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Mousavi and Rahnavard gesture to supporters during an election campaign at a cultural centre in southern Tehran, May 30, 2009. (Reuters Photo)
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The photos of the presidential hopeful Mirhossein Mousavi accompanied by his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, in press conferences and electoral rallies have ignited much interest both domestically and internationally. Rahnavard answers journalists’ questions and speaks on her husband’s behalf in a country where politicians rarely appear with their wives in public.
So, many observers are wondering whether Iran would have a first lady that accompanies the president in social events and international trips, and supports women’s rights.
Mousavi has received threats of revealing photos of his wife unveiled as well as making public a video clip of her dancing publicly before the Islamic Revolution. However, the couple insisted on Rahnavard being part of her husband’s campaign.
Rahnavard, who expresses her opinions about social and political issues openly, believes that what she is doing is totally normal and compatible with both logic and Shari’ah, arguing that she and her husband are setting a good example for married couples.
There has been a widely held belief in the Islamic Republic that women are incapable of acting as presidents.
“Women do not have the necessary qualifications for becoming presidents.”
This is the sentence that the Council of Guardians, the body responsible for supervising the electoral process, has been repeating over the past 30 years, a period during which Iran witnessed ten presidential elections.
However, last year members of the Council changed their minds, and said that they would examine the papers of female presidential candidates just like men.
Iranian Women in Politics
| The Council of Guardians did not clear a single female hopeful to contest the presidential race. |
The example of Rahnavard is the least Iranian women can accept after it has become clear that the Islamic system will not allow women to assume presidency in the Islamic Republic.
Notably, among the 476 people who had registered their candidacy for the upcoming election, there were only six women, the most distinguished of which was Massomeh Ebtekar. Ebtekar, who served as a vice-president under Khatami, had withdrawn her candidacy before the Council of Guardian issued the final list of candidates.
Refaat Bayat, the parliament representative of the city of Zangan, was also one of the six women. The Council of Guardians, however, did not clear a single female hopeful to contest the presidential race.
According to some arguments, the Council of Guardians’ decision was a public relations move that aimed for easing the pressure of the Iranian women’s organizations as well as improving the image of the system abroad.
What supports such arguments is that despite the recent decision, the de facto status of women remains the same since the Council of Guardians raises the question of the constitutionality of women assuming presidency.
“The president must be a man of politics,” states the Islamic Republic’s constitution.
Yet, many Reformists believe that the word “man” here refers to both men and women because in Arabic a group that contains males and females is addressed in the male form. Conservatives on the other hand insist on adopting the literal meaning.
Also, one of the main hindrances to women’s ascendance to positions of power in the Islamic Republic is the fact that assuming leadership posts is still linked to one’s revolutionary history or participation in the eight-year war with Iraq (for the second generation of revolutionaries), and hardly any woman has either of the two qualifications.
There is a huge gap between the freedom Iranian women enjoy in family environment and their status in the political system. Iranian women, particularly those of Farsi ethnic origin, are significantly active in the family environment, which is clearly reflected in the numbers of working women and university female students. Notably, females constitute more than 70 percent of university students in the Islamic Republic. Yet, on the political level, Iranian women face systematic marginalization.
Despite the existence of a big number of women’s organizations and the large space of freedom Iranian women have compared to women in other parts in the Middle East, the political representation of women remains low; no woman has ever assumed the position of minister. The number of female MPs has also been minute in Iran’s 270-seat parliament.
Cultured Zahra
| Rahnavard is a sculptor, whose sculptures can be seen in Tehran's squares. |
Zahra Rahnavard has not been an ordinary woman since her school years. The riotous student at the fine arts college did not put on the veil as many women did under the effect of Ali Shari’ati’s ideas about political Islam. However, she got veiled in the United States in 1976, and she wrote a book under the title of “The veil is the women’s message.”
Mousavi’s choice of her as a wife was unusual during that time because the first generation of revolutionaries were keen to marry the daughters of Ayatollahs to consolidate their positions in the new system. But the once-socialist Mousavi did not follow the same path.
Rahnavard, a sculptor whose sculptures can been seen in Tehran’s squares, plays music. Holding a PhD in political science, she worked as an editor-in-chief of an Iranian newspaper. Also, she is the only woman who occupied the position of a chairman of a university in the Islamic Republic.
However, her dearest title is that of the Servant of the Holy Qur’an, a title that she has acquired after studying the Qu’ran for 38 years. The outcome of her long study was 18 books and tens of articles, the most famous of which is the book titled “Art in Islam: Joseph’s Emigration and Moses’ Revolt.”
The 64-year-old artist does not shy away from talking about love publicly as she called her last art exhibition “Glass Tells a Story of Love.” And when she was asked about the name, she said her life was full of love, and that love was the very secret of life.
Women Rights’ Defender
| Rahnavard has perfectly succeeded at gaining the support of women voters. |
Rahnavard has been the guest of a big number of interviews since the announcement of Mousavi’s candidacy. And she has made it clear that she refuses the neglect with which women’s calls are met when they start asking the president to fulfill the promises he made during his electoral campaign, justifying his stance by putting the responsibility for changing laws on the legislature and the judiciary.
If her husband is elected, she has promised that the executive branch of government would interfere in favor of women’s rights. Also, she has announced that her husband will appoint the first female minister in the history of the Islamic Republic should he win the presidential election set for June 12.
Also, Rahnavard has announced a number of promises and suggestions that can be considered an action plan for empowering women.
First, she has promised to provide women who work at home with an insurance cover, arguing that more than one third of Iran’s national production is the outcome of women’s home activities in agricultural and Bedouin areas. Second, she has pledged to push for codifying laws that ensure that the ownership of agricultural land remains in the hands of women because one third of the workers in the agricultural sector are women. Third, she has undertaken to help changing Iran’s personal status law that, in her opinion, does not protect women.
The statements of Mousavi’s wife are not confined to women’s issues only; rather, she is trying to defend civil rights as well. Rahnavard believes that the Islamic system has become strong enough, and that there is no need to impose the emergency law anymore. She also advocates the “Third Way” approach to politics.
The ideal democracy, according to Rahnavard, is the one that increases the size of the middle class and decreases the sizes of the high and low classes, which can be achieved by minimizing the economic role of the government.
If we are to argue that Mousavi has failed at convincing men to rally behind him, Zahra Rahnavard has perfectly succeeded at gaining the support of women voters. Rahnavard, who carries the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, combines what are perceived as two extremes; she conveys the liberal image admired by university female students due to her familiarity with the Western culture, and her practice of arts, and at the same time she is an expert at Qur’an sciences.
Rahnavard has also managed to refute the classic argument against Reformists that they focus only on the intellectual elite and ignore ordinary people.
In a similar fashion, the wife of the Reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, is campaigning for her husband. The owner of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in Iran has been making statements about her husband’s intention to improve the status of Iranian women should he win the election. However, her role has been perceived as less influential than that of Rahnavard.
In a country where wives of politicians hardly ever make an appearance with their husbands, the recent phenomenon of them campaigning for their husbands might be an indication of the onset of a new phase in the participation of Iranian women in politics. Perhaps we would soon see Iran’s first lady on TV screens taking international trips and participating in charity events just like the United States’ first ladies.
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