Tehran, Asharq Al-Awsat- Standing behind her hotel desk, Sepideh, a
hotel receptionist in Tehran, expressed her wish to travel abroad to see
the countries that the foreign tourists speak about when they visit Iran.
Sepideh is 25 years old, unmarried and has no desire to do so, while her
mother at the same age was already married with two
children.
Sepideh said she would not agree to marriage unless her
prospective husband grants her written consent in the marriage contract
that he will not forbid her from working. But she is no exception; the
average marrying age among Iranian women has currently risen to be between
the ages of 25 and 30.
Girls are no longer anxious to get married
at a young age; the majority of them choosing to complete their university
degrees and secure work before seeking marriage. And yet the problem lies
in the fact that Iranian law gives men the right to forbid their wives
from working after marriage ¬– which is why a lot of young women either
postpone marriage or sometimes even marry foreigners.
A young,
ambitious woman, Sepideh taught herself English and said that her family
has no objections to her job as a hotel receptionist because the salary is
good. However, many Iranian men would rather not get married to a
receptionist because the job demands daily interaction with a multitude of
people and may even require working late hours, until 11pm on some days of
the week.
“I don’t want to get married now. I have been educated
and currently have a job and will be unhappy if I was forced to stay after
all this. I want to travel abroad, I have friends in Netherlands. I asked
my father if I could visit them over the summer but he refused,” she
said.
Since the 1990s, Iranian women have been striving to change a
number of laws that are discriminatory against them – however amending
laws will not suffice as Eastern cultural traditions are entrenched in
Iranian society.
Sociopolitical expert and women’s rights
activist, Zahra Nejad-Bahram affirms that fact and added that despite the
recent amendments granting women the right to divorce if it abides to the
conditions stipulated in the marriage contracts, many women do not
exercise their right out of timidity.
“An Iranian man has the right
to divorce his wife at any given time – no restrictions are placed on that
right. Many women have sought the right to divorce and the authorities
have changed the laws, allowing women the right to stipulate the right to
divorce in their marriage contracts,” Nejad-Bahram told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“And yet the vast majority of women are reluctant to exercise that right
out of timidity. They say that it’s a bad omen for the marriage contract
to include a divorce clause on it. These are the prevalent social beliefs
that the law cannot change,” she continued.
But the economic
conditions are changing the dominant culture, even if that change is
gradual. Despite polygamy being religiously and legally permitted in Iran,
the phenomenon is not a widespread one as a result of the tight economic
conditions. Additionally, there is an increasing number of women who are
working to financially assist their husbands. This is contrary to the new
generation and its beliefs who not only want to work, they also want to
respected and treated equally in the house.
According to
30-year-old Ilham, who is a student, “When I get married I want my husband
to help me with the chores around the house. I don’t want to come back
from work and have to cook and clean while he does nothing,” she
said.
“Perhaps that is the reason behind the rise in divorce rates
in Iran, 1.3 percent during the last year only,” said Nejad-Bahram.
Notwithstanding that the Iranian revolution led to women’s involvement in
politics, motivating them to engage in public affairs and activities,
there still exist various laws and procedures that were endorsed following
the revolution, such as not allowing women to study certain specialties.
In the private Islamic Azad University (IAU), which has branches spread
over most Iranian cities and has a total of 1.6 million students, women
are not allowed to study mechanical engineering in some of its branches.
And yet 70 percent of students who graduate with an applied physics degree
are women – a figure that indicates that women do not only study
literature, languages and the arts, but also the natural
sciences.
But this ban on some specializations has not prevented
women from studying some of the sciences – Iranian women are fast
progressing. Today, 30 percent of the labor force in Iran is female, a
figure that is expected to rise considerably in the coming few years. A
percentage of 62-65 percent of university students are women who quickly
become part of the labor market upon graduation.
Gilda, a senior
student at the faculty of foreign languages at the University of Tehran
said that the majority of university students were female. “At the faculty
of foreign languages I can say that 95 percent are young women, while only
5 percent are young men. We sit together but the men are barely noticed
because they are a minority,” she explained.
And yet the labor
market is not open to Iranian women; there are certain disciplines that
are difficult to access. Although Iranian women can study the subjects of
energy, petroleum and natural gas at university, it remains extremely
difficult for them to secure jobs in oil or gas companies. In light of the
Iranian economic crisis, high unemployment rates and inflation, some
conservatives in the Iranian parliament have attributed these problems to
the fact that women earn universities degrees and are thus able to access
jobs in the market “that could have belonged to the men”.
A number
of MPs, including female members, presented a draft law to the Iranian
parliament that proposed that the share of Iranian females in university
should not exceed 50 percent – which is a 15 percent decrease in the
number of female students currently studying at universities.
“They
are punishing Iranian young women for their high merit. Instead of
encouraging us, they hinder our progress with obstacles,” Ilham told
Asharq Al-Awsat. She added: “They will not be capable of passing this law…
They do not have the necessary power to do it since many people in society
are adamantly against it – even among the conservative
circles.
Many Iranian women believe that a number of Iranian laws
must change because they violate women’s rights, even in the cases where
these laws are not actually implemented. Among these laws is one that sets
the marrying age for girls to be nine years of age. Although the law is
only implemented in some remote rural areas, still Iranian women believe
it is obsolete and are striving to have it abolished.
But there is
hope for change, Iranian women are graduating from universities in large
numbers and have particularly benefited from the men’s departure to fight
in Iraq. The women have charged into the labor market and have the ability
to elicit social change in Iran. According to Iranian women: This has
already started to
happen.