International Women’s Day

Baroness Afshar Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Afshar]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for putting this debate on the agenda. On this occasion I will speak on the experiences of Iranian women, whose access to education has been systematically curtailed over the past decade, and ask whether it would be possible for conditions allowing bright, qualified, English-speaking Iranian students who apply for universities and have the resources to be more easily admitted via the visa requirements. However, before doing so, I point out that the reason why the access of Iranian women to education has been severely curtailed by the Iranian Government over the past decade is the fear that, through education, they will gain familiarity with and knowledge of their Islamic rights.

Some 14 centuries ago Islam gave women rights that are the subject of discussion in this debate today. I will begin with the right of independent means. Muslim women never lose their property on marriage. As I said to my husband when I married him, what I have is mine—and what he has is mine too. The reason for that is, to follow the comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, the duty of reciprocity. That is to say, Muslim men first have the duty to pay for women to agree to sign a marital contract. Marriage is a matter of contract between consenting partners, and men must pay women to participate and sign in the first place. They can impose any condition they like, and these are contractually binding agreements.

Secondly, marriage and motherhood are not indivisible. The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, raised questions about paying for childcare and motherhood. The reality is that Islam, 14 centuries ago, gave women the right to choose. If they chose to be mothers, they were entitled to payment, not by the state but by men—by their husbands. If they chose to do housework they were entitled to ask for payment—again, by their husbands. Therefore, essentially, rights that as a feminist in the West I have been fighting for ever since I have been in England were bestowed on Muslim women 14 centuries ago.

However, in order to exercise these rights women need to be familiar with the Koranic teachings and with what Islam offers them. This is the Iranian Government’s fear. In fact, they have two fears: the first is of women knowing their Islamic rights, and the second is the fear of the West—of West-toxification, of Iranian women being intoxicated by the West. They have nowhere to turn.

After the Iranian revolution, the post-revolutionary Iranian Government closed all universities in order to cleanse them of any kind of western influence. When they reopened the universities only 10% of university students were women, because women were deemed unsuitable to attend university. However, using their Koranic rights and the teachings of Islam, women fought, and within a decade they made up 18% of university places, eventually reaching 50% of the student population.

Far from seeing this as an achievement, the Iranian Government declared that this kind of access to education caused,

“social disparity and economic and cultural imbalances between men and women”.

This fear was exacerbated when women made further progress until they comprised 65% of students at universities, simply because they were willing to work harder; they passed entrance exams, which are set for all, and they did better than men. We all know that women often do better than men if they are given the chance.

By 2009, 68% of all graduates in the sciences at Iranian universities were women. This caused real fear on the part of the Iranian Government. Ayatollah Khamenei, the spiritual leader, ordered a second cleansing of university material—and Islamification all over again. As part of this, they felt that there had to be severe segregation between men and women; women would study particular subjects while men would study other, more suitable subjects. The result of that was that by the year 1213, 77 fields of study were considered to be male only, and therefore unsuitable for women. The one women-only subject was nursing; it was recognised that we might be good carers, but nothing else mattered.

There was also an idea that because the female dormitories were limited, fewer women would attend universities from towns other than Tehran. Furthermore, it was felt that educated women who accessed universities and read the limited range of subjects that they were allowed to study caused a very serious problem. First, they tended to marry later. Secondly, they tended to be much choosier about who they married and they preferred to marry men who were equally well or better educated than themselves, so the poor old uneducated men were left on the shelf. That was not considered acceptable. Of particular importance was the fact that educated women had fewer children. Following that, the Iranian Government have imposed draconian measures that have resulted in a number of prestigious universities, such as the Oil Industry University and Isfahan University, no longer admitting women. Those universities that do admit women limit them to a very restricted range of subjects. Human rights, English literature, women’s studies and a whole raft of subjects are considered unsuitable for women. I suppose they think that women might get interested in other subjects through reading English literature. At this crucial point it is very important to open doors for those Iranian women who are able to go to university to enable them to do so in countries such as the UK and to treat them as freedom fighters, not potential terrorists.