Challenging stereotypes about Iranian women
Homa Hoodfar laughs as she describes her American husband’s reaction to the stereotype of the submissive Iranian woman. “He says, ‘oppressed Muslim women, my foot! I’ve been travelling to Iran for 25 years and I haven’t seen a single one of them yet.”
Hoodfar, who teaches in Concordia’s Sociology and Anthropology Department concurs.
Her research has looked at educated women who use international digital media campaigns to stop the stoning of women, and at poorer women who redefine their limited volunteer health-care roles to advocate for improved local standards in community health.
In her close to 30 years of research into women’s situations under Muslim law, Hoodfar has been able to point to countless examples of women’s social and political activism at all levels within Iranian society.
She got an early start as a researcher when a relative asked her to recruit women for literacy classes when she was just 15 or 16 years old. Hoodfar recalls that her middle-class family had recently moved into a newly built housing estate that backed onto a shantytown.
The exposure to such different circumstances proved to be a defining moment in her life. As she walked around the shantytown, Hoodfar found herself asking questions about the great differences in wealth among people living in such close proximity.
Since then, first during her undergraduate studies in Economics and later in her ongoing work in Anthropology, she has continued to explore the impact of class differences and opportunity, particularly as experienced by Iranian women. Whether rich or poor, the women Hoodfar describes in her work are a far cry from the docile, submissive figures so often portrayed by the Western media.
Hoodfar has recently published two papers focussing on women’s social activism in Iran since the 1979 revolution. She argues that far from hampering women’s activism, the advent of a Shi’ite religious state, though unintended, has offered ordinary women opportunities to push for change in a way that didn’t exist under the Pahlavi regime, though their political right was finally recognized in 1963. “The Mullahs were the first regime to include the recognized ordinary women as their political constituency,” says Hoodfar.
“Women are legally still considered second-class citizens, but now view themselves as political agents deserving of rights. Before it was only educated middle- class women who viewed themselves as citizens with rights.” says Hoodfar.
While it is still too dangerous for women in Iran to collectively organize in activities that might be defined as feminist elsewhere in the world, they have become adept at using the language and opportunities offered by the Shi’ite regime to promote women’s discussions and challenge the regime. Hoodfar gives the example of a religious ritual whereby the simple act of putting a flag in front of the house turns a private home into a public discussion space – one that is open to women only.
She remembers going to listen to some of the discussions at such gatherings and being very surprised by what she heard, “For five or six hours women come together to talk about religious or family issues. They said, ‘Whether male or female, black or white, tall or short, you’re all equal in front of God. It’s how you behave that is important.’ It was very interesting for me. I realised that these religious meetings were not making women docile at all, in fact, they were undermining the legitimacy of the regime by changing the way that women understood their rights.”
Hoodfar is critical of the Western tendency to focus on the veil and see it as a deep-seated sign of Muslim women’s oppression. “I think we should focus on Iranian and other Muslim women’s initiative for resistance and the changes they have managed to bring about rather than on what they don’t have. That’s the way solidarity should work.”
Through her ongoing research and her active participation in such networks as Women Living under Muslim Laws, Hoodfar continues to present a vision that challenges the stereotypes of Iranian women’s state-enforced submissiveness and lack of power.
Homa Hoodfar will participate in a discussion entitled “Prohibiting face covers: a comparative perspective” on November 19, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in room 763 of the Hall Building.
The discussion is part of the conference Revealing Democracy: Bill 94 and the challenges of religious pluralism and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec November 18 to 20.
Related links:
• Concordia Department of Sociology and Anthropology
• Women Living Under Muslim Laws