YOUNG GENERATION IS LEADING THE PRESENT MOVEMENT AGAINST THE USE OF HIJAB
By Harihar Swarup
The custodial death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was arrested by the morality
police in Tehran, has sparked wide protests in Iran. Under the scanner are police who patrol
public places to enforce the headscarf law and other Islamic laws. Conversations are also
taking place on the situation of women in Islamic Republic.
Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, women have been required by law to wear a veil
covering their head and neck and conceal their hair. Over the past two decades, however,
more and more women in Tehran and other cities of Iran have been letting strands of their
hairs outside their veil as a form of protest. More recently, some women have been sharing
photos that show them taking off headscarves in opposition to hijab rules.
The struggle against compulsory headscarves made headlines in December 2017 when a
young woman, Vida Movahed, waved her hijab on a stick at Tehran's Revolution Street.
Then, on July 12, this year, -– the hijab and chastity day on the Islamic Rebulic's calendar—
another group of women took part in a national civil disobedience campaign against
mandatory headgear. More and more women, many of whom have not experienced the
1979 revolution, have been risking fines and even prison sentences for violating the hijab
rules.
The Iranian Revolution, which ended with the victory of Islamists and the creation of the
Islamic Republic, was marked by a noticeable presence of women. Thousands of young
women joined Islamist and leftist politics groups. In his interviews with foreign journalists
before returning to Iran Ayatollah Khomeini praised women for their involvement in the
revolution.
Earlier, however, Khomeini had taken a firm stand against the Shah's “White Revolution” —
one of the axes of which was women's access to the Iranian public space. Since the
beginning of the 20th century, especially during the Constitutional Revolution of
1906—1911, progressive Iranian women demanded access to schooling and the right to
expression. Before the end of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's reign in 1978, thirty per cent
of students in Iranian universities were women. Though many Iranian students were
attracted by the revolutionary language of radical reform in 1979, under influence of religious
intellectuals such as Ali Shariati, the country's public space became a field of social political
contradictions between sexes.
In March 1979, after the new Islamic law on veiling at workplaces came into force, massive
demonstrations took place in the Capital and major cities of Iran. Thousands of men took to
the streets shouting slogans such as: “We did not make the revolution to go backwards.” The
demonstrators were attacked and injured by Islamist storm-troopers. They were not
supported by the secular opposition groups who advised them to remain calm, so as Along
with the introduction of compulsory veiling, the Islamic Republic abolished the modernizing
reforms in the field of civil liberties for women and families law introduced during the Pahlavi
regime. The Shah era laws restricting the exercise of polygamy and raising the legal age of
marriage to 18 were abolished.
After the death of Khomeini in 1989 and the end of the eight-year war with Iraq, new
ideological currents emerged among women who demanded reforms while supporting the
Islamic regime. Reformist women stood firm against some of the ideological framework of
the Islamic regime in the 1990s, but they were gradually overtaken in the first decade of the
twenty-first century by a younger generation, the carriers of new demands.
The most significant action of this new generation of activists was the “One million
signatures for the repeal of all discriminatory laws against women in Iran” campaign in 2006.
From the Green Movement women against electoral frauds in 2009 to protest against acid
attack on women's resistance movement in streets of Esfahan in 2014, women's resistance
movement have caused social and political tremors in Iran.
In one of its recent reports on the country, Amnesty International noted that the Iranian
authorities have not taken any initiatives to combat violence against woman and girls in
private spheres or public sphere. Recent history shows us that Iranian women have been
present at all major points in the country's destiny. They have contributed to the evolution of
the Iranian public sphere while building a new future for their country. (IPA Service)
