“Women without guardians” in Iran: gender, cultural assumptions, and social policy

Abstract

This article explores the role of cultural assumptions in the formation of the only Iranian social programme designed exclusively for women, “Empowering Women without Guardians”. It examines these assumptions at different stages of the policy process: problem definition, policy formulation, and policy adoption. As shown, assumptions behind the adopted policy are not consistent with the ones underlying the original problem definition; women are considered mothers at the problem definition stage, but at the policy adoption stage they are understood as workers. The relative power of these assumptions helps explain both continuity and change in Iranian social policy towards women.

Keywords:

• gender
• social policy
• Iran
• culture
• ideas
• women

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Heather McWhinney, Anneli Anttonen, Loleen Berdahl, Kimberly Morgan, Haizhen Mou, Azam Taleghani, Mahnaz Afkhami, Philip Lashley, Kathleen McNutt, and M.A. Panahi for their support and suggestions. Daniel Béland acknowledges support from the Canada Research Chairs program.

Notes

This programme intends to provide the following services to recipients: social insurance coverage, financial services, such as monthly allowances, employment-related services, including vocational and technical training, and cultural services, which facilitate access of women without guardians to cultural products.

Temporary marriage is a short-term marriage contract, which ends when the contract expires without a need to divorce. Men are allowed to temporarily marry an unlimited number of women simultaneously.

A father or husband, for example, can decide to allow or prevent the women they are the legal guardians of from studying or working outside the home. They can decide to transfer their properties to women before their death or leave them with limited resources as part of their will, as provided by the state's traditional rules. Thus, the well-being of women is somehow dependent on their guardians’ assumptions, attitudes, and behaviours.

The Women's Organization of Iran was established in 1966 with the support of Ashraf Pahlavi, the Shah's sister, and had representatives in parliament. This organization established women's centres in different regions of the country (Afkhami, 2004; Paidar, 1995; Sedghi, 2007). These centres, whose main goal was to acquire equal rights for women, helped women to attain self-sufficiency by providing them with educational, vocational, legal, and family-planning resources.

Iran's external debt stocks were 7% and 5% of its Gross National Income in 1982 and 1983, respectively, whereas this indicator had a value of zero before 1980 (World Bank, n.d.).

Monthly allowances are worth less than a $1 per day on average (below the poverty line).

Article 300 of Iran's penal code: the blood money for the first-degree or second-degree murder of a Muslim woman is one-half that of a murdered Muslim man.

In addition, as suggested above, from a demographic standpoint, polygamy is a problematic solution because there are more men than women in contemporary Iranian society (Behrouzi, 1983; World Bank, n.d.).

During the Shah era, the state encouraged women's participation in the labour market, and by 1976 women accounted for 11.2% of urban employed population. After the 1979 revolution, women's employment increased during the war with Iraq due to a shortage of male labour (Moghadam, 1988).