“I saw many photos of my grandmother from before the revolution, she with the veil and my mother with a miniskirt, living in harmony, one next to the other”.
Lo that Rana Rahimpour, Iranian-British presenter of the Persian service of the BBC, remembers is not limited only to her family.
In Iran, before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there was no strict dress code that currently It forces women, by law, to wear the veil and modest “Islamic” clothing.
“Iran was a liberal country. Women were allowed to wear whatever they wanted,” she says.
Her testimony is relevant while protests are taking place in dozens of Iranian cities over the recent death of a young woman from 22 She had been arrested for years by the “morality police”, which is responsible for enforcing Islamic dress codes.
Rahimpur was born after the revolution, but the experience of his parents and relatives and his journalistic work have allowed him to delve into the transformation that his country experienced after the fall of the Shah.
A transformation that, in the early years, went beyond clothing, as the Iranian journalist Feranak Amidi, a reporter for Women’s Affairs for the Near East region of the BBC World Service, also tells BBC Mundo.
“ We had no gender segregation before the revolution. But after 1963, schools were segregated and unrelated men and women were arrested if they were caught socializing with each other”.
“When I was a teenager in Iran, the morality police arrested me for being in a pizzeria with a group of friends”.
“Before 1979, there were nightclubs and entertainment venues and people were free to socialize as they wished” .
Pre-revolution movies are also testament to a time when women could choose whether to wear Western or more conservative attire.
“You saw a variety of ways of dressing. Some wore the black veil or chador, but not in the way the government currently requires.”
A dynasty
Before the revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the Pahlavi dynasty, which began after a coup.
In 1926, the leader of the coup, Reza Khan, was crowned Reza Sha Pahlavi and his son Mohamed Reza Pahlavi was proclaimed crown prince. Later, he would become the last Sha.
In an article, by 1997, the Wilson Center study center reproduced an interview from his radio program Dialogue with Haleh Esfandiari, author of Reconstructed Lives : Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution (“Reconstructed Lives: Women and the Islamic Revolution of Iran”).
Esfandiari left Iran in 1978 and I come back 14 years later to investigate the impact of the revolution on women.
In that interview, the journalist said that “the women’s movement in Iran began at the end of the 19th century, when women took to the streets during the constitutional revolution”.
After that, many of them started projects such as opening schools for girls and publishing magazines for women.
To this network, which began in the capital, Tehran, they tried to link other provinces and that led “to the development of the women’s movement”.
The veil
The women’s clothing women had already been an issue on the agenda of the country’s leadership at the beginning of the 20th century.
“The veil was not officially abolished in Iran until 1926, during Reza Shah’s era Pahlavi, the father of modern Iran”, indicated the author.
Years earlier, the leader had encouraged women to not wear the veil in public or “to wear a scarf instead of the traditional long veil.”
“When the veil was finally officially abolished, it was undoubtedly a victory for women, but also a tragedy, because the right to choose was taken away from them, just as it happened during the Islamic Republic when it was officially reintroduced the veil in 1963”.
Many women “were forced to abandon the veil and go out into the street feeling humiliated and exposed“.
Even so, Esfandiari acknowledges that the father of the last shah undertook some changes that had a positive impact on women.
The White Revolution
In 1941, his son, Mohamed Reza, assumed power.
During that reign, “the modernization of the country began”, says Amidi.
This process became known as the White Revolution and gave women the right to vote in 1963 and the same political rights that men had. In addition, an attempt was made to improve access to education in peripheral provinces. During his reign, the law was approved protection of the family that dealt with different areas, including marriage and divorce. The legislation, explains Amidi, expanded the women’s rights. “The family protection law increased the minimum age for marriage of girls from 13 a 18 years, and also gave women more influence for ped go for divorce“. It also limited men to having only one wife. “All this was quite progressive compared to other countries in the region”. And the fact is that the Shah, although an autocrat, was a progressive leader and liked the culture Thus, it established a program of secularization. Women came to occupy positions of power. “We had women ministers, judges,” recalls Rahimpour. However, despite the promises of the White Revolution, “women were still confined to traditional roles”, says Amidi. And although she highlights that “there were women in Parliament”, she considers that “women did not have a great participation in the political sphere. But we must bear in mind that that was almost half a century ago and women women around the world at that time did not have much political power”. Even so, she recognizes that her compatriots were beginning to play an increasingly social role: “They had a vibrant presence in society.” Amidi highlights “the great impact” that Queen Farah Pahlavi, wife of Mohamed Reza, had on arts and culture. In fact, an essay by Maryam Ekhtiar and Julia Rooney, from the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, addresses “the artistic flourishing in Iran ”, which began in the years 18 and continued in the 60 Y 70. “These decades saw the opening of Iran to the international art scene”. Much of this growing artistic activity was due to economic prosperity. that the country was experiencing. And it is that Iran had a lot of oil, but the vast majority of Iranians were not benefiting from that wealth. Despite the support of the Shah and his wife in the field of the arts, artists were not blind to this reality, nor to the regime’s repression against those who opposed it. Nahid Hagigat, the authors indicate, “was one of the few artists who expressed the concerns of women during the years before the revolution.” “In his prints, he captured the feeling of tension and fear in a male-dominated society under government scrutiny.” To 1971, Mohammad Reza, who had declared himself “shahanshah”, “the King of Kings”, he was not only one of the richest men in the world but the absolute leader of Iran. His regime was increasingly repressive against dissidents political issues. “In the regime before (the revolution) people had social freedoms, but zero political freedoms“, evokes Rahimpour. “That was a big problem. All the parties were controlled by the king, it was a guarded society, there was no freedom of the press, any type of political activism could end up in prison”. Social discontent took to the streets and in 1978 protests were registered mass protests against the Shah’s regime. According to Esfandiari, the progress achieved by women during his reign destabilized towards the end. “In reaction to the increasingly vocal traditionalist elements in society, the Shah drastically withdrew his support for greater participation of women in decision-making positions.” The Islamic Revolution was supported by many Iranians who “were not necessarily religious,” explains Rahimpour. Many only called for a “true democracy”. “He had the support of all groups, with the liberals, the communists and the religious ”. Women, regardless of what they wanted to wear or their degree of religiosity, were part of that force that ended up causing the fall of the Shah in 1979. “In the marches that led to the revolution, there were professional women without headscarves and women of conservative origin with the traditional black veil; there were women from lower and middle class families with their children. All these women walked shoulder to shoulder , hoping that the revolution would bring them an improvement in their status s economic and an improvement in their social status. And above all an improvement in their legal status”, recalled Esfandiari. Amidi does not believe that women “necessarily felt more independent” before the Islamic Revolution. “Iran was still a very conservative religious society. But back then there was political will to break that traditional and conservative mold, and allow women to flourish and occupy more spaces in society”. This flourishing, she clarifies, never fully happened. According to Rahimpour, there are opposing ideas about whether women felt more independent and empowered before the Islamic Revolution. “Religious women would say that they felt more comfortable going out after the revolution, but liberal women would not agree with them”. “We must not forget that there is a part of Iranian society that is very religious”. Hence, there are women who agree with aspects of the system . Seeing archive photos of women in Iran wearing western clothing and without veils, an Iranian lady pointed out to me that these images are not representative of women’s lives in general before the revolution . Many women, of different ages, chose to wear the hijab or the veil and more conservative clothing because “society was possibly much more conservative and religious compared to today”. Many Iranians participated in the revolution with the idea of having freedom, but, says Rahimpour, they quickly saw their frustrated illusions. “After the revolution, we realized that many religious people felt uncomfortable with the miniskirts and with the freedoms that men and women had, and that is why they also agreed with the revolution”. However, it says that many people who are “deeply religious” in Iran think that wearing the veil “has to be a choice”. “It ceases to be a religion when it is forced”. Iran is experiencing an outbreak of protests throughout the country after the death, in police custody, of a woman from 18 years for allegedly not complying with the hijab rules. The authorities assure that Mahsa Amini died for reasons underlying health conditions, but her family and many Iranians believe she died after being beaten. The protests appear to be the most serious challenge Iran’s leaders have faced in recent years. And a new chapter of popular mobilizations in Iran. Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss our best content. 126832120 
The day to day
Concern of the women
Elbow to elbow
Different views
Protests
