In an event hosted by the Center for Gender Studies at Koç University, Dr Gülriz Şen, specialising in Middle Eastern politics and Iran’s foreign policy, gave a presentation about the current state of the protests in Iran with a focus on the historical context.
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The Center for Gender Studies at Koc University (KOÇ-KAM) held a webinar on the regional and global developments for women’s rights, with a focus on the dynamics of inclusion and the social upheavals led by women around the globe. In the event, Dr Gülriz Şen gave a presentation about the dynamics of protest in Iran by focusing on its historical context along with global dynamics.
Offering a historical perspective, Şen stated that Iranian society could not find the freedom and democracy that they dreamed of in the 1979 revolution. In the 1990s women became active in shaping the process of change in Iran. Şen underlined that during the reform movement of the 1990s, Iran struggled to keep the theocratic elements of the regime in the background and to bring its Republican characteristics to the fore. Addressing the women’s movement in Iran in this context, Şen stated that the backbone of the group that brought Mohammed Khatami, who was labelled as Iran’s reformist, ti power in 1997, was women and young people.
Şen summarized the extent of women’s struggle in her speech:
“Women were always active during and after the 1979 revolution, mainly urban educated women became more and more politicized within the political and social conjuncture. They became more united on the ground of struggle for rights because in the 1980s, there was a separation between women in Iran, between Islamic and more secular women, but they experienced loss of rights, like getting custody of their children in divorce, lowering the age of marriage, polygamy, and all these issues. The problems brought both more conservative women and secular women together and they agreed to tackle them all together.”
Şen underlines that there is a securitization of civil society and they are defined as an enemy, as collaborators by the regime. This according to her harms both civil society activities and the women’s mobilization. Despite this, Şen states that in a process where the diaspora is highly mobilized, the protests are not limited to only affecting only the Iranians or the region, but it is an issue that has affected the entire global community.
Protests Are Going on for Years
Şen stated that the biggest demand of women in Iran, especially since the nineties, is the signing of CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and its approval by the parliament, that is, creating a legal basis for combating all forms of discrimination against women and ensuring women’s rights. (Although the reformist parliament approved CEDAW in 2003, this request was rejected by an upper legislative authority in Iran.) Stating that international crises have closely affected the struggles of the people and women in Iran, Şen said that securitization of domestic politics and everyone who desires freedom and democracy in domestic politics is one of the biggest problems. It is possible to observe that this securitization discourse has also increased with the increasing legitimacy problem along with the regime’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Şen also argues from a historical point of view that the revolution in Iran gave birth to a hybrid structure, and that the fact that it was both a theocratic and a populist revolution affected today’s mobilization. Iranian women’s protests did not only appear after the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, but have recently started with both the political pressure and the economic downturn and the increasing pressure on women. Anti-hijab protests have been on social media since 2010s.
Another dynamic underlined by Şen is the promotion of the headscarf in Iran as a symbol against imperialism since the revolution. Thus, even though the pressure on women eased during the reformist and more moderate governments in Iran, we saw that the hijab, that is, the compulsory veiling law, always in effect, and the practice came to the fore in a much more restrictive and oppressive way during the conservative administrations. However, Şen stated that after Mahsa Jina’s death, the symbolic actions of women, which started at her funeral, turned into an outburst of anger, and that the common feeling of women, intersectionality, came to the fore in the protests.
“We are witnessing a great revolution in Iran”
Touching on the question of what will the future of the women’s movement look like in Iran, Şen states that instead of negotiating with the masculine system, there is a section on the street that struggles with this system and tries to transform it altogether. She states that although there is not yet a very organized struggle, the protesters never use the word reform and say they want a revolution.
Şen says that the emphasis on the struggle against the patriarchal system and a secular democracy dominates the protests, and argues that both the brave and angry actions of women in Iran are closely watched in a global environment. Finally, she ends her talk by stating “we have seen Iranian women and men who have been forced to pay the price for their courage, but we have witnessed a great movement and optimism of will in Iran.”