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Women alongside men in the protests in Iran |
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Many women in Iran had placed their hopes with reformist candidate Mir
Hossein Moussavi. Today, they are among the thousands of people
demonstrating in the streets of Iran.
 A young woman, dying in a pool of her own blood on a street in Tehran, has become an icon for the protesters after the violent crackdown of Iranian government forces towards the protests following the 12 June presidential polls. Mir Hossein Moussavi contests the results of the vote, saying they were fixed in favor of current President Amhmoud Ahmadinejad. According to media reports, at least 20 people have died in the attacks.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged an immediate end to the arrests, threats and use of force and has called on authorities to respect fundamental civil and political rights, especially the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom from threats and the use of force.
Zahra Rahnavard, wife of Mir Hossein Moussavi, took part in her husband’s campaign trail, a rarity for political wives in the country.
"Thirty-four million women demand to have female Cabinet ministers; 34 million women demand to be eligible to run for president," Zahra Rahnavard said to CNN before the elections.
Iranian women make up 65 percent of university students in the country, yet they remain second-class citizens when it comes to criminal matters, divorce, child custody and inheritance. This year, Iran’s Guardian Council announced for the first time that a woman could legally be among the candidates for the presidency. However, no woman was ultimately allowed to be a candidate.
The feminist movement is not new in Iran. Women participated in the constitutional revolution of 1906 and supported the Islamic revolution in 1979. They have subtly been challenging traditional Islamic law, for example by pushing restrictions on women’s dress to a breaking point.
Before the elections, secular and religious women’s movements had come together to form a coalition in order to pressure the candidates to take women’s rights into account in their election platforms. As a result of the pressure, together with the yearning for women’s votes, several of the candidates for the 12 June election had presented promises to strengthen the role of women in the country. Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric, had promised to campaign for women’s rights.
Female voters have also provided key support for Moussavi, who has talked about expanding women’s economic and legal rights. Feminist Shahla Lahiji said to the Swedish newspaper Daily News (Dagens Nyheter) said that she does not favour any of the candidates, but that she fears a continued Ahmadinejad rule.
“We have had four grim years with Ahmadinejad. A reelection might mean that activists will be crushed and jailed. Only in Tehran, there are already 80 women activists behind bars. How many in the whole of Iran is hard to say,” she stated.
Ahmadinejad represents for the women’s movement a leap backwards for their rights, as his government has presented policies such as a “family protection law,” easing restrictions on polygamy, as well as the launching of a “culture of modesty” for women’s dress and a propaganda campaign to tell women their rightful place is in the home. His politics have led to a resurgence of feminist organizing.
“I wouldn’t say the election was a turning point for women,” says Sanam Anderlini, a Washington-based consultant on international women’s issues to news aggregator site The Daily Beast. “But I would say women were the turning point for the election.”
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