<TITLE: Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: Women and Politics in Iran
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: social sciences
DISCIPLINE: political history
EVENT TYPE: presentation
FILE ID: CPRE09B
NOTES: continuation of and continued in CDIS090, session also includes presentations CPRE09A/C-D

RECORDING DURATION: 18 min 7 sec

RECORDING DATE: 16.10.2006

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: circa 45

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 2

S8: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: unknown; GENDER: female; AGE: 51-over

S9: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Persian/Farsi; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: 31-50

SS: several simultaneous speakers>


<S9> good afternoon everybody . my talk is going to be on women and politics in iran , i'm going to talk about women's status in (xx) in few sentences in few paragraphs , er long before women constituted 15 per cent of parliament members in 2002 and er women have not achieved an effective role at the political and managerial levels and during the beijing conference only 21 out of 189 countries made commitments to improve the status of women . in my belief studying women in the muslim countries requires er these conditions evaluating women's situation in a country requires the knowledge of culture customs and traditions of the country despite some common (socio-) human values . thus to speak on women's status in muslim countries one should not take the western values as the sole judgment criterion , furthermore such evaluation is a relative issue and should not be considered as an isolated case . contrary it may be regarded in time and space i.e. from (xx) to evaluate the role of women in country it may be projected in comparison with (this class) or within another country in the region with a s-similar cultural background <P:07> now i'm i'm going to talk about the background of political participation of women in iran er i believe the condition of women in the 20th century iran may be studied in three different intervals king pahlavi regime's er- era pahlavi's perception on emancipation of iranian women and post-revolutionary era <P:06> in the first era which was in the 19th and early 20th centuries the british and russian rivalries in iran on the one hand and the manipulation of iran's resources on the other hand presented adverse economy effects leading to western super- superiority which created an awareness of an alternative model of society to aspire to , unfortunately iranian women were the victims of a male-dominated society with very limited rights , the changing position of women in the second era during the pahlavi regimes from 1925 to 1979 should be attributed to the integration of iran into the world capitalism <COUGH> the main progress was to decreasing segregation opening of education and employment to women and it is worth mentioning that these positive developments eroded due to contrasting government policies . firstly both reza shah and mohammad reza shah due to their anti-religious approach perceived the emancipation of women as a secular issue . then er it led to the (f-) post-war unveiling of women during reza shah and disregarding religious social values which were respected by (parliament) . this policy led to the further separation of the majority of families in urban and rural areas from the unelected dictator regime , secondly the regime's approaches were very cosmetic , while the pahlavi regimes were was emphasising on one or two ministerial posts for women in 1976 more than 83 per cent of the rural population which consisted 62 per cent of the overall population were illiterate . after the revolution in 1979 , some socioeconomic changes have happened , actually the development of the islamic revolution in the 70s in the in the 1979 contradicted the expectation that the process of modernisation would (xx) religion in iran two trends of sharia law and higher access to education happened actually in er returning back to sharia law was not in favour of women because the marriage law m- the m- the marriage age was lower from 15 for girls to 13 and for men from 18 to 15 and even er er the government policies was in favour of high population growth rate in iran er and they dismantled family planning programmes and er consequently the population growth rate raised from 2.7 to 3.9 in 1988 which was an alarm for the government to lower the population growth rate it is worth mentioning that in ten years er it was a combination of government policies and government interest with with people's interest at the same time in which er they could reduce the population growth rate very sharply and iran was among one of the most successful developing countries in the world er on population er on er er decreasing the population growth rate and having the successful family planning programme in the region , the culmination of muslim feminism was an interesting phenomena in the last three decades after the revolution which has sought equal access to opportunity for men and women these women attempt to adapt or interpret islam to the realities of a society in which women's social economic and political activities become an integral part i'm going to mention partly how er partly they have succeeded and partly they haven't succeeded and the new generation of youngers have been a force for changes that no government can deny , then the role of women in two areas of politics happen one on the political decision-making processes and second on-going pol- polity of the country i believe the second one is a precondition to successfully build (xx) with men in major political decision-making processes . for example in 1997 presidential election which led to the victory of president khatami was a new era as female voters were 70 per cent of the votes which led to the victory of president khatami at the time of khatami government two measures have been taken , there were two female cabinet members one as vice president and the head of environmental protection department and the second one as presidential advisor and head of centre for women's participation , but what happened in ahmadinejad government from 2005 which is continuing continuing government er policy on women is one of them has been changing the name of centre for participation of women to centre for women's affairs and family which is erm which shows that the government try to emphasise on family and family affairs instead of improving women's status in political and economical spheres women's posts in new government stayed as before the new government has not made any commitments toward improving women's condition during the presidential campaign . but educational attainment of women is improving as before i'm going to talk about four criteria of polity , and as if we want to appraise to role of women in iran's polity we have to examine four criteria i believe first is the sh- social participation of women second one is the accessibility and presence at all levels of power the third one is the legal infrans- infrastructural framework on women in society and the last one is non-governmental institutions for women , NGOs , on social participation of women i have , pointed out three points first is the women's participations participation in demonstrations a- against pahlavi regime in which women have been very active (you see) they were very active and almost half of people who participated in demonstrations they were women women's active role in rallies in favour of the revolution and in which it happenings even now and the third one women have been active in voting for the parliament , i believe they have had some very active social participation , it is partly due to women's education in iran in which i'm going to discuss </S9>
<S8> we have three minutes </S8>
<S9> alright <SS> @@ </SS> , if if we look at the figure in 1976 only 55 per cent of wom- urban women were literate while the figure was 17.3 per cent for rural women in 1986 ten years later 65 per cent of urban women were literate compared to 36 per cent of rural women a decade later in 1996 84 per cent of urban women were literate but the figure for rural women was 60 per cent based on 2001 statistics 90 per cent of women in in urban areas are literate compared to 72 per cent in rural areas and the er consensus er 2006 is is happening in november and we are going to have new statistics then accessibility to political power it happen only in two areas office of women's affairs in president office and female deputies in which <NAME> is going to er throw some lights in female deputies the number is (xx) but they have played in- an important role in initiating leg- legislation on on women what was successful in gaining full access in legal infrastructural challenges legal improvements happened in er in judicial system in the areas of divorce child custody and division of wealth improved to some extent but is still far from expectations and NGOs there are more than 300 women female NGOs women NGOs erm in which 150 of them officially (to r-) registered and they are working on different issues of women as it is a new phenomenon in iran it needs more time thus to be evaluated . in conclusion i believe that well an increase of erm women of 53 per cent in female candidates during the 2000 parliamentary elections shows women's interest in political participation despite this increase in the number of female candidates the number of female parliament members has not increased and even in the last parliamentary elections decreased slightly , 13 in 2000 compared to 12 in 2004 , however women have been more successful in provincial (qualities) this is apparent from the second round of the islamic rural and urban council elections in which the number of female members increased by 154 per cent i believe one of the major impediments in spite of the existent of it's it's the existence of a sufficient number of women professionals and women representative in key posts in macro-politics and planning in which they er er make er policy-making decisions are happening then i believe this liberal approach which was which was promised under the khatami government was not fully realised with the new government of president ahmadinejad now in place hopes for the implementation of this approach are even dimmer the new government emphasises on the role of women in the family rather than holding key posts in different arenas thank you </S9>
<S8> thank you </S8>
<APPLAUSE>
