Iran
can be viewed as a culture where women can wear religious clothing and live a
normal life. I believe though, that it is an oppressed nation, where women can
be killed for what they wear, get treated differently for the same crimes as
men, and have little political power. Women have tried to change their
situation in Iran but for all they have done not much have gotten changed.
In
western culture we do have more equality and some might think that we don’t
have any kind of oppression of women, but they are wrong. Women are oppressed
even if they don’t think they are; it’s in our popular culture. My younger
sister gets Cosmo magazine and every once in a while I’ll take a look at it and
every time I can count on that there is at least one article trying to empower
women and then the next page is something like the newest diet that will change
your life for the better. “[W]omen
work outside the home, but they make about 76 cents to a man's dollar and make
up the majority of Americans living in poverty”(Valenti). This
shows that even though there has been large leaps in equality in the USA, but there
is still a lot more we need to accomplish before we can truly have equality.
For
us in the western society especially the USA, we have freedom of expression,
but not in Iran. “A fifty-five-year-old woman is walking home, her arms full of
groceries. It is hot, and the
woman is clearly struggling to hold the groceries and maintain her veil, or
chador, at the same time. Before
she can put it back into place, the chador slips back and a single lock of hair
appears on the woman's forehead. Immediately, she is arrested and imprisoned.
For her "crime" she receives eighty lashes with a whip”(Graves W.I.I.
pg.1). As a person I’m appalled at the injustice of the human rights being
violated, we should be helping the woman with her bags not imprisoning and the
beating her just because a lock of her hair showed. This example is just one of
a large growing number of women being beaten and treated unjustly because of an
overreaction to an accident or an expression of oneself.
In
Iran you would think that logically men would be held to the same laws and
regulations as women, but that is incorrect. “Article 114 of Iran’s Civil codes
states: When rajm [stoning] is being administered on a man he must be placed in
a pit almost down to his waist, and when administered on a woman she must be
placed in a pit almost down to her chest. Such barbaric behavior by the regime
includes dictating the style, size and the administration of stoning while
differentiating between male vs. female victims. Female victim up to her neck to avoid physical escape,
however, even if condemned female victim is able to flee the scene, authorities
are obliged to arrest her and execute her by firing squad. As for the male
victims, they are buried up to their waist and if able to escape the scene no further
punishment awaits them” (http://www.wfafi.org/laws.pdf). I found the laws to be a little hard
to read just for the injustices that are put into practice on a daily basis. I
would hope that, together women could change the injustices that are befalling
them, but they cannot get any hold in government as they have no voice of value.
Men
control the entire government in Iran and from what I have read and heard about,
women have no way they can get anything done to change their current situation
in the law and how they are and can be treated. “On Monday, an Iranian court sentenced a women's rights activist to
almost three years in jail and 10 lashes for attending a banned rally, her
lawyer said on Tuesday” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/04/us-iran-khamenei-women-idUSDAH44354320070704). This just
shows how bad it can be, trying to change how people treat you and people like when
the government and society is against it. I personally hope that the situation
changes but rationally it probably will not happen.
As a
culture where old traditions are everything, I think that they need to change,
not all the traditions but the ones that make things harder to make
unobstructed and uninfluenced decisions where law and politics are involved.
Works Cited
GRAVES, ALISON E. "WOMEN IN IRAN: OBSTACLES TO HUMAN RIGHTS
AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS." JOURNAL
OF GENDER & THE LAW (1996): 57-92. Washington College of Law. Web.
21 Feb. 2013.
<http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/genderlaw/05/graves.pdf>.
"Official Laws against Women in Iran." Wfafi.org.
N.p., 2005. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://www.wfafi.org/laws.pdf>.
Tehran. "Don't "play" with Islamic Law, Iranian
Women Told." Http://www.reuters.com/.
N.p., 4 July 2007. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.
Valenti, Jessica. "For Women in America, Equality Is Still an
Illusion." Washington Post.
Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2010. Web. 10 Mar. 2013.
