Mick Hartley

The recent crackdown on “immoral” clothing seems to be part of a wider repression of women’s rights in Iran (via Secular Blasphemy):

Iranian police shoved and kicked them, loaded them into a curtained minibus and drove them away. Hours later, at the gates of Evin prison, they were blindfolded and forced to wear all-enveloping chadors, and then were interrogated through the night.

All 31 were women — activists accused of receiving foreign funds to stir up dissent in Iran. But their real crime, says Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, was gathering peacefully outside Tehran’s Revolutionary Court in support of five fellow activists on trial for demanding changes in laws that discriminate against women.

During her 15 days in prison, “I tried to convince them that asking for our rights had nothing to do with the enemy,” Abbasgholizadeh told The Associated Press by telephone from Tehran. “But they insisted that foreign governments were exploiting our cause.”

The March 4 arrests highlight how women’s rights, which were making some advances under the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, are being rolled back by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who succeeded him in August 2005.

Activists say that while world attention has focused on the West’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, the abuses of women’s rights have intensified, using fear of a U.S. attack as a pretext…

Under Ahmadinejad, Web access has been curbed, almost all liberal newspapers have been shut, and activists say they are under closer surveillance and often summoned for questioning.

The women say they have borne the brunt of the onslaught.

Abbasgholizadeh and other reformists have waged a lengthy battle against laws that permit death by stoning for women accused of adultery, the practice of polygamy, employment laws that favor men, and family laws that deny divorcees full custody of their children and entitle them to only half the inheritance a man can receive.

Far from backing down, Ahmadinejad’s government has turned its crackdown to colleges.

It is drafting a law to limit women students to half the places in college, instead of the 65 percent they now occupy. It is also restricting women’s entry to medical schools, arguing that they put a strain on limited — and sexually segregated — dormitory and transportation facilities.

Women working for the government must leave work by 6 p.m. to get home and tend to their families.