”, especially since the 70s, opposition to “imperialist culture” has been seen as an important struggle - as an element of the fight against imperialism. Left and populist forces have also been engaged in this fight. Women have been the victims of this struggle against ‘imperialist culture’. This is because women’s liberation and women’s rights are seen as imperialist and Western concepts, a legacy of imperialist culture which should be resisted.
Traditional, backward, religious and reactionary forces oppose women’s liberation in the name of fighting imperialism and the West. In Iran the struggle against Westernism was formulated by the writer Jalal Al Ahmad as a struggle against Western culture, values and systems of thought. In my opinion, Al Ahmad’s book Westernism is a document of total support for sexism and a full backing for reactionary patriarchal ideas. The struggle against ‘Westernism’ is necessarily a struggle against women’s liberation, women’s rights and any form of modernity.
In this outlook, women’s liberation is conditional: It is accepted, if the native traditions and values are respected, if morals and chastity are kept and if there is no Western depravity and immorality. These are the watchwords for patriarchal and backward thinking, for Easternism.
Iranian culture and Iranian literature as a whole, with few exceptions, is sexist. To defend this culture means to defend patriarchalism. But these cultural values are defended under the guise of fighting ‘westernism’. In the process of struggle against patriarchalism we should also settle accounts with this backward culture, with a culture which I call Easternism and which also encompasses Islam.
So this concept of Easternism is a major barrier to women’s liberation, especially as it assumes the appearance of something ‘progressive’ when it is presented as a struggle against imperialism. We saw this clearly in the 1979 revolution. In that revolution a serious ideological and political obstacle to those who wanted to fight for women’s rights, those who wanted to challenge the regime from the point of view of women’s rights, was the question of fighting imperialist culture. This struggle was fought as a defence of ‘our culture’ and ‘our traditions’ against ‘imperialist and western’ culture and traditions.
In this sense, the struggle against Easternism is an important aspect of the struggle for women’s liberation in Iran. We should be clear that the idea of women’s liberation and equal rights for women is a universal one. We should not put any cultural restrictions on it. By this I don’t mean that when studying the situation of women in different countries we should not refer to the specific cultures in those countries. What I mean is that when we speak of women’s rights and liberation we are dealing with something universal. Any attempt to restrict these rights in the name of culture, or to redefine freedom and equality according to different cultures, which is sometimes presented as ‘cultural relativism’, puts a major obstacle in the way of women’s liberation. Especially when attempts are made to give to this idea a progressive, anti-racist and anti-eurocentrist appearance, it creates a serious barrier for forces who are fighting for women’s liberation and women’s rights.
Women’s rights are universal. Traditional culture is patriarchal. Struggle against patriarchalism must replace it with a new and modern culture.
Another issue is that women’s movement should acquire self-awareness and have a clear idea of its demands and objectives. In the 1979 revolution we suffered from lack of clarity of demands. We have been through an immense revolution; a revolution that was defeated. If we haven’t learnt anything else from this revolution, we have at least learnt that our demands and perspectives must be clear. We should be careful not to make the same mistakes again.
The women’s liberation movement in Iran is strong - whether inside the country or outside, within the Iranian communities. Inside Iran this movement cannot raise itself fully due to the repression. As I said, one of the important issues facing this movement is clarity of aims and demands. This movement is certainly not homogeneous, and like any other political and social movement has its own different tendencies. The point, however, is that there should be a clear definition of women’s liberation and equal rights for women; about what we mean by these concepts and what our perspectives are. In one sense, one of the tasks of conferences like this one is to lend clarity to these issues. We for our part have tried to do that. Women’s demands for equality and equal rights are set out in detail in our programme A Better World.
We know that 30 years ago there was concepts.
The fact that the feminist movement of the last three decades in the West could not solve women’s question, despite their strength and the profound effects that they had on social mentality and culture, is a clear indication of the fact that there is a more fundamental problem standing in the way of women’s equality. The point is that real equality between men and women, genuine women’s liberation, is not possible under capitalism. The struggle of the women’s movement in the West over the last three decades has widened the differences between women from upper and lower classes and deepened the split among the different tendencies in the women’s movement.
As the socialist tendency in the women’s movement, we have clearly defined our demands and perspectives. Our demands are set out in our programme A Better World, and the system that in our view can realise these demands has been clearly outlined. These are the criteria by which we judge other tendencies and their perspectives. In our view, anything less than that is not woman’s liberation and freedom.
A look at the West and the women’s movement there shows us that if we tie our hopes to a system of Western-style democracy and leave the foundations of the system untouched, at best we will have to be satisfied with a half-hearted equality. The situation of single mothers, working women and young women without any future shows that equality and freedom cannot be achieved within the capitalist system. The egalitarian society that can ensure women’s real liberation and equality is a socialist society. This is another precondition for achieving real freedom and real equality for women.