Daily Life - Iran - page 577

workforce is acknowledged - maternity leave, for example, is given for three months at
67% of salary or four months if breastfeeding - there is still widespread discrimination.
However, a woman's testimony is still only worth half that of a man's in court and in
the case of the blood money that a murderer's family is obliged to pay to the family of the
victim, females are estimated at half the value of a male.
On the street, especially in Tehran, you will
see that superficially the dress code has eased
compared with the days when the black chador
dominated. Despite crackdowns that have be-
come more regular in recent years, women of
all ages can be seen wearing shorter, tighter,
brightly coloured coats and headscarves worn
far back on elaborate hairstyles. Young women
have lost their fear of being seen outside the
home with unrelated men and are prepared to risk arrest to do so. Activists such as Shirin
Ebadi, who works as a lawyer and champions human rights, are insistent that within Islam
are enshrined all human rights and that all that is needed is more intelligent interpretation.
Any visit to an Iranian home will leave you in no doubt as to who is really in charge of
family life - which is the most important institution in Iran. Iranian women are feisty and
powerful and they continue to educate themselves. Most women in Iran will tell you that
the hejab is the least of their worries; what is more important is to change the institutional
discrimination inherent in Iranian society and the law. As ex-Reformist MP Elaheh
Koulaie says: 'We have to change the perceptions that Iranians have of themselves, the
perception of the role of men and women'.
But since conservatives regained control of the majlis in 2004 and the presidency in
2005 (with Ahmadinejad), this change has become more difficult to achieve. Since
mid-2007, and more so since the Green Movement mass protests in 2009, the government
has been much more aggressive in enforcing restrictive laws that had, in effect, been
dormant during the Khatami years. Across the country, female university students were
told to start wearing a maqna'e (nunlike head scarf or wimple) or stop coming to class. In
cities, and especially in Tehran, the liberties taken for granted for a decade from 1997 are
being challenged by periodic high-profile crackdowns on what is perceived as bad hejab -
usually too much make up and not enough scarf.

A Separation (2012) is Asghar Farhadi's complex
portrayal of the emotional challenges a Tehran
couple face as their marriage falls apart. It won the
Golden Globe and Academy Award for best
foreign-language film, and was nominated for an
Acadamy Award for original screenplay.