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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| "Women Commandos" in Iran |
| 2009-07-15 |
| ... So strong is the women's movement that a web site linked to Iran's intelligence ministry has begun referring to "woman commandos" in describing post-election protests, according to Haleh Esfandiari, who added that there are reports that Zahra Rahnavard, Mir Hossein Mousavi's well-known activist wife, is the leading voice behind the scenes urging Mousavi not to accede to pressure to halt his campaign against the election results. (So well known is Zahra Rahnavard that, when Mousavi became prime minister in the 1980s it was said in Iran that "Rahnavard's husband was named prime minister.") The panel answered a lot of questions about the role of women in Iran today -- and left some questions hanging. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, who quit her term in parliament in 2004 to protest against the Guardian Council's peremptory banning of hundreds of political candidates -- including not less than 80 members of parliament! -- in that year's election, described women in Iran as being on the "front lines" of the Green Movement and the election battles. Often, she said, they protected men from being beaten in the streets, and they formed ad hoc groups such as Mothers in Mourning or Peace Mothers to demonstrate at places like Evin Prison, where many protestors are being held. Most interesting was the panel's emphasis on the fact that the women's movement in Iran didn't arise out of nowhere to prominence in the Green Movement but was, in fact, a long time in the works. Tohidi said women in Iran had been engaged in many years of quiet educational and organizational work, especially over the past fifteen years, and today the women's movement in Iran is the "strongest in the Middle East." Some of them, she said, were Islamists who have been formulating a more progressive and liberal version of "Islamic feminism" while others are secular women who've moved far beyond Iran's culture of revolutionary Islam. The two currents came together in 1997 in the massive vote that elected President Khatami, and since then they've brought strong pressure to bear on subsequent candidates. Jaleh Lackner-Gohari added that during the 1980s and 1990s, many women went into higher education and the professions precsiely because they were barred from politics and, she joked, "had nothing better to do." Quietly, they built networks, professional organizations, and channels for communications -- including, lately, blogs. ... |
| Posted by:Ebbaimp Snease7045 |