The role of women in Iranian society under the Pahlavi Shahs greatly changed under the post-revolution Islamic Republic established by Ayatollah Khomeini. The unpopular modernization efforts of Reza Shah Pahlavi were the major source of discontent in Iran that led to the revolution. The Iranian people felt that the Shah was too greatly under western influence and that the changing role of women was a symbol of his great folly. Thus, as the Islamic Republic sought to purify Iranian society and cast out foreign evils, women’s behavior and liberties were vastly changed.

The Iranian women’s western dress became the symbol of western corruption in Iranian society. One common view was that the values of Islamic society were threatened by this change is women:

In Islamic countries the role of women is even more sensitive. Islamic belief and culture provides people of these societies with faith and ideals . . . Woman in these societies is armed with a shield that protects her against the conspiracies aimed at her humanity, honour and chastity. This shield is verily her veil. For this reason . . . the most immediate and urgent task was seen to be unveiling . . . Then she became the target of poisonous arrows of corruption, prostitution, nakedness, looseness, and trivialities. After this, she was used to disfigure the Islamic culture of the society, to erase people’s faith and drag society in her wake toward corruption, decay and degradation. ²

The Islamic Republic discouraged or barred women from working, instead emphasizing that their place is in the home. The new constitution was ratified in December of 1979. It barred women from becoming judges and suspended the Family Protection Law. The courts established under that law were taken apart, thereby destroying the gains women had made in matters of divorce and custody. Also, the marriage age for women, which had been raised to 18 under Reza Shah Pahlavi, was reduced to puberty. Temporary marriages, which left the temporary wife with no rights after the contract period was over, were also encouraged by the new regime. Segregation of the sexes was also imposed. Primary and secondary schools ended coeducation, and women were to sit in the back, and men in the front of public buses. The Islamic Law of Retribution (1981) made adultery punishable by stoning and a number of women meet this end. Many women were also severely punished for infractions of Islamic dress.⁴  In 1981, all political and women’s organizations are banned.

Women were also barred from certain areas of study. Eventually women were excluded from technical, agriculture, engineering, veterinary science, and business fields. Women were discouraged from having decision-making positions in the public sector. The minister of education, Farrokhru Parsa, who was also the first woman to have a cabinet post, was executed. She was accused of leading young girls to prostitution, but appeared more as a warning against career women. Many policies, such as the Part-Time Work Law, and the closure of day cares, encouraged women to go back to the home.

The main theme of this movement was the purification of women. The leaders of the Islamic Republic saw the changes that had been made in the roles of women, which favored western ideals, as tokens of the corrupt past that needed to be eliminated. Although women’s employment did increase during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) and reconstruction, the rights that women had achieved under the Pahlavi’s were never regained.

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