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New Friends: Gender Relations within the Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Erika Friedl
Erika Friedl*
Affiliation:
At Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
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Abstract

Trends in intra-family relationships in Iran point to fast changes in regional and class-linked cultural patterns following the rapid spread of the national culture and of modernist ideologies and practices. People redefine their responsibilities and expectations as small nuclear families increase, women aspire to higher education and employment, and the bad economic situation necessitates various adaptations. Analysis of recent ethnographic data suggests that the shift from traditional authoritarian intra-family relations to relationships based on autonomy, individuation, independence and companionship creates new intimacies but also conflicts. The prevailing ideology of “progress” in Iran likely will further weaken patrilineal ties and kin relations while strengthening ties based on friendship and collegiality.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1: Special Issue On Gender and Sexuality , February 2009 , pp. 27 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2009

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References

1 See the publications of Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi and Peter McDonald, such as, for example, “From Seven Children to Below Replacement Level: Factors behind the World's Most Rapid Fertility Decline in Iran,” Paper read at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, 10 March 2008. Using national and their own census data, the authors found that demographic and family formation trends have converged everywhere in Iran, regardless of class and ethnicity. In 2006/7 the Swiss Academy for Development undertook a study of the status of married women in all provinces of Iran except Beluchistan, interviewing non-elite women from all walks of life. The ongoing analysis of over 4,000 protocols suggests results similar to the descriptions I give here that are based on observations in an ethnographic context. Mithra Akhbari et al., “Conflicting Voices of Iranian Women” (working title), Swiss Academy for Development (in preparation). For other relevant recent quantitative data see Azadeh, Kian-Thiébaut, “From Motherhood to Equal Rights Advocates: The Weakening of Patriarchal Order,” Iranian Studies, 38, no 1 (2005): 45–66Google Scholar.

2 On elderly women, see, for example, Hegland, Mary E., “Iranian Village Grandmothers and the Independent Life,” Paper delivered at the 5th International Conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies (Bethesda, MD, 2005)Google Scholar; Hegland, Mary E., “Grossmutter lebt allein in ihrem Häuschen,” journal-ethnologie.de, 1 (2007)Google Scholar.

3 I talked to professionals from/in Shiraz, Yasuj, Isfahan, Hamadan and Bushehr but will not name them because I did not ask their explicit permission. Newspapers and women-oriented journals report such occurrences frequently. A useful academic summary/analysis of this literature comes from the University of Bamberg, Germany: Abid, Lise J., “Frauenzeitschriften im Iran und ihr Einfluss auf den sozialen Wandel” (2008), http://web.uni-bamberg.de/split/iranistik/Abid.pdfGoogle Scholar

4 For issues of power and authority regarding gender relations see various contributions in Afkhami, Mahnaz and Friedl, Erika eds., In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-revolutionary Iran (Syracuse, NY, 1994)Google Scholar; Friedl, Erika, “The Dynamics of Women's Spheres of Action in Rural Iran,” in Women in Middle Eastern History, ed. Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth (New Haven, CT, 1991), 195–214Google Scholar; Friedl, Erika, “Rural Women's History: A Case Study from Boir Ahmad,” in Women in Iran. From 1800 to the Islamic Republic, ed. Beck, Lois and Nashat, Guity (Urbana, IL, 2004), 218–239Google Scholar; Nakanishi, Hikae, “Power, Ideology, and Women's Consciousness in Postrevolutionary Iran,” in Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity Within Unity, ed. Bodman, Herbert and Tohidi, Nayereh (Boulder, CO, 1998), 83–100Google Scholar.

5 For descriptions and analyses of this hierarchy see Afkhami and Friedl, eds., In the Eye of the Storm; Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT, 1986)Google Scholar; Ferdows, Adele K. and Ferdows, Amir K., “Women in Shi'a Figh: Images through the Hadith,” in Women and the Revolution in Iran, ed. Nashat, Guity (Boulder, CO, 1983), 55–68Google Scholar; Mahdavi, Shireen, “The Position of Women in Shi'a Iran: Views of the Ulama,” in Women and the Family in the Middle East: New Voices of Change, ed. Warnock Fernea, Elizabeth (Austin, TX, 1985), 255–268Google Scholar; Moallem, Minoo, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley, CA, 2005)Google Scholar; Moghissi, Haideh, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (Princeton, NJ, 1999)Google Scholar; Shahidian, Hammed, Women in Iran: Emerging Voices in the Women's Movement (Westport, CT, 2002)Google Scholar; Friedl, Erika, “Review of Shahidian, Women in Iran,” in Middle East Studies Bulletin, forthcoming; Ali Shari'ati, Fatima is Fatima, trans. by Bakhtiar, Laleh (Tehran, 1980)Google Scholar; Schirrmacher, Christine and Spuler-Stegemann, Ursula, Frauen und die Scharia: Die Menschenrechte im Islam (Kreuzlingen, 2004)Google Scholar.

6 See Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, CA, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Boir Ahmad, an area where until recently economic and everyday life were strictly gender-complementary, people mention homosexuality only in the context of “boy-play, bacebāzi,” here meaning sexually oriented activities among boys and male adolescents before marriage rather than pedophilia. Such “games” are considered “ugly” (zesht) and childish. People disapprove of rough sex-play and rape among young males; a victim's male relatives may punish such aggression severely.

7 Such relationships appear in all authoritarian systems, including those familiar to students of western cultures, but here is not the place for comparisons.

8 The unprecedented speed with which the population growth rate in Iran has dropped over the last 20 years again is a function of government pressure and of “progress” as a philosophy of life, but how these two factors combined to produce a drop from 3.2 percent in 1986 to 1.2 percent in 2001 has not been adequately analyzed. Larsen, Janet, “Iran's Birth Rate Plummeting at Record Pace,” Minnesotans For Sustainability, 28 December 2001, http://mnforsustain.org/iran_model_of_reducing_fertility.htmGoogle Scholar

9 In urban upper middle class families the shift seems to have happened earlier, but according to my own observations, until about 1975 behavior and attitudes connected to this shift did not have much of an influence in the countryside and among lower classes. This process, however, is for historians to document.

10 Friedl, Erika, Children of Deh Koh (Syracuse, NY, 1997)Google Scholar.

11 This shows especially in elder-care. See Hegland, “Iranian Village Grandmothers and the Independent Life.” See also Friedl, Erika, “Vom kleinen Diener zum kleinen Tyrannen. Wie sich im Iran Kindheit ändert,” journal-ethnologie.de, 3 (2005)Google Scholar.

12 For the level of analysis I adopt here I stand by these generalizations, even if I cannot refer to statistical data. The exception is some young people in well-to-do urban middle to upper classes in certain neighborhoods, especially in Tehran, where they flaunt their “freedom” seemingly unhampered by paternal authority. A young man from Tehran said this about his girlfriends: “Mobāil o māshin-e chic sedā-e pedar suqut mikone,” i.e., after giving their daughters cars and cell phones fathers no longer have much say in how their daughters run their lives.

13 This view belongs to the lag in gender expectations. See Friedl, Erika, “A Thorny Side of Marriage in Iran,” in Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Lee Bowen, Donna and Early, Evelyn A. (Bloomington, IN, 2002), 111–120Google Scholar.

14 In urban, educated, “westernized” elite families the trend described here had already started under the Pahlavis, i.e., three generations ago and even earlier. Excepting elites, however, the heavy traditional workload of young women cuts across the urban/rural divide and all social classes, with variations based on the number of women sharing the work, the amount of work to be done, and the ratio between males and females in the house.

15 Compare this paucity to Harris, Colette, Muslim Youth. Tensions and Transitions in Tajikistan (Boulder, CO, 2006)Google Scholar. It invites comparisons on every page.

16 The score on the highly competitive university entrance examination (konkur) largely determines acceptance in a field of study, but students may indicate their preference on the application form.

17 Especially in rural areas the practice of ultimogeniture puts the responsibility for the care of elderly parents on the youngest son, who will inherit an extra share to offset his additional expenses. But where the difference in income in a set of brothers is great, the wealthier brother is expected to help out, thereby usually gaining influence and authority over his siblings.

18 See Friedl, “A Thorny Side of Marriage in Iran”; and Friedl, Erika, “Dornen im Ehebett. Eheprobleme im modernen Iran,” journal-ethnologie.de, 1 (2007).Google Scholar

19 “Elders” here means anybody close enough to the young woman or man to have an interest in his/her well-being: parents, relatives, siblings, but also friends and co-workers are potential matchmakers.

20 In the Iranian context, this is a marriage where the customary male/female hierarchy with male authority and female subordination is substituted for a sharing of tasks and responsibilities, intimacy and mutual confidence. See, e.g., various contributions in Hirsch, Jennifer S. and Wardlow, Holly eds., Modern Loves: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship and Companionate Marriage (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Dr. Behrouz Khosrozadeh, University of Goettingen, kindly drew my attention to a published exchange between Amir Abadi of the Divorce Courts in Tehran and Fariba Daoudi Mohajer of the daftar-e tahkim-e wahdat-e Iran-e Islami that puts the issue into a national context. Abadi had said in a speech that “the women of today are unable to make scrambled eggs, but they want the right to divorce” (author's translation), http://norooznews.ir/news/4820.php, December 12, 2007, and Daoudi Mohajer answers him at length, http://advarnews.us/article/6468.aspx, January 5, 2008.

22 Because the penalty and the loss of face are so high, many husbands who learn of a wife's infidelity keep the matter private. Such silence gives the husband the power to deny his wife the divorce settlement written in the contract. Recently, the government also tried to make it easier for men generally to break marriage contracts.

23 The brideprice used to be a negotiated sum of money and/or goods the father of a bride asked of the groom and his family to offset the expenses of his daughter's upbringing, as people said, and to enable him to provide the basic necessities of setting up the couple's household. The recent trend is in most places for a bride's family to use (most of) the payment to provide household goods, a dowry-plus-hope chest for the couple.

24 I talked to lawyers and judges in Qorveh, Hamadan, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Yasuj, and to other social service providers in several more places.

25 An anonymous manuscript reader of this article kindly informed me that “some fathers still do so, particularly among the wealthy merchant classes.”