Women and Gender II: Divorce and Family Law

Inside the bus, too dark to read any more—we are busily becoming scholars of Ferdowsi, Saadi, and Hafez—a sample of Iranian cinema is being played on the video system. After about twenty minutes of previews, mostly comedies that need no translation, the main feature is a serious critique of society and how people treat one another. Based on a true story, it follows a teenage girl whose father is paranoid that she is seeing boyfriends and beats her repeatedly. In the meantime, a rival at school is sending fake love letters to her home in order to fuel the father’s rage against the daughter. He nearly kills her one night, and she runs away, then returns to sue him for his unjustified behavior. In the end, he reforms. The moral of the story is that it doesn’t necessarily take a government to oppress people; people are quite good at oppressing each other using any means available, whether a series of laws or mere power relationships over others.

We had quite a lengthy conversation about women and divorce, after hearing a variety of perspectives from Iranians during the week on the topic. In past years, men have been able to get a divorce immediately, without consent of the wife and for any reason. However, apparently laws have improved the situation for women. There are a few reasons for which a woman can get an immediate divorce, such as a husband’s addiction, failure to provide for the family, or for adultery. Domestic violence charges can be brought to court, but these take longer to adjudicate. Other reasons that take longer to adjudicate include the presence of children or if the divorce is disputed by one of the spouses. Generally, the judges try to keep families together if there are children. There is also the possibility of unjust judges or lawyers or bribery or other complicating behaviors that can tie up cases for years. I guess that is not so unlike our system either, unfortunately for all.