Shirin Ebadi’s memoir, Iran Awakening, is a captivating tale of her experiences as a woman in Iran throughout its turbulent history. It provides the reader with a great amount of insight into what it truly means to be a woman in Iran and how Iran’s history has lead to the status of women there today. It is a perfect piece for analysis from the standpoints of both post-colonial feminism and socialist feminism. By analyzing Iran Awakening through both of these scopes, one can come away with an even more complex understanding of Ebadi’s life and the work that she has done for other Iranian women.
The theory of post-colonialism can easily be connected to Shirin Ebadi’s life and experiences as set out in Iran Awakening and provides us with a very apt framework for an analysis of her life. Post-colonial feminism, as presented in Lorber’s Gender Inequality, proposes that the sources of gender inequality include undermining women’s traditional economic resources through colonialism, the exploitation of women workers in post-colonial countries, and the lack of education for girls, among other things (86). Post-colonialist feminism asserts that all of these sources of inequality find their origination in colonialism and its after-affects, as well as in current economic globalization. This theory proposes that the best ways to address the oppressive aspects of the post-colonial world include educating girls in a way that fits the cultural context in which they live, and through grassroots organizing of women within communities (Lorber, 86). One of the greatest contributions of Post-colonial feminism to the greater feminist discourse is the concept that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” (95). Many of these aspects of post-colonial feminism can be analyzed within Ebadi’s memoir.
The fact that Iran has, in fact, been continuously colonized or otherwise involved in colonial dynamics with other countries throughout history, the United States in particular, lends Iran Awakening to a post-colonial feminist analysis. One of the most disturbing examples of this that had a lasting impact on Iran was the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh. Driven by the fact that Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil, the United States directed a coup d’´etat that placed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power and sent the beloved Prime Minister to jail for 3 years (Ebadi 5-6). According to Ebadi, “it was a profoundly humiliating moment for Iranians, who watched the United States intervene in their politics as if their country were some annexed backwater, its leader to be installed or deposed at the whim of an American president and his CIA advisers” (Ebadi 5), and only “when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and radicals took the American embassy hostage, did I see how the long arc of the coup had worked its way across our twentieth-century history” (Ebadi 13). As suggested by the latter of these quotes, the Islamic Revolution was in part a backlash against the Westernization and colonization of Iran by the United States. To Ebadi, this was made evident when soon after the revolution, she returned to Iran from a trip to the United States to discover that “the tie was deemed a symbol of the West’s evils, smelling of cologne signaled counterrevolutionary tendencies, and riding in the ministry car was evidence of class privilege” (Ebadi 41). However, the revolution did not assure that the dynamic of domination and submission in the relationship between the United States and Iran was erased. After Iran had made clear steps to show their rejection of the previous administration’s submission to the United States, the U.S. stepped in during Iran’s war with Iraq. They “even strengthened Iraq’s hand… the Reagan administration provided Iraq with satellite images of Iranian troop deployment” (Ebadi 77).
After the Islamic Revolution, the nation’s passionate dismissal of all things Western lead to the government’s use of an extremist interpretation of the Qur’an and the imposition of the Islamic penal code. The penal code “in short, turned the clock back fourteen hundred years, to the early days of Islam’s spread, the days when stoning women for adultery and chopping off the hands of thieves were considered appropriate sentences” (Ebadi 51). They also stated that “the value of a woman’s life was half that of a man” (Ebadi 51). Ebadi fought this statute for years, believing whole-heartedly, like post-colonial feminism, that women’s rights are human rights. One of her most memorable cases involving this principle was that of Leila Fathi. Despite her horrific death, her family was charged money for the execution of her murderers as their lives were worth more than hers, a ruling that left them homeless and desperate for justice to be served. (Ebadi 112-114). Not only does this part of the Islamic Penal Code violate the basic post-colonial feminist principle that women’s rights are human rights, but the institution of this code alone is yet a further sign of how the backlash against colonization can lead to the oppression of a country’s people. In their desperation to rid themselves of all Western influence, they instituted a pre-colonization penal code that ended up harming their own people. This is yet another horrible result of the colonization of Iran.
Socialist feminism provides us with another interesting perspective on Ebadi’s life and experiences. Socialist feminism finds sources of inequality in several aspects of society, including the accumulation of various advantages for men and the way that these advantages give men a great amount of social power and the ability to dominate women, and the accumulation of various disadvantages for women culminating in their second-class status (Lorber 63). It also carries much of the same theories as Marxist feminism, including the dual-systems theory (Lorber 47) and the concept of a reserve army of labor (Lorber 45). Ebadi’s life as relayed through Iran Awakening provides great experiences to be analyzed through these various aspects of socialist feminism.
Socialist feminism shares many of the same basic principles as post-colonial feminism and this becomes clear when attempting a socialist feminist analysis of Iran Awakening. While post-colonial feminism is concerned with women’s rights as human rights, socialist feminism restates this concept through its concern about the second-class citizenship of women. Therefore, through a socialist feminist analysis of Iran Awakening we must once again make note of the Islamic Penal Code and the case of Lelia Fathi. The Islamic Penal Code made it very clear that women were in fact second-class citizens in Iran and strongly asserted that their lives are worth less than the lives of men. This is troubling for socialist feminists, and so by fighting the statutes that guaranteed second-class citizenship for Iranian women, Ebadi was doing the work of socialist feminism.
The dual-systems theory of socialist feminism can clearly be applied to the life of Shirin Ebadi as she took part in both productive and reproductive labor. Despite the fact that she was a progressive woman with a career as an influential judge (productive labor), she was still responsible for the reproductive labor of taking care of her home and raising her children. In her own words, “there was no such thing as division of household responsibilities… as all the tasks, from cooking to cleaning to paperwork, were mine alone” (Ebadi 29). From a socialist feminist standpoint, this is a problematic fact and yet another way that women are kept within their role as second-class citizens. Perhaps most troubling is that a woman as well educated and intelligent as Ebadi would recognize this fact and simply accept that she “could not have everything” (Ebadi 29).
Iran Awakening also touches on the socialist feminist concept of women as a reserve army of labor. Ebadi, along with many other Iranian women, had been a supporter of the campaign against the shah’s regime and of the revolution, but once the revolution had been achieved, she was thrown to the sidelines and lost her equality as a human being. She was only an equal as long as they could use her support, and as soon as their need for her ended, her concerns were disregarded. Regarding the revolutionaries, Ebadi states “in their hierarchy of priorities, women’s rights would forever come last. It was simply never the right time to defend women’s rights” (Ebadi 56). “It took scarcely a month for me to realize that, in fact, I had willingly and enthusiastically participated in my own demise. I was a woman, and this revolution’s victory demanded my defeat” (Ebadi 38).
Iran Awakening contains a rich tapestry woven from the history of a country that has been forced into the submissive role in relationships with Western powers and from the struggles of those who are forced to submit even further within Iran due to their sex. Analysis through both post-colonial feminism and socialist feminism can lead to a better understanding of why this oppression has continued throughout the years, and how it continues to be inscribed upon the current politics of the country. Both provide the reader with unique insight into these issues, and both share the common belief that as long as women are second-class citizens and their rights are not seen as human rights, they will continue to suffer as the submissive members of a country attempting to recover from its own history of oppression.
Works Cited
Lorber, Judith. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2005. Print.
Ebadi, Shirin. Iran Awakening. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007. Print.
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