I am taking part in a uni course about the Feminist revolution in Iran. The lecturer has been going over the Iranian revolution in 1979 in a very, shall we say, interesting way.
I do not want to discredit their pov on this as I am obviously a Westoid, but the way this is being framed is that before the revolution things were better for women. The lecturer said the revolution happened because people disliked the Shah having more than others, but she did not elaborate this in any way. One would think the complaints of people were pretty big for them to start a revolution? But I know very little about this.
After the revolution women were to have equal rights, but over the next years the dictatorship which is named as Islamic removed them and things like the hijab became mandatory. She stated that people were given false promises and betrayed and this is why the people sided with the revolution. Where does this framing come from? Was it the same people going for revolution that ended up in places of power?
Now my understanding is that the social democratic movement there was destroyed by the West in the 50s and the following twenty+ years under the Shah led to a sort of pseudorevolution that wasn't entirely progressive in nature. Is this correct or wrong?
Also how did the revolutionary force become so deeply conservative? The lecturer told us that before this there was no national religion as such and things like wearing a scarf were personal choices. This was then turned into a mandatory thing starting from workplace dresscode to eventually all public life, however at home people to this day do not follow these norms.
The Women Life Freedom movement is then a result of the way these last decades have eroded all womens rights.
I will include the following questions as well:
If this reactionary tendency in societies is always high, how do we make sure our revolution does not lead to something like this? Or was this all external influence?
If we accept that there always tends to be external influence, what can we do to make sure the reactionary force does not get on top and be in a position to dictate things like womens rights? (I am spesifically thinking of Hamas in Palestine now being the force that is driving change, if they stay in power, won't that easily result in a second Iran when it comes to Islamic nationalism/minority rights?)
How then can we engage in critical support of operators who have a high chance of creating systems of oppression?
Any history on Iran, feminism and ML and other thought very welcome.
I'm curious how much (anything you've said) is actually true in practice, or if the sample size of (people who can travel internationally) ∪ (people who have big instagrams) ends up being biased in favor of the rules-dont-apply-to-the-rich type stuff.
The maternity benefits and the safety aspect compared to Western countries are definitely true.
The rest are anecdotes that I gathered from talking to people. Clearly, like every other country, there are wealth disparities and privileges that come with it. The people I talk to are mostly middle class, academic types, not the super wealthy ones - most of them did their undergraduate degrees in Iran and then pursued their Masters/PhD overseas (that’s how I came to know them), so we’re not talking about super rich kids. Also I wasn’t talking about big instagram accounts, just friends showing me their friends/family members who have a small following (i.e. average instagrammers) because they wanted to show me what life was like back home in Iran. But yes, definitely more privileged compared to your average working class people.