Women’s Rights in Iran: A Conversation with Kelly J. Shannon

In September, 22-year old Mahsa Amini died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Protests quickly erupted, and over the past two months they have grown into calls for regime change. How did Iran, a country that once sat at the forefront of Muslim women’s advancement, end up with such conservative gender laws? After decades of repression, why did Amini's death lead to such a broad movement for reform? And how does the issue of Iranian women’s human rights constitute a policy issue for the United States? Join us in conversation with Kelly J. Shannon as we discuss Iranian women's human rights then and now. 

Kelly J. Shannon, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of History and the Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Florida Atlantic University. She specializes in the 20th century history of U.S. foreign relations, with a particular focus on the Islamic world, Iran, and women’s human rights. She is the author of the book U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women’s Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). 

Transcript

Narrator 0:08

Welcome to Then and Now, a podcast by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. We study change in order to make change, linking knowledge of the past to the quest for a better future. Every other week we examine the most pressing issues of the day through a historical lens, helping us understand what happened then and what that means for us now.

Tawny Paul 0:32

Welcome to Then and Now. I'm Tawny Paul, Assistant Director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy at UCLA. Over the past several weeks, Iran has seen major civil unrest. Protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September after she was detained by the so-called morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress code. Protests quickly escalated, and demonstrations have grown beyond calls for greater freedom for women. There's now a call for regime change. And the current uprising poses perhaps the most serious challenge to the ruling clerics since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power. We've seen solidarity protests throughout the world, including most recently at the World's Cup. Joining us today to provide some historical context to these issues and to the long history of women's rights in Iran is Dr. Kelly Shannon. Kelly is Associate Professor of History and the Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights at Florida Atlantic University. She specializes in the 20th century history of U.S. foreign relations with a particular focus on the Islamic world, Iran, and women's rights. She's the author of the book U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights, published in 2018 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Kelly, welcome to the podcast.

Kelly Shannon 2:00

Thank you for having me, Tawny.

Tawny Paul 2:02

So let's start with the current context. The death of Mahsa Amini was the spark that ignited the current protest movement that we're seeing in Iran. But now it's actually about much more. I'm wondering if you can give us some context. What are the factors that have allowed this movement to grow into what it is now? And what is it that the protesters are demanding?

Kelly Shannon 2:24

Yes, so there are a lot of different factors that have come together into this current moment. And there have been a lot of protests in Iran in the last 10 or 15 years or so, but I would say this one is very different. I would see it as a revolutionary movement at this point. So there are multiple factors. Some of them are historical and some of them are more recent. The first is that there has long been a movement for democracy in Iran, stretching back to the country's first revolution at the dawn of the 20th century. But Iranian attempts to create democracy at home historically has been thwarted by foreign intervention. So that first revolution was ended in 1911 when Russia invaded Iran, then tried to have a genuine democracy after World War II. And that was ended when the CIA and MI6 uh staged a coup to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossaddegh in 1953. Um, and then in the 1979 revolution, there were people who won it secular democracy, but they were outmaneuvered and outnumbered by the fundamentalists who won it the current theocracy. And I think at that point, a lot of people were looking at um a potential third way between the West and between the communist bloc, and they turned to Islam. Um, but there are still Iranians today who want secular democracy, and increasingly uh the protesters as a whole seem to be demanding the end of the Islamic regime and the creation of a new democratic government that represents the voices and the needs of the people. Um, another major factor is the Iranian government's long history of discrimination against the Kurdish people, who are an ethnic and linguistic minority in Iran, as well as in nearby countries like Turkey and Iraq. And I think it's relevant because Mahsa Amini was Kurdish. And I think that that did play a role in how brutal the police were with her. And a lot of the early protests were in Kurdish regions. And to this day, a lot of the more um kind of committed protests are in the Kurdish regions of Iran. Um, then on top of that, there's the general history of repression, human rights violations, um, corruption by the Islamic regime over the last 40 years. And historically, under this government, when Iranian uh citizens protest or show any signs of dissent, they're met with really violent um brutality, which includes, I mean, horrific numbers of citizens executed over the last 40 years, as well as violence against um, you know, protesters and other citizens. Um on top of that, there is uh right now, you know, the last several years, there have been really significant economic problems in Iran. Uh, they've been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. So some of these economic problems have to do with global sanctions, but um, on top of it, the Islamic government they don't have a terribly effective economic program. And they don't seem willing to provide for the basic needs of their people, um, or maybe they're not able to. Um, so for instance, there were protests in parts of the country uh in the last couple of years because of the lack of drinking water. And instead of figuring out a way to provide drinking water for those regions, the government just violently suppressed the protests. Um there's high unemployment, there's uh completely out of control inflation. So it's it's a struggle for people to live and especially for young people to get ahead economically. And they have a large young generation. Um, the majority of Iranians were born after the 1979 revolution, so they're under the age of 40, they don't have a lot of economic opportunity, they have a severely repressive government, so they don't have freedom. And I think we've hit a tipping point with this generation wanting a change. Uh, and then I think probably the most relevant factor is the historic history of this government's oppression of women in Iran. Um, you know, it's it was the death of a young woman that sparked these protests, and women and girls have been at the forefront of these protests ever since.

Tawny Paul 6:35

And what are the possibilities for reform under Iran's system of governments? Historically, have reform movements worked?

Kelly Shannon 6:44

So I think overall, I mean, we're seeing a government that is unwilling to change. It's uninterested in the uh needs of its people and what its people are saying they want. And in the last 20, 25 years or so, there was a reform movement in Iran that successfully elected two reformist presidents. Um, the first was Khatami uh in the late 90s, and then the second was the more recent president. And these reformers were unable to really change the system. Um, all of the power really stems from the supreme leader who is the religious leader, and it's um Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And he's unwilling to change. So the president really has very little power if the supreme leader is not willing to also uh implement reforms. And so I think because it's become very clear to the Iranian people that reform isn't going to work, the only alternative is revolution at this point. So the protesters have been very clear in this protest, they're calling for the end of the Islamic Republic itself. They're calling for secular democracy, they're calling for a government that respects the human rights of its people, especially the human rights of women. And uh they're being met with deadly force by a regime that will not give an inch.

Tawny Paul 8:02

Wow. So let's let's focus then on the issue of women's rights, which remains central to this movement. Um, one of the striking things to me about Iran's really repressive gender policies is how new they are, historically speaking. Iranian women haven't always faced the kind of oppression that we're hearing about in recent weeks. And in your 2018 book, US Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights, you write about an Iran in the 60s and the 70s that was at the forefront of women's advancement. Can you tell us a little more about what this looked like?

Kelly Shannon 8:40

I mean, Iran historically was like a lot of other countries. I mean, traditionally, it was a patriarchal society, uh, but there was a homegrown women's rights movement. Uh, there were some individual women who started calling for women's rights as early as the 1850s. Um, and then during Iran's first revolution, the constitutional revolution of 1906 to 1911, uh, women participated in that revolution in large numbers and out of that developed their own movement for women's equality. Uh, so women did not have equal political rights following that revolution, but they did uh slowly start to make progress over the course of the 20th century. So that by the 1960s and 70s, under the government of Mohamed Reza Shah Pahlavi, um, who used women's rights as kind of a centerpiece of his modernization programs. And um, you know, he himself was definitely still a chauvinist and was not a feminist in any way, but he allowed women to um occupy high-ranking positions in his government and a lot of them set the agenda for achieving gender equality. Um, so this is his twin sister, Princess Ashraf, um, his third wife, uh, Farah, and the minister for women's affairs, Manaz Afkhami, uh, at the time. And so Iran passed a lot of really progressive measures, uh, especially in the 70s. So um, women had access to higher education, they had access to careers, there were laws mandating equal pay. Um, and this is, you know, in the 70s. Uh, women had reproductive rights and health care, um, which in some cases was more progressive than laws that you saw in Western countries, including the United States at the time. Women, you know, had a variety of roles, and it varied by economic class and whether people lived in an urban area or a rural area or what ethnic group they belonged to. But in general, women had freedom of dress, freedom of movement. Um, they could write, they could vote and run for office. And in 1967, the Shah passed the Islamic world's most progressive family law, which is the law that governs marriage, inheritance, divorce, and child custody. Um, so you really, you know, women gained a lot of rights in a lot of different areas of society in Iran. Of course, there was a lot of work left to do. It was, you know, there's still a lot of patriarchal attitudes. It wasn't perfect, but um it was Iranian women really kind of pushing the envelope on gender equality. Uh, and actually the the 1980 UN Second World Conference on Women was originally scheduled to be held in Tehran, uh, but the revolution changed that and they had to move it to to Copenhagen. So this was a this was a country where women were um, you know, moving toward greater equality and rights. And then the revolution in 1979 changed that dramatically.

Tawny Paul 11:37

So so what happened? How did women end up losing these rights? When and when and how did that happen?

Kelly Shannon 11:45

Uh well, that happened because of the 1979 revolution. Uh so women and men participated in that revolution. Um, despite the Shah's programs uh trying to modernize the country, and despite the more progressive uh laws for women at the time, uh the Shah's government was politically repressive, and there were a lot of economic problems in the country. So women and men participated in this movement to overthrow the Shah's government. Um, there were a lot of different factions. You had secular democrats, you had Marxists, you had traditionalists, and then there were the um Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Khomeini. And the fundamentalists were able to seize control. Um, once the Shah was gone, they were the most organized, they were the most willing to use violence against their opponents. Um, and you know, they created this Islamic republic. And one of the first things that Ayatollah Khomeini did when he became the supreme leader was move to roll back the rights that women had fought to gain over the previous, you know, century or so. Uh for him, I think controlling women was essential to creating the kind of strict Islamic society he envisioned for Iran. And that society really wasn't in keeping with Iran's historical tradition of Islam. Um he invented something kind of wholly new, and I would say kind of very modern in a lot of ways, of this all-encompassing Islamic regime run by religious leaders that kind of homogenized Islam into one monolithic kind of Islam that everyone had to abide by. And historically, that you know was a very diverse religion in Iran. And actually, Iran had been a multi-religious society, even though it was Muslim majority. And so there was a lot of repression against religious minorities as well. Uh, and so he immediately decreed in March of 1979, um, about a just a couple weeks after he returned to the country and the Shah had abdicated that women had to wear the headscarf and that um women who were judges should be fired. And he sort of previewed that that more was to come. And women immediately mobilized, went out into the streets and the tens of thousands and protested um for their rights and said that um, you know, wearing a headscarf is a woman's choice, whether they want to wear it or not. It should not be mandatory. And men didn't really march beside them uh at the time, but these women's protests at that moment were effective because Khomeini was still struggling against other political factions for control. A year later, he had consolidated power, he had pushed out the prime minister Bazar Ghan, who had was a secular Democrat. Um he was fully in control of the country, and so he decided to try again. Um, so this time he again instituted mandatory headscarves or mandatory head job. He fired women from being judges and from other high-ranking positions, he closed down the universities. Uh, and when they reopened, they were segregated by gender. Women were not allowed to study certain subjects, mostly in the sciences. Uh, he changed the family laws to once again grant most of the rights to men. He lowered the age of marriage uh for women first to um, I think it was 11 and then to nine. Uh, it got raised again in 2002 to 13, but you know, child marriage for girls uh became more common under Khomeini. Um, he also encouraged polygamy, which the Shah had tried to discourage in Iran. Uh, and so women saw an almost immediate erosion of their rights. And they did protest again in 1980, but um, in at that point, the government was solidified enough under Khomeini's control that he was able to violently repress those protests. And because men were not there beside them, women were then forced into these um really you know subordinated positions in Iranian society.

Tawny Paul 15:55

And how did this compare to the treatment of women in other parts of the Islamic world?

Kelly Shannon 16:02

It still is not was never as bad as the Taliban in Afghanistan, um, or as bad as Saudi Arabia. So women could still go to school, they could drive, but they were they were very much controlled. You know, they they can't travel without their husband or their father's permission, they can't get married without their father's permission, they can't leave the country without their father's permission or their husband's permission. So women very much have a second-class status in Iran. And um, along with that goes daily harassment by the so-called religious police or the morality police who are checking to make sure that they're dressed properly. Uh, and so it's sort of this daily humiliation and this daily intrusion into women's lives that by the government that um we're starting to see, you know, that the anger about this has erupted um over the death of Masa Amini.

Tawny Paul 16:50

So we're sitting here in America watching all of this happen. And one of the things that you have written about is how women's rights in the Islamic world have featured in American foreign policy. Um, can you tell us how concerns over women have historically featured in America's relationship with Iran?

Kelly Shannon 17:11

That's yeah, that's an interesting question. So I write about this in my book. I think it's actually the loss of women's rights in Iran in 1979 and 80 that sparks American concern about women's rights in the Islamic world more broadly in a serious way. Um, I mean, there's this long history of Americans and and Westerners in general denigrating the Islamic world through these um stereotypes. So a lot of them had to do with women as like the harem woman or the silent veiled victim of oppression. And you see this in American popular culture going all the way back to you know the 17, 1800s. But in that period, there wasn't actually a sense of concern that Americans really needed to do something about it. Um, but coming out of the 79 revolution, this is now a historical period where the US has gone through the second wave of feminism at home. Uh, so gender equality is much more on Americans' minds. Um, there was the global grassroots human rights movement that gained steam in the 1970s. And so Americans had these older stereotypes that they could draw on, but they also had newer concepts drawn from global feminism and the global human rights movement. And so they could see what happened in Iran as not just an issue of cultural difference, but as an actual, you know, dramatic taking away of women's human rights that they had already had. Um, but when it came to dealing with Iran after that, I mean, Iran sort of looms as this specter in Americans' concerns about what might happen in other Islamic countries if fundamentalists gain control there. Um, and they they say, oh, you know, women will also suffer if these movements are successful in places like Egypt. But with Iran, um the United States ended up not having a relationship with the Iranian government because of the 1979 hostage crisis, um, where Iranian students stormed the US embassy in November of 1979 and famously held the Americans there hostage for what was it, 444 days? Uh so that led to the US breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran. And we've never re-established that official diplomatic relationship. Um the US has never been in a position to directly call for the Iranian government to respect the rights of women.

Tawny Paul 19:35

Kelly, here in America, are we getting accurate information about what's going on in Iran?

Kelly Shannon 19:41

I'd say for the most part, no. It's very difficult to get information on what's happening. Um, one reason is that the Iranian government has been shutting down the internet and access to messaging apps like WhatsApp to limit the information getting out of the country, as well as to disrupt the ability of the protest movement to communicate and organize. This is something they've been doing with the protests for the last several years. On top of that, there's a real problem with misinformation online. Uh, there are supporters of the Iranian government and potentially, who knows, it might also be Russians because Russia and Iran are allied who have been putting out misinformation intentionally to disrupt global outcry over human rights violations in Iran. Um, what's happening there is horrific. I mean, there have been over 15,000 people arrested for protesting, including prominent Iranian uh intellectuals, athletes, rappers, schoolgirls. Um, they are arresting children. They are torturing protesters, including children and teenagers. They are committing sexual assault against protesters, including children and teenagers. And recently the parliament voted to make the penalty for these protesters the death sentence. And initially, there was a public outcry around the world about this announcement that potentially 15,000 people could be facing execution in Iran. But then the forces of misinformation took to the social networks and started to argue that, oh, actually, these people aren't facing execution because it was the parliament and not the judiciary who stated that this should be the sentence. But that intentionally misrepresents the way the Iranian system works. Uh, their justice system is a sham. Any direction really comes from the supreme leader. Um, Ayatollah Khamenei's been very clear that he's a hardliner on these protests. If the parliament passes a law saying that the punishment for protesting is death, that means when these protesters have their trials, which are sham trials, uh the judge has no choice but to. Issue a death sentence. So it's a matter of when, not if, these uh protesters who were imprisoned are facing execution. And Iran has a long history of executing large numbers of its own population. Most recently, they executed uh several thousand people after the 2009 election protests in the country. So I think there is a real danger. And we're looking at a human rights emergency in Iran right now. But because of misinformation online, a lot of people no longer know what to believe. And so they think maybe things aren't that bad there, but they really are.

Tawny Paul 22:31

Yeah. We've seen so much international concern over what's going on in Iran. There have been solidarity protests all over the world. This has emerged as one of the problems at the World Cup. What can we actually do to help support Iranian women and their demands for equality? And are we doing enough as an international community?

Kelly Shannon 22:53

I think we're not doing enough. But there's a difference between the global public and the governments of the world. I think this issue has certainly resonated with the global public. We see that with these sympathy protests. Um I there were even, I mean, the protesters in China this past week also referenced Iran. Uh so this has global resonance. But the governments aren't, I don't think, taking enough effective active action to support the protests. And I don't know if it's because they just assume the protests will fail, like previous protests have. I don't know. I don't think they recognize that these actually are different from what came before. Um, but I, you know, for the public, for those of us who care about Iran, um, one of the big things is to keep it in the public eye. Um, talk about it, use the names of Iranians, prominent Iranians who've been arrested by the government, draw attention to the danger that the arrested protesters face. Um, this government has a history of executing thousands of people for um political dissidents, and they executed large numbers of people after the 2009 protests. So um I think calling out the Iranian government, calling the UN, putting pressure on them to take more affirmative action, call your political representatives, write to the White House, um, make this an issue and make it clear to policymakers that we care about this issue. I think that's one thing we could do. It's it's difficult to donate directly to Iranian organizations in Iran, but there are organizations based in the West who are very much focused on this. Um, Persians with a purpose comes to mind, but there are lots of others. Uh, so I think you know, we could we could donate, we could support those organizations as well. From the government perspective, I think I mean it is difficult because the US government doesn't have a direct relations with Iran and we don't have the best hit track record uh as a country in terms of you know getting involved in Iran's affairs. But I think this this protest movement offers the US government the chance to be on the right side of history um for the first time in a long time. And it needs to not miss this opportunity. So I think the government needs to be more forceful in speaking out in favor of the protesters. It needs to, you know, be more um to show more leadership in the UN in terms of trying to call out the human rights abuses of Iran. And the US government might want to consider how it could materially aid the protesters on the ground. You know, the the Biden administration has framed its policy really as a struggle for democracy against the forces of authoritarianism at home and around the world. And if that's really the case, this is the most pro-democratic movement happening right now. So if the Biden administration really is serious about supporting democracy, it has to do something to help these protesters.

Tawny Paul 25:47

Well, Kelly, you've given us so much to think about, both in the past and now. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. I'm Tawny Paul for the Luskin Center for History and Policy. I'd like to thank the History Department at UCLA who supports this podcast. And thank you to you, our listeners.

Narrator 26:07

Thank you for listening to Then and Now, a podcast by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. You can learn more about our work or share your thoughts with us at our website, leskincenter.history.ucla.edu. Our show is produced by David Myers with original music by Daniel Reichman. Special thanks to the UCLA History Department for its support. And thanks to you for listening.