Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/24680
GETTY IMAGES N EARLY SEPTEMBER, MARZIEH Vahid Dastjerdi was approved as the first woman minister in 30 years of Islamic rule in Iran. The last one, Farrokhroo Parsa, was executed in 1980 by the revolutionary govern- ment. Dastjerdi, 50, a gynecologist and two-time parliamentarian, will head Iran’s Ministry of Health. Iranian President Mahmoud Ah- madinejad’s nomination of Dastjerdi (and two other women who were not approved) for a ministerial post caused quite a stir within Iran’s ultra- conservative circles. Even the presi- dent’s staunch supporter Fatemeh Rajabi, a hard-line woman journalist, said, “It advances the harmful goals of feminists and secularists,” and that “high positions for women were not a practice in early Islam…” Western media, the Iranian opposi- tion and many Iranian feminists were dismissive in a different way, calling Dastjerdi a conservative who would push the women’s agenda backward. They deemed Ahmadinejad’s move an empty gesture to “soften his hard-line image” and blunt the mo- mentum women had been gaining in recent years as youth have pushed for social changes and feminists have www.msmagazine.com AWoman Minister for Iran I The hard-line Islamic government blinks confronted authorities. Viewed in terms of the recent Iranian election dispute, the subsequent mass trials and allegations of rape and torture in prison, Dastjerdi’s rise is not a cause for celebration. But viewed in the context of the past 30 years, her selec- tion signals a shift in the power and status of Iranian women. A great show of power was dis- played in the presidential election and in its aftermath: Three of the four candidates offered a visible woman in their camp. Reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi had his wife Zahra Rahnavard, an artist and po- litical scientist; Mehdi Karroubi, the moderate candidate, had Jamileh Kadivar, a university professor and former member of Parliament who told me she would have been offered the post of minister of education if Karroubi won; the conservative candi- date Mohsen Rezaee had the help of Leili Boroujerdi, the granddaughter of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Iranian women formed an unprecedented coalition that put aside their differences and made two specific demands of the candidates: approval of the Conven- Iranian women protest in the streets of Tehran, defying government warnings and police use of tear gas and physical force. tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and elimination of dis- criminatory laws against women. The move clearly marked the matu- rity of the Iranian women’s move- ment and signaled their readiness to enter power negotiations. But the show of power reached its peak when a grassroots uprising broke out in the streets of Iran. Media im- ages showed masses of fearless Iranian women at the forefront of demonstra- tions, and a young woman who was killed during the uprising, Neda Agha Sultan, became its symbol. It is against this backdrop, then, that the Islamic republic delivers its first woman minister. Her approval has both sparked debate on the role of women within ultraconservative circles and communicated to all the notion of gender equality. In the complex politics of Iran there may not be a change of heart, but a change of attitude when it comes to women. —PARI ESFANDIARI FALL 2009 | 25