Wearing the veil to college: The paradox of higher education in the lives of Iranian women

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 189-211

  Shavarini, Mitra K ^a  

^a AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY   (Pakistan)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HIGHER EDUCATION; SOCIAL STATUS; WOMENS STATUS;

ASIA; EURASIA; IRAN; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 33646159090     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: 14716380     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743806412319     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. B. M. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).
2. Refers to the veil and/or proper, modest Islamic dress.
3. Literally translates to "sisters," although in postrevolutionary Iran, the term refers to a female government employee.
4. Shahla Kazemipour, "Evaluation of Women's Expanded Participation in Higher Education." A report prepared for Iran's Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, 1999.
5. Mahnaz Kousha's recent publication Voices from Iran: The Changing Lives of Iranian Women (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2002) is one recent scholarly work recognizing the importance of women's own perceptions and opinions about their realities.
6. Until now Iranian Muslim feminist discourse has been situated in women's weekly and monthly magazines. See for example Etezadi Tabatabai, Zan Ruz, June 1981
7. F. Hashemi, Ettellaat, 28 July 1980
8. Zan Ruz, June 1991.
9. L. Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women, Feminism, and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
10. The Family Protection Act of 1967 and 1973 restricted polygamy, raised the age of marriage for girls, and allowed women the right to divorce.
11. Valentine Moghadam, "Islamic Feminism and its Discontents: Toward a Resolution of the Debate," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27 (2002): 1135 71.
12. Afsaneh Najmabadi, "Power, Morality, and the New Muslim Womanhood," in The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, ed. Myron Weinter and Ali Banuazizi (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 366-89.
13. Golnar Mehran, "Ideology and Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Comparative Education Review 20 (1990): 53-65.
14. Patricia Higgins and Pirouz Shoar-Ghaffari, "Sex-Role Socialization in Iranian Textbooks," NWSA Journal 3 (1991);
15. Jacquelline R. Touba, "Cultural Effects on Sex Role Images in Elementary School Books in Iran: A Content Analysis after the Revolution," International Journal of Sociology of the Family 17 (1987): 143-58.
16. J. Matini, "The Impact of the Islamic Revolution on Education in Iran," in At the Crossroads: Education in the Middle East, ed. A. Badran (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 43-55
17. Hammed Shahidian, "The Education of Women in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Journal of Women's History 3 (1991): 6-38, 12-14, 17-20
18. Khosrow Sobhe, "Education in Revolution: Is Iran Duplicating the Chinese Revolution?" Comparative Education Review 18 (1982): 276.
19. S. Ghahreman, "The Islamic State's Policy Towards Women's Access to Higher Education and Its Socioeconomic Effects," Nimeh-ye Digar 7 (1988)
20. S. Mojab, "State Control and Women's Resistance in Iranian Universities," Nimeh-ye Digar: Iranian Women's Feminist Journal 1 (1991): 35-76.
21. Reza Arasteh, Education and Social Awakening in Iran, 1850-1968, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: E. J. Brill, 1969).
22. Guity Nashat, Women and Revolution in Iran (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983).
23. Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
24. Eliz Sanasarian, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982).
25. Hamideh Sedghi and Ahmad Ashraf, "The Role of Women in Iranian Development," in Iran: Past, Present and Future, ed. J. W. Jacqz (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976).
26. Kaveh S. Mirani, "Social and Economic Change in the Role of Women: 1956-78," in Women and Revolution in Iran, ed. G. Nashat (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983).
27. Said Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
28. Nikki Keddie, The Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981)
29. Mojab, "State Control and Women's Resistance in Iranian Universities," 35-76
30. Robert E. Rucker, "Trends in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Education," Journal of Contemporary Asia 21 (1991): 455-69.
31. David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 227.
32. Mojab, "State Control and Women's Resistance in Iranian Universities," 35-76
33. Rucker, "Trends in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Education," 455-69
34. Sobhe, "Education in Revolution," 276
35. Farideh Selhoun, "Iran," Integrateducation 20 (1983): 13-14.
36. H. Esfandiari, "The Politics of the 'Women's Question' in the Islamic Republic, 1979-1999," in Iran at the Crossroads, ed. John L. Esposito and R. K. Ramazani (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 75-92.
37. Matini, "The Impact of the Islamic Revolution on Education in Iran," 43-55.
38. Men could not enter such fields as dental hygiene, midwifery, family health, fashion design, and sewing-instructor training.
39. Quoted in Jane Howard, Inside Iran: Wome's Lives (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 2002), 84.
40. M. Q. Patton, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990).
41. M. B. Miles and A. M. Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1994).
42. "Employment in Iran" in Eqtesad-e Iran 6 (November 2003): 39-40, http://www.netiran.com/php/artp.php?id=24.
43. Sobhe, "Education in Revolution," 276.
44. Anya P. Royce, Ethnic Identity: Strategies of Diversity (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1982).
45. An optional section asked whether the respondent was willing to be contacted for a personal interview. Of the 417 respondents, 212 provided their contact information from which I followed up with 34 interviews; time did not allow me to contact all students who had expressed an interest in follow-up interviews. Interview data were used to explore themes; data in this paper are from the questionnaires.
46. In addition to these surveys, I also interviewed men and women who opted out of the college track, as well as with those who had failed the college entrance examination and had enrolled in a private college (such as Azad University). I also conducted formal interviews with seven college administrators. Their comments have helped inform the content of this work.
47. The university is named after the Iranian thinker Dr. Ali Shariati (d. 1977), whose published lectures during the 1960s and 1970s had a great impact on the debate concerning women in an Islamic society.
48. Depending on the field, female students at Tehran Polytechnic range from one-third to two-thirds of the total students enrolled in each department. The university provides training in fields such as electrical engineering, biomedical, textile manufacturing, and so forth. Women who are accepted at Tehran Polytechnic have some of the highest college entrance examination scores in Iran.
49. The social climate in cities other than the capital city, Tehran, is considered more traditional and religious. My intent in including an institution outside of Tehran in my study was to pose a counterpoint to what I heard from students in what is considered a cosmopolitan setting.
50. Sharif University, established in 1966, is one of the largest engineering schools in IRI and has a student body of approximately 8,000. Tehran University was established in 1934 and was the first to admit women.
51. B. Glaser, Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis: Emergence Versus Forcing (Mill Valley, Calif.: Sociology Press, 1992)
52. A. Strauss and J. Corbin, eds. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd edition. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998).
53. Languages in Iran are generally divided by linguists in two groups: Western (Gilani, Mazandari, Tajik, Tati, Talishi, Kirmanji, Baluchi, Parachi, Ormuri, Luri, Sivandi, Gabri, and Qumzari dialects) and Eastern (Afghi, Ossetic, Yaghnobi, Munjani, and Pamiri). For a discussion of Iran's linguistic diversity see Richard Nyrop, Iran: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: American University, 1978).
54. Some of the major ethnic groups in Iran include the Gilani, Mazandaranis, Kurds, Turks, Lurs, Bakhtiaris, and Baluchis.
55. M. Belenky, Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1997)
56. C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
57. Commonly referred to as smaller provinces or townships.
58. Muslim women must abide by a modest dress code, hijāb, that covers their body and hairline. Rūsarī refers to a woman's headscarf, and mānto is a loose fitting overcoat that can be worn in place of a chador, the traditional body covering for Muslim women.
59. Her comment echoes a statement made by Farzaneh Milani in "Lipstick Politics in Iran," New York Times, 19 August 1999.
60. Noruz is the Persian New Year celebrated at the turn of the vernal equinox (21 March) of a calendar year.
61. Rawdha may be metaphorically defined as "the Garden of Paradise," where believers interact and recall the principle beliefs of Islam during eulogies for different Shi'i martyrs. The term originally comes from a book called Rawdhat al-shuhada by Mulla Hossein Kashifi (who has compiled Lubb-i lubab-i mathnawi). He was the first person who compiled a book with such content, and later on, it became prevalent in Shi'i circles. Since then, whenever such sessions are held, they are called rawdha.
62. Women's "lower status" in the Muslim world predates the advent of Islam and was tied to social and economic conditions of the time and geographic region. These ingrained cultures were so well established that they altered the early teachings of Islam (see Nashat, Women and Revolution in Iran).
63. As Leila Ahmed states, "conceptions, assumptions, and social customs derived from the traditions in place in the Middle East at the time of the Islamic conquests entered into and helped to shape the very foundations of Islamic concepts and social practice as they developed during the first centuries of Islam." (Quoted in Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992], 5);
64. Two popular Iranian Islamic thinkers, Dr. Ali Shariati (d. 1977) and Ayatollah Mortaza Motahhari (d. 1979), have both offered seminal texts that urge Muslims to distinguish religion from social custom. For example, see Ziba Mir-Hosseini, "Stretching the Limits: A Feminist Reading of the Sharia in Post- Khomeini Iran," in Feminism and Islam: Legal Literary Perspectives, ed. Mai Yamani (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 285-319.
65. Dr. Shariati's most famous work is Fatemeh is Fatemeh;
66. and Dr. Motahhari's text is The System of Women's Rights in Islam.
67. Center for Women's Studies, Gender Dimensions of Labor Market and Employment Patterns in the IRI (Tehran: Center for Women's Studies in Tehran University, 2004).
68. Ibid.
69. United Nations, Women in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A Country Profile, no. 15 (New York: Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Statistical Profiles, 1998).