Iran Travel Guide

When Samira Makhmalbafs first film, The Apple, made waves in the West, people were confused. How could Iran - the land of female oppression and Sharia law - produce an I8-year-old female film-maker of such vision? Samira Makhmalbaf’s answer was simple: 'Iran is a country where these two contrasts coexist.'

Nowhere are the contradictions in Iranian society more apparent than in the position of women. Historically, women in Iran have lived in a progressive society and enjoyed more equality and freedom than their neighbors. In Iran women are able to sit in parliament, to drive, to vote, to buy property and to work.

There is a long precedence for this. In pre-Islamic Iran, archaeological evidence suggests that ordinary women were able to work, own, sell and lease property and that they paid taxes. Women managers were mentioned at work sites and women were also known to have held high level military positions. By the Sassanian period, though, women's rights were not formally enshrined.

The Prophet Mohammad was the first to specifically address women's rights, recognizing men and women as having different (rather than unequal) rights and responsibilities. Men are expected to provide financially, therefore women are not seen as needing legal rights as men are there to protect and maintain them.

In reality, for Iranian women, the arrival of Islam after the Arab con-quest saw a decline in their position at every level. Most of their rights evaporated, the Islamic dress code was imposed, polygamy was practiced and family laws were exclusively to the advantage of the male.

Reza Shah started legislating for women when in 1931 the Majlis ap-proved a bill that gave women the right to seek divorce. The marriage age was raised to IS for girls. In 1936, a system of education was formed for boys and girls equally and in the same year, legislation was passed to abolish the veil. Reza Shah also encouraged women to work outside the home.

The last shah gave women the vote in 1962 and six years later the Family Protection Law was ratified, the most progressive family law in the Middle East. Divorce laws became stringent, and polygamy was discouraged. The marriage age was raised to 18.

Many Iranian women were active in the revolution that overthrew the shah, but it's safe to say that few women foresaw how the adoption of Sharia law and the Islamic Republic would affect their rights. Within a couple of years of the revolution women were back in the hejab (veil) - and this time it was compulsory. The legal age of marriage for girls had plummeted to nine (15 for boys), and society was strictly segregated. Women were not allowed to appear in public with a man who was not a husband or a direct relation, and they could be flogged for displaying 'incorrect' hejab or showing strands of hair or scraps of make-up. Travel was not possible without a husband or father's permission and a woman could be stoned to death for adultery, which, incidentally, included being raped. Family law again fell under the jurisdiction of the religious courts and it became almost impossible for a woman to divorce her husband without his agreement, and in any case of divorce she was almost certain to lose custody of her children. Women holding high positions - such as Shirin Ebadi who became a judge in 1979 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 - lost their jobs and many gave up promising careers.

However, women did not disappear behind a curtain this time. Iranian women had been emancipated, and they resisted a total return to the home. There were many rights that women did not lose - such as the right to vote and the right to hold property and financial independence on marriage. In fact, the rates of education and literacy for women have shot up since the revolution for the simple reason that many traditional families finally felt safe sending their daughters to school once Iran had adopted the veil. Women made up 63% of university entrants in 2002-03 - though their subsequent employment rate was only 11 %. Although women's importance in the workforce is acknowledged - maternity leave, for example, is given for three months at 67% of salary - there is still widespread discrimination.

In 1997 reformist president Khatami was voted in by mostly women and young people, promising change. By 2000, there were II women in the Majlis and many members are speaking out for women's rights. One of Iran's most prolific Islamic feminists is Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of the ex -president, who herself was a member of parliament, a magazine proprietor, an academic, a mother and an Olympic horse rider.

In recent years there has been a series of hard-fought minor victories. The reformists managed to win the right for single women to study abroad, to raise the legal age for marriage from 9 to 13 for girls (though they had proposed 15), to defeat an attempt to limit the percentage of female students entering university and to improve custody provisions for divorced mothers. However, a woman's testimony is still only worth half that of a man in court and in the case of the blood money that a murderer's family is obliged to pay to the family of the victim, females are estimated at half the value of a male. Sigheh (the Islamic practice of temporary marriage) is seen by many as sort of legalized prostitution.

On the street you will see that superficially the dress code has eased and the sea of black chadors is offset by shorter, tighter, brightly colored coats and headscarves worn far back on elaborate hairstyles. Young girls have lost the fear of being seen outside the home with unrelated men, and many defy the regular clampdowns. Activists such as Shirin Ebadi, who works as a lawyer and champions human rights, are insistent that within Islam are enshrined all human rights and that all that is needed is more intelligent interpretation.

Any visit to an Iranian home will leave you in no doubt as to who is really in charge in the home - and family life is the most important institution in Iran. Iranian women are feisty and powerful and they continue to educate themselves. Most women in Iran will tell you that the hejab is the least of their worries; what is more important is to change the institutional discrimination inherent in Iranian society and the law. As ex-reformist MP Elaheh Koulaie says: 'We have to change the perceptions that Iranians have of themselves, the perception of the role of men and women.'