Iranian woman in car. Image via AFP.
As soon as I saw the headline, I have to admit I was thinking “huh?” and “what!” I’m not too keen on products geared towards women because usually these products rely heavily on stereotypes. Unfortunately, this new feminine car does just that.
It’s suppose to come out in a range of “feminine colors” and “interior designs” because we are just so keen on how our car looks. I guess those guys in my neighborhood who spend thousands of dollars on rims and getting their car waxed didn’t get the memo that they’re not suppose to care how their cars look. Oh, and those women I see in big, black Escalades with spinning rims really didn’t get the memo that they’re suppose to be in more “feminine” cars, but I digress.
To make things even better, the new cars will feature “automatic transmission, parking and navigation aids and a jack for changing tyres without getting grease on your chador.” Again, I wonder why this is special to women. I’m sure plenty of men in Iran would love to drive an automatic, since they’re much easier to drive. My husband and most American men aren’t buying automatics simply for their wives to drive, but to drive themselves since they’re less of a hassle than stick shifts. Same for the navigation aids. As for not getting grease on a chador, who wants to get grease on their clothes? I honestly don’t understand why these products aren’t marketed to both genders, since they would seem to benefit both men and women.
While that was annoying, the part of the article that “grinds my gears” was the BBC’s little tirade about gender in Iranian society. After describing the features of the car the author writes, “If that suggests a degree of sexist stereotyping in Iranian society, it is, just possibly, true.” Yes, definitely. But then we start to get in this little slippery slope of self righteousness with the author saying things like “Iranian men have yet to absorb fully the message of equality” or “‘As a result, the report concludes, Iran’s new generation of working women “are obliged to play the role of a superwoman to resolve their contradictions in handling all tasks.’ It says such women ‘have become increasingly frustrated with their life’”.
Now I don’t disagree with these assertions, but I did wonder why they were brought up in an article about a car for women and why the author was acting like these issues were exclusive to Iranian women. American women have to contend with this issue as well. American women spend more time doing household chores than their husbands. British working women also have to contend with juggling it all while getting little help from men. So this is an issue that affects women all around the globe.
Next time, I think the BBC should just stick to the story.
This was also posted at Muslimnista.
Good points Faith!
It’s amazing that the state’s enforcement of gender expectations (which are being subverted everyday) is being manifested in car production too.
I love how Western critics highlight how since the revolution, Iran has forced specific and ‘humiliating’ gender roles on women, yet not only ignore their own problems regarding this but also how under the Pahlavi regime, the Iranian woman was also expected to fulfil specific gender roles. Like most modernising programs, with their secular ideals, she was still understood and framed in natonalist discourse in traditional gender terms i.e primary role being a mother, being chaste in her behaviour etc. Very similar to what the Khomeni and co discourse expected of her in the later period. The regime never pursued anything radical regarding gender at all.
Great post, Faith! Especially loved “I did wonder why they were brought up in an article about a car for women and why the author was acting like these issues were exclusive to Iranian women.” YEAH!
This car was made to make money. Simple as that. That’s one way Iran and the US are nearly indistinguishable: the use of gender roles to further a capitalist marking strategy.
What I find interesting about this post is that very often on this blog, we make the important connections between gender stereotyping/discrimination in Muslim societies and those in Western societies. But we don’t make the connections between the economic and governmental systems between the two, and the role colonialism has had on this.
We should peel back the layers a little bit and realize more nuances about these types of situations, which often involve issues of globalization and capitalism.
@Sahar”The regime never pursued anything radical regarding gender at all”
It is true that there were many congruous policies Khomeini and the Shah took (e.g. compulsory and prohibition of the veil, respectively; primary roles as wife and mother; etc.)
But the above comment is very misinformed, and it is quite disturbing to hear it. I suggest you read the following the get better acquainted with the Revolution’s use of gender. There’s a lot of opinions out there, but I found these authors/texts to be fundamental:
Parvin Paidar: “Women and the Political Process in Iran”; Nikki Keddie; Homa Hoodfar; Val Moghadam; Ziba Mir-Hosseini.
This makes me think of Daisy guitars. They’re guitars made for girls. The acoustics do have a narrower neck for smaller hands, which is nice for girls. But the electrics are just regular guitars in pink, or glitter, or whatever. They’re good guitars, don’t get me wrong, but as someone who doesn’t like pink or glitter it makes me think “so girls need a guitar to be be pink to have it be cool and feminine and acceptable? Are they calling girls who don’t unfeminine?”
If it helps make it seem a little cooler to young girls starting out to have them glittery, or makes a girl feel a little more comfortable to see something aimed to them, then it’s a cool thing, I guess. But when the only display you see aimed towards girls focuses on the appearance and not the skill it seems to reinforce the idea that girls care about the appearance first and don’t deserve to move out of their second class status in a guitar store. Why not have pictures of female guitarists? And some guitars that look a little more mature? Like girls never grow up and want to be glitter and fairy dust forever.
But the one plus about the guitars is that I do feel the company is trying to be women supporting. They believe in supporting women musicians, they think they are helping, and who else is reaching out and marketing just to them? So I don’t have so much of a problem.
The issue with the article about cars for me is that this guy is speaking for muslim women that they should be enraged. I may think the cars are stupid too, but why can’t we speak out for ourselves? Women solving problems and men helping and supporting is one thing. But men just pointing out sexism without a frame of trying to solve it, and without letting women speak and listening to their experiences and suggestions of how things should change, isn’t helpful. It’s like saying to someone “oh you’re so ugly and not doing well in school and don’t have any money”…I feel so sorry for you…but I don’t really want you to improve so all I will do is point out how bad things are without giving any hope or [ositive options or listening to you to see what your problems are that got you to this point.
Rochelle: I’m familiar with all those authors considering Iran is one of my case studies i’m writing about for my thesis. But you misunderstood my point, by ‘regime’ I was referring to the Shah’s. However, seeing as you thought I was referring to Khomeni’s regime, i’ll add: changes in gender weren’t radical in the shift from one regime to another. They were just discursively represented in different ways. Just because post-revolution Iranian women were forced to wear the Hijab doesn’t mean that there was a dramatic shift in gender –which Western Iranian critics concentrated on. The unveiled Iranian woman was expected to behave in a similar way to that of the veiled Iranian woman. Both Mir-Hosseini and Moghadam, along with Ashraf Zahedi and others have argued what radical changes in gender that were attempted after the revolution were very shortlived and didn’t last. The new regime soon reconsidered their approach in light of the protest which occurred. Example: The family protection law of 1967 which was abolished after the revolution was re-written into law in 1994 under the Amendents to Divorce Regulations amongest others.
My whole point is the gender shift between one regime to another wasn’t really radical, if you consider the discourse around women in both regimes.
Sorry, I don’t mean to get too off topic, but…
Sahar: Sorry I misunderstood your point, but I still trongly, while respectively, disagree with your statement that changes in gender weren’t radical between the Shah and Khomeini. While I do personally believe the hijab issue was/is a radical and important one, I understand why many studying the issue are frustrated that people centering on this. So I won’t give much thought to this and give other examples.
Gender and the family were cornerstones of revolutionary discourse, and I’ve found it very difficult to argue against this notion. The Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini set out to implement the proposed ideal ‘Islamic’ family once it emerged from the transitional period of the revolution. This ‘Islamic’ family was defined in opposition to ‘Western’ or ‘imperialist’ definitions of sexuality and the family, and was asserted as the culturally authentic and appropriate form of family for the modern, Islamic Iranian society. It was radical in terms of its supposed ‘authenticity’ and political legitimacy.
The actualization of the ideal ‘Islamic’ family became the foundation of the ideal ‘Islamic’ nation, and involved extensive Islamization of women in the process, thus the repeal of the FPA. But the FPA was not re-written into law, and I’m not sure where you’re getting this. Some statues have been reinstated yes, but the bulk of the law (divorce, inheritance, child custody, mehr, sigheh, age of adult responsibility, age of marriage, etc.) remains in effect the same as the Civil Code of 1931, which was drafted under Reza Shah based on a relatively liberal interpretation of Shii sharia.
Also, Mir-Hosseini and Moghadam do not argue that the radical changes were short-lived, rather they were mutable and many times contradictory. For example, effective implementation on restrictive family planning laws had to be abandoned due to economic concerns surrounding population control during the Iran-Iraq War. Same thing happened with sigheh and hijab, with women reintepreting these statues to benefit themselves. As a result, the rhetoric of the ‘Islamicness’ of family planning changed, too. This resulted in a heterogeneous and at times contradictory public policy on women’s status.
But this does not mean that the changes weren’t radical. If you agree that the revolution itself was radical, then you must agree that the gender changes were radical, as gender was the foundational basis for the social transformation following the revolution.
I know we can’t settle this debate over a blog, and I hope you don’t think I’m attacking you personally. There are many respectable people who underplay the changes in gender after the revolution; I just don’t think their arguments are very credible.
“While I do personally believe the hijab issue was/is a radical and important one, I understand why many studying the issue are frustrated that people centering on thi”.
What I meant here is that Western critics of Iran focus on the Hijab’s imposition as a sign of women’s oppression in Iran, when the situation is a little more complicated than that. The study of the Hijab in Iran is quite telling actually, it taps into several other areas of society which really help understand the status of women in the country. My own research is based on the Hijab and the image of the Iranian woman which helps me to understand her position in Iran. So it’s not because there is a concentration of the Hijab, it is the way Western discourse around the Hijab is constructed and misrepresents the experiences of many Iranian women in post-revolution Iran.
“But the FPA was not re-written into law, and I’m not sure where you’re getting this”.
I was lazy in my post to elaborate. What I meant was, the issues many women had with abolishing the FPA were in many ways made up for in the 1994 law–in regards to divorce.
“Also, Mir-Hosseini and Moghadam do not argue that the radical changes were short-lived, rather they were mutable and many times contradictory”.
Not sure which works of Moghadam and Mir-Hosseini you’ve read but i’m reading Mir-Hosseini ‘s ‘Islam and Gender’, and have read a journal article of hers too which focuses specifically on the Hijab. Both have written several pieces on Iran. In the case of Mir-Hosseni, she uses the 1994 example to show that there was a loosening up of otherwise stricter approaches. Which is why I agree with you when you say:
“This resulted in a heterogeneous and at times contradictory public policy on women’s status.” The contrdiction in fact allowed for this loosening up process.
“But this does not mean that the changes weren’t radical. If you agree that the revolution itself was radical, then you must agree that the gender changes were radical, as gender was the foundational basis for the social transformation following the revolution”.
My own research of Iran is focused on gender discourse. It is here, I argue that the revolution wasn’t necessarily ‘radical’ because I look at it comparatively with modernising discourses seen under the Shah’s period. To say the revolution was radical for women would mean i’d have to say the same about the modernising period for women. From what i’ve studied, I don’t really see it. The gender discourse around Iranian women in both discourses was heavily patriarchal and reinforcing traditional gender roles only discursively different. This doesn’t mean a gender shift didn’t occur, I just don’t see a dramatic shift occurred–which many critics suggest. I’d be happy to read any more recommended literature in that area if you know of any.
“I know we can’t settle this debate over a blog, and I hope you don’t think I’m attacking you personally. There are many respectable people who underplay the changes in gender after the revolution; I just don’t think their arguments are very credible”.
Why would I take your critique personally? On the contrary, I enjoy these debates and see them as an opportunity of learning. I’m only letting you know from what i’ve read. i’m not convinced there was a dramatic change that could be described as ‘radical’–perhaps we may see this now under Ahmadinajad where I notice the government has really started crackingdown on women and blame women for the country’s moral corruption. Who knows.I think there is an inherent discrediting process that occurs when religious discourse is applied to gender though, but we don’t really approach secular nationalist discourse with the same skeptical eye.