Individual Narrative on Topics

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.