We are not a country of 75 million, we have the capacity to become at least 150 million people, if not more.
–Ayatollah Khamenei, October 2014.
With the talk of nuclear development clouding deeper perceptions of Iran over the past year, an important issue that has burgeoned since the beginning of 2014 in Iran has largely been overlooked. Starting in October 2014, Iran has proposed to reboot population growth with The Bill to Increase Fertility Rates and Prevent Population Decline (Bill 446). In a push to advance Iranian population, Bill 446 threatens to curb the use of contraceptives, outlaw voluntary sterilisation, ban the distribution of information on contraceptive methods and dismantle state-funded family planning programmes that have hitherto been praised for improving access to information and provisions for sexual maintenance.
Image courtesy of Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, © 2007, some rights reserved.
Bill 446 was passed with an overwhelming majority in August 2014 and is undergoing amendments as recommended by the Guardian Council who can approve it before it becomes law.
During Iran’s conflict with Iraq in the 1980s, Iran’s population policies were based on the perception that a large source of population would be important for increased military strength and national security, and if this is for similar reasons as the push to increase population during Iran’s conflict with Iraq, then reasons arise as suspiciously military. Or, if it is for national security, the bill may be in a defensive response to international, or Western, involvement in Iranian affairs. Since the war with Iraq and due to economic necessity, Iran’s population has decreased drastically: in 1960 fertility was at seven births per woman and in 2012 at less than two births per couple, which is not sufficient to maintain the current population level.
However, in the light of women’s rights, the issue is that of political manipulation of women as a tool in the nationalistic desire for a swelling Shia populace at the expense of fundamental human entitlement. Iran has begun to mobilise its women as baby-making engines to churn a fresh generation of the Iranian population and establish the country as a dominant regional power with an overwhelmingly Shia community.
The bill appears to have evolved out of a series of repressive measures taken out on women in 2014. Over the past year, Iranian authority has worked hard to reduce women to passive, non-verbal machines to prevent female “activism” and “propagandising against the state”. Since President Rouhani assumed power in 2013, the number of executions have surged: more than 170 people have been sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic since the beginning of this year. Reyhaneh Jabbari’s execution by hanging after stabbing her would-be rapist stirred national outcry in October 2014, prompting Iranians to raise objections to the death penalty and, on an international scale, reconsider women’s rights under Shari’a Law.
Similarly, Ghoncheh Ghavami was accused of “propagating against the ruling system” when she attended an Iran-Italy men’s volleyball match on 20th June 2014. It is written in law that women are banned from watching sports matches in “protection from the lewd behaviour of male fans”, despite the fact that Brazilian women were allowed to enter the stadium seven days before during a Iran-Brazil Volleyball game. Like Jabbari, Ghavami was placed in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer. She was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison with a two-year travel ban, and released on bail in November due to health problems. Trapping Ghavami within Iran under a two year travel ban communicates to the outside world that Iran is trying to teach women a lesson on their role in the country through capture within its borders and enforcement of its rules.
What is particularly ironic about both of these cases is that the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomenei, promised in 1983 that in an Islamic government, all people have freedom to express any opinion, however it seems that a large reason for the introduction of this bill is to reduce all women to their baby-making role and teach them their place in society.
Further discrimination can be seen in the fact that Bill 446 comes with The Comprehensive Population and Exaltation of Family Bill (Bill 315) which instructs all public and private entities to prioritise (in order) men with children, married men without children and married women with children when hiring for jobs. If passed next month, Bill 315 will exacerbate discrimination against women seeking employment as it promotes childbearing at the expense of women’s rights to equal participation in the economy. Iran’s emphasis on the importance of the family derives from a significantly Shia perspective according to its principles and reinforces the introduction of Bill 446 as a way to establish Shia regional dominance. Added to this, Iranian authorities claim that the lifestyle for women that comes with Bill 446 would promote integrity of the individual and the country consistent with Islamic values and the best interests of the family “so as to allow for a better and more complete fulfilment of the role of mothering and being a wife”. This justification for the introduction of Bill 446 emerges however as more beneficial to the country and the implementation of its Shia interests instead of the personal integrity and independence of the woman.
This new political initiative to strengthen population integrity has shone a light on Iran’s political machine to reduce women to passive and non-verbal tools. Through 2014 and early 2015 Iran has been exercising its chauvinistic de facto approach to the freedom of expression of women; rather than focussing on the personal integrity of the 49.7 per cent of its population that are women, Iran looks to using them instead as political automata in its dominating goals of population swell and dominance that would undoubtedly worsen if Bills 446 and 315 come into passing.