Roots of Opposition to Gender Equality Laws Regarding Women

In the latest issue of the monthly magazine Women Today published in Tehran, an interview has been published with Laleh Eftekhari, a member of the ninth parliament, titled 'In our country, gender equality is detrimental to women.' This interview was conducted by Hania Khakpour, a writer for Women Today. According to the interview, Laleh Eftekhari, a conservative representative in the seventh, eighth, and ninth parliaments, is also a member of the board of directors of the Cultural Commission of the Parliament and the head of the Quran and Ahl al-Bayt and Elites and Innovators factions. The spokesperson for the Women's faction in the parliament claimed that when the issue of gender equality was raised at the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Turkey, countries around the world welcomed it because, in those countries, gender equality helped increase women's rights and elevate their status, as Ms. Eftekhari stated that the level of women's rights is low in those countries. However, Ms. Eftekhari stated in her speech that if gender equality were to prevail in Iran, it would be detrimental to girls and women, and due to the implementation of gender equality, many rights of Iranian women would be reduced. We are joined by Hossein Ghazian, a sociologist residing in the United States. Mr. Ghazian, what kind of thinking leads someone like Laleh Eftekhari, a parliament member, to believe that Islamic laws are superior to equality-seeking laws? Hossein Ghazian: I think this claim, regardless of its correctness or incorrectness, is based on a misunderstanding of the law in its modern sense. Because law is not something that a group brings from somewhere for another group. Law is what the people living there bring for themselves. Therefore, thinking that a law is written somewhere and can be told to people to follow does not constitute law. Law is what people collectively decide to manage their public affairs. This is what creates law, and it differs from something that is to be enforced from outside the will and desire of the people. Even if it is equality-seeking or better than equality. If it has such a thing. Therefore, this claim can be evaluated by denying the concept of modern law. Then we can say whether this claim is correct or incorrect. But Mr. Ghazian, where does the root of this thinking originate? A thinking that loudly declares that Iranian women should respect Islamic laws because we support you more than laws that are heard both in Iran and in many parts of the world and are presented as equality-seeking laws. This is, in fact, a kind of ideological understanding of collective life that is intertwined with religious and supernatural concepts and is believed that there is a hand at work in the world that has envisioned rights for humans, and now humans must implement those rights and obligations exactly. In fact, in this ideological thought, humans do not have the right to determine their own destiny. People themselves are not the source of rights. Therefore, they do not have the right to legislate for themselves. This is where that different understanding of contemporary life shows itself compared to that ideological type of life that has resorted to religion. You see that in the thinking of the leaders of this ideology, it is completely clear and explicitly stated that people are not the source of rights to want to delegate this right to others. And part of that right is where humans want to decide to create laws. If they do not have such a right, then there is no need for them to want to exercise that right. From somewhere else, outside their will and desire, there is a set of laws that they must implement. In this case, they have no rights. This right comes from somewhere else, whatever its source, it is not from the people themselves. In support of your statements, Ms. Eftekhari, in response to a question about the marriage age of girls and that more than 40,000 girls under the age of fifteen have their marriages registered annually, responded that the legislator must act according to the sacred law because the sacred law knows how a girl’s needs and priorities and her rights can be respected. This sacred law, I think, is the reference you mentioned. But let's return to the specifics of this matter. From the perspective that Ms. Eftekhari speaks from, for example, how can we say that in the case of dowries, women's rights are better considered than those of women who do not have dowries? In this specific case, an important issue is that the matter here is not the formation of a family life. If we want to assess the essence of alimony and dowry, we will see that this is actually a type of transactional contract. It is a contract of buying and selling. It is a contract of trade. The trade involves the use of a woman's body for sexual exploitation and reproduction in exchange for a mortgage and rent. The mortgage is essentially the dowry, and alimony is the rent. Therefore, in this type of trade, a woman's body is temporarily or permanently owned for exploitation. This is why if someone does not pay the mortgage or rent, they do not have the right to exploit the woman's body, and that is why a woman can refuse to comply. While if in a normal situation, if the mortgage and rent have been taken and she does not comply, she is accused and condemned. Whereas the opposite is not the case. This shows that there is a kind of buying and selling contract of sex in exchange for cash or non-cash assets, and therefore it falls outside the scope of forming a shared life in the sense of a family. But Mr. Ghazian, what impact can this type of view of women and women's bodies and a contract called marriage have on the dignity and character of Iranian women? Iranian women who now enter such a transaction not to start an equal shared life, but as you said, to begin a physical and sexual transaction? If you pay attention to the fact that women from childhood to adulthood are constantly taught that their rights are not equal to those of men, that men have superiorities over them, these superiorities not only exist but come from a supernatural source, from God, from the prophet's words, from a sacred text, and if someone opposes it, they will be subjected to punishment and retribution in the afterlife. This fear and anxiety, along with opposition to something that harms the individual, and at the same time, opposing it is also painful, becomes part of that personality which creates a subordinate and second-class character. That is, this notion that if this is the case and nothing can be said about it, one must obey, one must comply, and there must be wisdom in it. In this case, the personality of the individual who accepts these becomes a type of subordinate follower personality, and this personality naturally cannot rise to leadership and management and must always be subordinate to another, which here is the man. This may form part of that historically suppressed inner personality during the growth and socialization of women that we may also see in the traditional forms of our social life. Nasrin Afzali, a women's rights activist residing in the United States, is with us. Ms. Afzali, in your opinion, why did Ms. Eftekhari raise such issues? Nasrin Afzali: This is a kind of compulsion that after the Islamic Republic, all officials of the Islamic Republic have had. Reformists and non-reformists and conservatives. The reason is that they could not provide another justification for this. After all, we now know that human rights are also based on the discourse of gender equality, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is also based on gender equality. Therefore, in such a situation where every year a gender gap report is presented and a human rights violation report is issued, and Iran is always condemned for violating gender equality, they have to provide such justification and reasoning for it. They have no other choice. Iran's laws are among the most regressive social laws in the world, even in the regional context and even compared to the situation in Iran forty years ago, it has regressed and continues to regress. We see that alongside existing laws, anti-women practices are constantly added, moving towards greater gender inequality.