In March 2019, the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. This happened in Iran. She had been working to defend women’s rights, but her activities were judged to threaten national security and to insult the country’s Supreme Leader.

Iran has been a constant target of criticism for violations of women’s human rights. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2018, the country ranked 142nd out of 149 in gender equality. In the decades following the 1979 Iranian Revolution (※１), both conservative and revolutionary administrations have, through various legal reforms, advocated women’s participation in society and simultaneously worked to address unfair treatment of women. Nevertheless, as the data above show, those efforts have yet to bear fruit.

Women shopping in a Tehran department store (Photo: Maede Nasiri)

In recent years, however, unexpected grassroots movements have begun to emerge to resolve women’s rights issues, and changes not seen before are being driven by Iranian women themselves. This article aims to shed light on the various problems Iranian women face and the background of the movements seeking to change them.

Legal and social discrimination against women in Iran

There is blatant discrimination against women in Iranian society. At both legal and social levels, women’s rights are severely restricted. Take marriage law, for example. For a woman’s first marriage in Iran, formal approval by a “male guardian” (※２) is required for each woman. In addition, all women in the country—regardless of religion or nationality—must wear Islamic dress in all public spaces. Since violating the rules is a criminal offense, resistance is difficult. Further restrictions are imposed on freedom of movement. To obtain a passport, a woman needs formal consent from a “male guardian”, and when it comes to leaving the country she must also secure a permission letter. In this way, the country’s civil and penal codes codify unfair restrictions on women’s rights.

Consent form that a ‘male guardian’ must sign for a woman to leave the country (Photo: Maede Nasiri)

Iranian women are also constrained by the country’s traditional social norms. The line between law and social norms is blurry, but long-standing norms are effectively as binding as law. In this respect, it is clear that the patriarchal custom in Iranian society, which views women as lower in status than men within the household, operates as a powerful unwritten rule. Although legal reforms have explicitly specified that when a man engages in polygamy or temporary marriage, the consent or understanding of the female partner is required, in practice men’s wishes are still often the only ones respected—even though a husband can, without being reprimanded by anyone in the family including his wife, forbid her from working or leaving the house. Moreover, despite state efforts such as legal amendments and penalties for violators, domestic violence against women remains a serious problem, especially in rural Iran, where it persists.

Although there is support for women’s participation in society, fundamental solutions have not been achieved. Each year, women account for about 60% of entrants to comprehensive universities in Iran, yet after graduation only 19% of them obtain full-time employment. In certain academic fields such as mineral engineering and road engineering, many public universities still admit only male students. Furthermore, in sports like swimming and gymnastics, women are allowed to practice domestically (the very need to phrase it that way smacks of discrimination), but due to dress codes and other obstacles they are not permitted to take part in public events or official international competitions. Stadiums that restrict women’s entry are also frequently seen. Strangely, however, such restrictions do not exist in law at all.

Smartphones, social media, and work

The inability of women to be financially independent, and their resulting dependence on men, weakens their position in the household and thus in society at large. Many women in Iran do not have steady jobs, in part because of restrictions on interaction between men and women in the workplace. Traditional norms have hampered women’s advancement in society. What has begun to change this situation is the development of technology.

With smartphones and social media, Iranian women have gained opportunities to earn income without leaving their homes. Face-to-face communication can run up against norms governing male-female interaction, but by conducting business online via smartphones and social media, women can pursue economic independence without breaking norms and inviting social criticism.

According to statistics from 2017, 48 million smartphones are in use in Iran, a country of 80 million people. Other data estimate that 53% of adults have social media accounts. Although many social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, are restricted, many Iranian officials—including the Supreme Leader—along with cabinet members and legislators, continue to communicate via the internet and social media. In fact, Iran is ranked seventh in the world by Instagram users, and Telegram (※３) has over 40 million users.

Consider it from a business perspective as well. Iran is under economic sanctions (※４), and as a result, famous international brands are absent from the domestic market. The market is dominated by little-known small firms and sole proprietors, for whom increasing visibility is vital to their business. Consequently, online advertising has become a powerful means of attracting consumers.

This means women have acquired new ways to participate in the market while still maintaining their households. Increasing numbers are using social media accounts to sell their own products—artisanal crafts and decorations, artworks, jewelry, custom-made cakes, and more. With advances in technology and the tools of smartphones and social networks, Iranian women have been able to overcome social barriers and secure independent sources of income. As they shift from being dependents to breadwinners, women’s status in Iran is improving.

Will smartphones elevate women’s status? (Photo: Maede Nasiri)

This technology-driven trend has also encouraged women to step out of the home and seek more active roles in society. Even while at home, having new sources of income can help women move into the broader workforce. The share of women in the country’s total labor force rose from 14.5% in 2012 to 17.9% in 2017. It may seem like a small increase, but it could be a step with great potential.

Demands for reforms to promote women’s participation in society

In recent years, social movements aimed at improving gender discrimination have grown in Iran, and they are largely organized and supported by women who use social media. Consider the issue of participation in sports held inside the country. These movements, which demand that women be allowed to enjoy sports freely without unfair restrictions, have produced significant results. Until now, efforts to reduce gender discrimination had been led by the legislature—sometimes grudgingly, under pressure from foreign countries, or with the intention of distracting the public from government misconduct. By contrast, the social movements that have arisen for the first time since the 1979 Iranian Revolution are distinct: Iranian women have united and organized through social media.

In June 2018, the government was forced to change an advertising billboard in Tehran. Installed in one of the city’s busiest squares, it depicted the country’s diverse ethnicities in traditional dress as supporters rallying behind Iran’s national team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup—but social media users criticized it because no women were included among the supporters. They called it a discriminatory billboard that evoked a male-dominant ideology. As a result, a new billboard was put up that depicted female supporters alongside men. The original billboard had been intended to promote unity among domestic minorities, but the social-media-driven controversy laid bare male supremacist thinking in Iran.

The movement over the billboard sparked a more fundamental debate: whether women should be barred from entering sports stadiums at all. Online, voices condemning unfair discrimination against women multiplied, and Iranian newspapers and other media saw fiercer debate over this issue than ever before.

On social media, critics pointed out that Iran was the only country in the world that banned women from attending football matches. They also noted that Saudi Arabia (Iran’s regional rival) had already lifted restrictions on women, and broad pressure was brought to bear on Iran via social media. In January 2018, the Iranian government finally had to yield and allowed women partial entry to Azadi Stadium to watch the October 2018 friendly between Iran and Bolivia.

According to a recent study, attitudes inside Iran toward women attending sporting events are changing. More than 60% of the public agrees that women should be allowed to enter stadiums without restrictions. Nevertheless, clear regulations or legal reforms to eliminate gender discrimination in spectating still do not exist, but the latest developments have prompted various organizations in Iran to begin addressing the issue from administrative and legislative angles.

Limits of social movements led by Iranian women

Thanks to these social movements, the status of Iranian women has been gradually improving. One might say the efforts are bearing fruit, but they may be succeeding precisely because they avoid radical change—namely, far-reaching legal and social reforms. Instead of addressing root causes, they focus on amending existing laws and overcoming social barriers. Movements that use social media can win broad international support, but they can also run aground on issues like resistance to the mandatory wearing of the hijab (※５).

According to the Islamic Penal Code, Book 5, Article 638, women who appear in public without a hijab face the severe penalty of up to two months in prison. Article 639 imposes even harsher punishments on those who promote immoral conduct (including advocating opposition to the hijab). Yet a 2014 survey found that nearly half of Iranian society does not support compulsory hijab for women. Protests against mandatory veiling remain a key element of progressive movements in Iran.

Many citizens who resist compulsory hijab have been arrested, and those who sought to defend protesters—like the lawyer mentioned at the start of this article—have been subjected to even harsher punishments.

A similar impasse can be seen in the failure of online campaigns to abolish child marriage in Iran. According to UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), 17% of girls in Iran marry before the age of 18, and there have even been reports of girls married at far younger ages. The internet saw a flood of criticism over child marriage, yet a bill to ban marriage for girls under 13 did not pass the parliament until 2018.

While much of the activism remains online, in the case of compulsory hijab—as with sports—the movement has also spilled into street protests. Child marriage is now recognized as a global issue in need of improvement, and many commentators and experts express support for legal reforms while amplifying public voices online. Nevertheless, Iran’s hardline posture—resistant to any changes that would alter the conservative social structures underpinning the state—shows little sign of shifting.

A female engineer supervising a construction site in Tehran (Photo: Maede Nasiri)

Of course, it’s not all bleak. Efforts to eliminate gender discrimination have borne fruit, and increasing numbers of women are beginning to assume high-ranking public posts in Iran’s administrative and legislative bodies. There are women at the forefront of the arts and sciences, and although their numbers remain limited, there are also shining success stories of women who have become active entrepreneurs in Iran’s male-dominated economy. At the household level, new opportunities brought by social media appear to be promoting Iranian women’s economic independence and gradually reshaping domestic hierarchies. With technological progress enabling women’s economic autonomy, women have embarked on unprecedented social movements to seek redress for rights violations, while also boosting their motivation to play more active roles in Iranian society.

It is noteworthy that all of these reforms are taking place within Iran’s existing frameworks and ways of thinking, and have not yet translated into demands for fundamental legal overhauls or sweeping judicial reform to break out of traditional structures. Though social movements seeking to improve women’s rights violations are relatively new and radical change has yet to materialize, the seeds sown for major reform have surely begun to sprout. The spring of Iranian women may be close at hand.

※１ Iranian Revolution: A series of events that replaced the U.S.-backed monarchy with the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the revolution, a new constitution based on Islamic law was adopted.

※２ Male guardian: A guardianship system in which men head the family and are assigned responsibility for the care and protection of women. All women are required to obtain approval from a male guardian (usually a father, husband, brother, or son) when making important life decisions.

※３ Telegram: A social networking service with encrypted messaging. It is an instant messaging system characterized by high confidentiality.

※４ Iran engaged in nuclear-related activities and was subjected to stringent economic sanctions by the UN Security Council and Western countries that curtailed its ability to conduct economic activity abroad. After negotiations that led to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, UN Security Council sanctions were lifted in 2015. However, in 2018 the United States unilaterally withdrew under President Donald Trump, reinstating sanctions on Iran and on international companies doing business with it.

※５ Hijab: A set of rules regarding Muslims’ dress in public. Today it usually refers to women’s clothing, especially the headscarf. Literally means ‘curtain’.

Writer: Tahereh Mohammadi

Translation: Yuka Ikeda, Tadahiro Inoue

Graphics: Saki Takeuchi