Iran - Women
Iran adopted a new law in September 2023 that threatened stricter punishments for women who refuse to wear the mandatory Islamic headscarf, including prison sentences of up to a decade for those involved in organized protests against the rule. The national parliament – the Islamic Consultative Assembly – passed the legislation on 20 September 2023, voting to impose the new law on a trial basis for three years before it expires. Iran’s Guardian Council, an oversight body made up of religious and legal experts, still must approve the measure before it is enacted.
The law offers dozens of amendments to Tehran’s religious dress code, which has been in force for both men and women since the country’s 1979 revolution, with more than 70 articles defining rules and penalties for rule-breakers. In addition to the required headscarf, or hijab, women will be barred from wearing “revealing or tight clothing, or clothing that shows parts of the body lower than the neck or above the ankles or above the forearms,” according to local media reports. For men, “revealing clothing that shows parts of the body lower than the chest or above the ankles, or shoulders” will be off-limits.
Iranians found to be involved in organized protests against the dress code will face the harshest punishments under the new law, which proposes 10-year prison sentences for protesters working in concert with “foreign governments, networks, media, groups or organizations.” The penalties also apply to business owners who opt to serve women not wearing the headdress, or who promote “nudity, lack of chastity or bad covering.”
Legislators passed the measure just days after the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died while in the custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’ after she was accused of violating the hijab mandate. Her death kicked off months of violent protests across Iran, resulting in thousands of arrests and further loss of life among demonstrators and security forces.
Women's rights and roles in Iran have seen significant shifts over the last century. Under Shah Reza Pahlavi, women received the right to vote (1963) and faced Westernization policies. In 1963, Iran initiated a reform program to reduce inequalities of wealth and social position among the people. The various revolutionary corps, namely the literacy, health, extension and development, and women's corps were formed to implement these social reforms and development activities-these are collectively known as the White Revolution. Although women were not obliged to wear the veil after 1936, emancipation in the rural areas was not as advanced as in the urban centers.
However, following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, many rights were rolled back under the Islamic Republic, leading to a stricter interpretation of Sharia law. After the 1979 revolution, the hijab became mandatory for women in public. The dress code enforces modesty, with women required to cover their hair and bodies, save for their face and hands. This has been a contentious issue, with some women pushing back against the mandatory dress code in recent years through various protests. There were longstanding bans on women attending certain sports events in stadiums, but there have been some relaxations in recent years due to both international and domestic pressure.
Women can vote and run for office. There are women representatives in the Iranian parliament, and women have held various government posts. However, women are barred from the highest office, the Presidency, and certain other key positions. Furthermore, the number of women in political roles is limited compared to men. Women have played a significant role in the cultural sphere, particularly in literature and cinema. However, they often face restrictions, such as bans on singing solo in public or participating in certain sports events.
The law prohibits physical contact between unrelated men and women. There were no reliable data on the extent of sexual harassment, but women’s and human rights observers reported that sexual harassment was the norm in many workplaces. In addition to needing a husband's permission for international travel, women also face restrictions on riding bicycles in certain public places or traveling with men to whom they're not related or married.
In a symbolic act of defiance, Iranian actress Afsaneh Bayegan repeatedly posted photos of her unveiled hair on Instagram, and recently attended a public ceremony without a hijab. The move irked Iranian authorities, who have been looking for new ways to force women into covering their hair. Bayegan, 61, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to visit a “psychological centre” once a week to “treat her anti-family personality disorder”, the country’s Fars News Agency reported on 19 July 2023.
Many Iranian women had chosen to start showing their hair since the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after being detained by Iran’s morality police for “improperly” wearing her headscarf. Iranian celebrities, athletes and actresses have followed suit in solidarity. Bayegan’s case is not an isolated one. Iranian judges recently “diagnosed” Iranian actress Azadeh Samadi with an “antisocial personality disorder” after she wore a hat instead of a hijab at a funeral. Samadi will also have to seek therapy weekly in a “psychological centre”.
At the start of July 2022, a Tehran court sentenced a woman to two months in prison and six months of psychological treatment for “a contagious psychological disorder that leads to sexual promiscuity” because she didn’t wear a hijab. At the peak of the anti-government protests that broke out in Iran following Mahsa Amini’s death, Education Minister Youssef Nouri admitted that schoolchildren were being detained in the streets or at school and held in “medical psychological centres” where they were “re-educated” to prevent “anti-social” behaviour.
The surge in sentences forcing women to undergo psychological treatment alarmed the Iranian psychiatric sector. In an open letter sent to the head of the country’s judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, on 23 July 2023, the presidents of four mental health organisations accused authorities of “exploiting psychiatry” for other purposes. “Diagnosing mental health disorders is the responsibility of psychiatrists, not judges,” they decried. It was signed by Dr. Majid Sadeghi, President of the Scientific Association of Psychiatrists of Iran, Dr. Ahmad Ali Noorbala, President of the Scientific Association of Psychosomatic Medicine of Iran,Dr. Behrouz Dolatshahi, President of the Scientific Association of Psychotherapy of Iran, and Dr. Hamid Reza Poursharifi, President of the Iranian Psychological Association.
Women continued to face discrimination in home and property ownership, as well as in access to financing. In cases of inheritance, male heirs receive twice the inheritance of their female counterparts, a law based on sharia that also applies to the country’s religious minorities. The government enforced gender segregation in many public spaces. Women must ride in a reserved section on public buses and enter some public buildings, universities, and airports through separate entrances.
The law provides that a woman who appears in public without appropriate attire, such as a cloth scarf over the head (hijab) and a long jacket (manteau), or a large full-length cloth covering (chador), may be sentenced to flogging and fines. Absent a clear legal definition of “appropriate attire” or of the related punishment, women were subjected to the opinions of various disciplinary and security force members, police, and judges.
Authorities continued to arrest women for violating the dress code, and courts applied harsh sentences. Before the high-profile death of Mahsa Amini in July, 28-year-old Sepideh Rashnu was arrested after she was filmed arguing over the forced hijab policy. After two weeks in detention, Rashnu appeared on state television giving what human rights NGOs widely judged to be a forced confession, with signs of likely beatings visible on her face. According to IranWire, on August 20, Rashnu was charged with “propaganda against the regime” and “promoting corruption and prostitution.” She was released on August 30 pending trial. In late December, Radio Farda reported that Rashnu’s brother said the court found Rashnu guilty of charges of “gathering and colluding against the country’s security,” “propaganda activity against the government,” and “appearing without a hijab in public.”
Widespread protests that started in September 2022 following Amini’s death did not lead to changes in the dress code. Several prominent women arrested and tried for protesting the dress code remained in prison. By the end of 2022, Yasaman Aryani, her mother Monireh Arabshahi, and Mojgan Keshavarz were serving sentences of five and a half years’ for “spreading propaganda against the system” and “inciting corruption and prostitution.” These convictions pertain to their posting a video for International Women’s Day in 2019 in which they walked without headscarves through a Tehran metro train. Activist Saba Kord Afshari was serving a five-year sentence after being arrested in 2018 for walking without a hijab and opposing the dress code, and her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, is serving two and a half years for advocating on behalf of her daughter, having been arrested in 2019.
In March 2022, according to HRW, authorities blocked dozens of women from entering a football stadium in Mashhad to watch a World Cup qualifying match, saying they could not accommodate the women “due to a lack of preparation.” On August 25, following pressure from International Federation of Association Football, the government allowed women to attend a soccer game at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, allocating 500 seats for women. According to RFE/RL, many of the women used the opportunity to pay tribute to Sahar Khodayari, a fan who set herself afire in 2019 to protest the ban on women spectators after being arrested for trying to enter the soccer stadium dressed as a man. In August Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi stated that women were not banned from entering stadiums, but they would have to sit in separate sections.
The constitution provides for equal protection for women under the law in conformity with its interpretation of Islam. The government did not enforce the law, and provisions in the law, particularly sections dealing with family and property law, discriminate against women. Judicial harassment, intimidation, detention, and smear campaigns significantly hindered the ability of civil society organizations to fight for and protect women’s rights.
The government does not recognize marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men, irrespective of their citizenship. The law states that a virgin woman or girl wishing to wed needs the consent of her father or grandfather or permission from a court.
The law permits a man to have as many as four wives and an unlimited number of temporary wives (sigheh), based on a Shia custom allowing limited duration civil and religious contracts. The law does not grant women the right to multiple husbands.
A woman may divorce only if her husband: signs a contract granting her that right; cannot provide for his family; violates the terms of the marriage contract; or is a drug addict, insane, or impotent. A man may divorce his wife without providing any reason. The law recognizes a divorced woman’s right to part of shared property and to alimony. These laws were not always enforced.
The law provides divorced women preference in custody for children up to age seven, but fathers maintain legal guardianship rights over the child and must agree on many legal aspects of the child’s life (such as issuing travel documents, enrolling in school, or filing a police report). After the child reaches age seven, the father gains custody unless he is proven unfit to care for the child.
Women sometimes received disproportionate punishment for crimes such as adultery, including death sentences. The judiciary’s interpretation and application of Islamic law retains provisions that equate a woman’s testimony in a court of law to one-half that of a man’s and value a woman’s life as one-half that of a man’s life. The amount paid in “blood money” for the intentional or unintentional physical harm to a woman is one-half that paid for harm to a man, but since 2019 a publicly funded trust pays the difference. Automobile accident insurance pays the same for the death of a man or a woman.
Women have access to primary and advanced education. Quotas and other restrictions nonetheless limited women’s admissions to certain fields and degree programs.
According to HRW, citing official statistics, the unemployment rate for women is almost twice as high as for men. The organization also reports that more than 177,000 women left the job market during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating an already low participation rate. Women reportedly earned significantly less than men for the same work.
In April 2022 according to media reports, hundreds of women working in the country’s film industry, including celebrities Niki Karimi, Hedieh Tehrani, Sahar Dolatshahi and Taraneh Alidousti, signed a statement of protest decrying “sexual abuse, violence and harassment against women in the film industry.” The statement was inspired by Somayeh Mirshamsi, a well-known woman assistant director, who alleged in interviews with foreign-based Persian-language media that actor Farhad Aslani sexually harassed her on set. The statement listed numerous other problems women faced at work, including “sexual violence and threatening the victim’s job.”
By May 2022 signatories of the letter had reached 800. Initially Kazem Gharibabadi, the secretary of the High Council for Human Rights, expressed support for the women, saying the judiciary was prepared to act on any complaints in the artist’s file. In July, however, IranWire reported that an actress who signed the letter, Nazanin Bahrami, was arrested, along with several of her colleagues, shortly after she signed the statement. In December actress Taraneh Alidousti was arrested and taken to Evin Prison for a social media post calling international attention to the swift execution of a protester, Mohsen Shekari.
There were no reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization on the part of government authorities. The government did not provide access to sexual and reproductive health services for survivors of sexual violence. Emergency contraception was not available as part of the clinical management of rape. It is illegal for a single woman to access contraception, although most single women had access to contraception, particularly in urban areas.
Government health care previously included full free access to contraception and family planning for married couples. In 2012, on the supreme leader’s orders, the government ended the Family and Population Planning Program. In January 2021, according to a report by Iran International, the Ministry of Health banned health centers in nomadic tribal areas from providing contraceptives to women. In November 2021, President Raisi signed into law the “rejuvenation of the population and support of the family” bill, which directs authorities to prioritize population growth. These policies include measures such as outlawing voluntary sterilization and banning the free distribution of contraceptives by the public health-care system. The law also stipulates that content on family planning in university textbooks should be replaced with materials on an “Islamic-Iranian lifestyle,” with a framework drawn up in cooperation with religious seminaries and the Islamic Propaganda Organization.
Rape is illegal, including the rape of men, and subject to strict penalties, including death, but it remained a serious problem. There were reports that police or other government agents incited, perpetrated, or condoned gender-based violence, including numerous reports of sexual abuse of women who were imprisoned for participating in the protests that began in September 2022.
CHRI reported that on November 17, activist Soha Mortezaei was arrested by security officials, physically and sexually assaulted, and transferred to Evin Prison. The University Students Trade Unions Council reported, “officers tied Soha’s right hand to the top of one seat and her right leg to the top of another seat and while suspended, she was beaten and sexually abused by a female officer.” In 2019 Mortezaei was banned from completing her Ph.D. in political science due to allegedly engaging in political activism.
The law considers sex within marriage consensual by definition and, therefore, does not address spousal rape, including in cases of forced marriage. Most rape victims likely did not report the crime because they feared official retaliation or punishment for having been raped, including charges of indecency, immoral behavior, or adultery, which carries the death penalty. Rape survivors also feared societal reprisal or ostracism. For a conviction of rape, the law requires four Muslim men or a combination of three men and two women, or two men and four women, to have witnessed a rape. A woman or man found making a false accusation of rape is subject to 80 lashes.
In September 2022 NGOs and international media reported that a police commander of Sistan and Baluchistan province, Colonel Ebrahim Kouchakzaei, raped a 15-year-old Baluch girl. Sunni Imams condemned the rape, which led to increased protests after Friday prayers in Zahedan. Authorities responded with violence, reportedly killing several dozen persons on September 30, according to HRW. Local media reported Kouchakzaei was arrested in the days following the protests but released on bail on October 12.
The law does not prohibit domestic violence. Authorities considered spousal and intrafamilial abuse a private matter and seldom discussed it publicly. According to Iran International, in March a 17-year-old girl identified as F. Marandegani, died by suicide in Sistan and Baluchistan province due to her husband’s alleged physical and mental abuse.
The law criminalizes Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and states, “The cutting or removing of the two sides of female genitalia leads to diya [blood money] equal to half the full amount of diya for the woman’s life.” Little recent data were available on the practice inside the country, although older data and media reports suggested it had been more prevalent in Hormozgan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan Provinces, and was inflicted on girls ages five through eight, primarily in Shafi’i Sunni communities.
There were reports of killings motivated by “honor” or other harmful traditional practices during the year. There are no official statistics kept in the country concerning so-called “honor killings,” but according to academic articles and academic estimates cited by the daily newspaper Ebtekar, every year between 375 and 450 such killings occur, mostly women killed by their male relatives in the name of preserving the family’s “honor.”
The law reduces penalties for fathers and other family members who are convicted of murder or physically harming children in domestic violence or “honor killings.” According to the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law, Article 630 of the Iranian Penal Code “allows a man who witnesses his wife in the act of having sexual intercourse with another man to kill both of them if he is certain that his wife is a willing participant.” If a man is found guilty of murdering his daughter, the punishment is from three to 10 years in prison rather than the normal death sentence or payment of diya for homicide cases, because fathers (but not mothers) are considered legal guardians and are exempt from capital punishment for murdering their children.
Several news outlets reported that in February 2022, 17-year-old wife and mother Mona Heydari was beheaded by her husband and his brother in an “honor killing” in the southwestern city of Ahvaz. Authorities closed Rokna news agency after it released footage of the husband carrying his wife’s head around town, accusing the outlet of breaching “public decency.” Heydari reportedly had been forced into marriage and gave birth at age 14. She was killed a few days after returning to Iran after having fled to Turkey. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported that her family had ensured her return by assuring her of her safety.
Also in February 2022, Rokna reported the father of 16-year-old Ariana Lashkari shot her to death with a hunting rifle in Fars Province, allegedly for laughing with a boy in a park.
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