Women in Iran’s explosive society

 By Farid Mahoutchi

“As we speak there are around five million single mothers across Iran; 52 percent lack any insurance and pensions. Furthermore, 38 percent are considered among the society’s lower third; 19 percent, meaning around one million people, are not receiving any support at all.”

These were the words of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian regime’s Majlis (parliament) during Tuesday’s January 25th session, causing grave concerns among regime officials.

During the same session, the head of the Majlis’ Social Committee acknowledged the prevalence of “increasing concerns among single mothers, widows, and single women.”

“In 2006 we had 1.2 million single mothers. However, this figure has been rising each year,” he added.

As a result, during the past 15 years, the number of single mothers in Iran has quadrupled.

“There are around 13 institutions who claim to be responsible for the affairs relating to single mothers, and each has assumed certain responsibilities and tasks. However, single mothers are the only segment of our society that has been completely forgotten,” said Majlis deputy Ebrahim Azizi on January 25, according to the Mehr news agency, an outlet linked to the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

It is worth noting that the mullahs’ regime has another 25 institutions and entities focusing on “hijab and ifaf,” or women’s attire and sanctity, that are more correctly described as the regime’s apparatus tasked to maintain the mullahs’ crackdown on Iranian women.

Women in Iran comprise 60 percent of the current capacity in the country’s colleges and universities. However, the regime’s official policy, parroted through different pretexts by its officials, is to force women out of all social arenas and into the dark corners of their homes.

This includes remarks made by regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has time and again emphasized that women’s main role is confined to housekeeping and raising children. As a result, all regime officials have fallen in line to define women as second-class citizens. Regime President Ebrahim Raisi recently opposed women working during night shifts in any occupation and ended his remarks by saying, “At the end of the day, women are women.”

Ensie Khasali, Raisi’s Vice President in Family and Women’s Affairs, has the specific task of limiting Iranian women in their homes and working remotely. “Women have countless responsibilities. Therefore we have taken measures for them to continue working in remote fashion after the coronavirus pandemic fades,” she said on November 5, 2021, according to the regime’s official news agency, IRNA.

The regime’s misogynist policies to confine Iranian women to their homes do not end here. The ideal scenario for Khamenei and his regime is voiced through the Friday prayer leaders, describing even the streets as being unsafe for women.

“It is a God-given duty to express one’s hatred about women without hijab (headscarves covering their hair),” said Ahmad Alamalhoda, Khamenei representative and Friday prayer leader in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city.

Yousef Tabatabaie, Friday prayer leader in Isfahan, specifically called for conditions to “become unsafe” for those women not abiding by the regime’s compulsory hijab rules and regulations. It is worth noting that women in Isfahan have in the past been the target of acid attacks by members of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) paramilitary Basij members. A similar incident was reported recently in Tehran when several women exercising in a park were attacked by a man who sprayed acid on their clothes.

Even though the misogynist regime goes the distance in its crimes and hideous measures against Iranian women, although thousands of Iran’s most courageous women have been killed by the mullahs’ regime throughout the past four decades, and despite the regime’s effort to literally eliminate women’s role from Iran’s social structure, the bigger picture shows that the mullahs’ have failed miserably in this regard.

Iranian women have long played a leading role in the unrest, protests, and nationwide uprisings against the mullahs’ regime. They are not only playing a leading role in both the organized opposition coalition the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and its pivotal component, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), but also in the ever-growing MEK-led network of Resistance Units across Iran.

One can also witness the regime’s defeat in Ghalibaf’s remarks during Tuesday’s Majlis session where he quoted Khamenei’s own words in saying: “For 20 years we have neglected and had shortcomings in regard to the issue of women.”

Of course, it would be naïve to think Khamenei and Ghalibaf are concerned for the better good of women in Iran. Such an assumption runs contrary to the regime’s historical characteristic of being a misogynist entity and completely goes against the mullahs’ 43-year report card of all-out crackdown and suppression of Iranian women.

After four decades of suffering and with tens of thousands of Iranian women killed or executed by the mullahs’ regime, the current circumstances of this important segment of Iran’s society are why the country is being described as a powder keg about to explode. Women in the leadership of the Iranian opposition have enjoyed such status that women elsewhere in the world envy. And this is the very source of growing concerns for Khamenei and his regime’s officials, knowing the undeniable reality that women will be the force that will bring down their misogynous regime.

This article was first published by english.mojahedin