Interview with Mansureh Ettehadieh

Mansureh Ettehadiyeh is professor of modern history at Tehran University. She obtained her Phd at the University of Edinburgh. 16 years ago, she founded Nashr-e Tarikh Iran, a publishing house which publishes books on 19th-20th century history, and which shall eventually include a research center for Iranian history of that period. The publishing house also organizes a well-attended Monday night lecture series, beginning every summer, and lasting 6 months. The talks touch upon a wide range of subject matters, and are held by a variety of contributors, from artists and writers, to political activists, to local and foreign academics.

Ms. Ettehadyeh is the editor of "Khaterat Taj ol-Saltaneh" (The Memoirs of Taj ol-Saltaneh), the memoirs of a member of the Qajar monarchy who, at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote about her experience of being brought up in a harem, and who advocated socialism and women's rights.

TZ - Is there such a field as 'women's history' in Iran?

ME - It's difficult to work on women's history in Iran, and to do original research in that field, especially when it comes to the 19th century and before. Even oral history would be very limited. You can't find the sources, apart from, say, the many women poets. One problem is that women's names are never mentioned, and even when they are, they're just mentioned as the wife of so and so, or the daughter of so and so. Those who are named are often prostitutes, or you sometimes have mention of a 'naneh' (a word for mother which suggests an elderly woman), naneh Qamar, naneh Moluk. The place to look for women would be in the 'oqaf', in endowments, because women did hold property; although, as some recent research has implied, this might not reveal anything very particular either.

TZ - What's it like being a women professor?

ME - Oh, I don't think the experience is very different. I've often thought about this. Have I been treated differently, would my experience have been different as a man. And no, I don't think so. There are rivalries, and we can be nasty to one another, but this is not because I'm a woman. Of course, at the university, there are very few administrative posts that are open to women, only a fraction of women are heads of departments, usually they're assistants or secretaries. That's where the discrimination is, but not in the academic field. If I write a good article, then the impact has nothing to do with being a woman, it's just my work.

MS - How many woman professors are there?

ME - Roughly a fifth, but maybe less. There are more in the humanities, but in the sciences there are much less.

MS - Are there any particular gender differences among students?

ME - I think all professors would agree that female students participate more, and do better work. They're much more motivated. You see, as a female student it's much harder to get on, they're hard on girls, they scrutinize their behaviour, whether they laugh too loudly, or talk to boys. And up to last year, there were quotas in favor of boys - boys who had served in the government, or been to war, or had martyrs in the family - they had the guaranteed privilege of going to university, and these were very bad students. It was very demoralizing. They wouldn't come to class, and they'd expect all these privileges.

MS - Are all classes mixed?

ME - At Tehran University, the classes are mixed, they merely sit separately, on opposite sides of the room. And a few years ago, they also started talking to each other, asking questions and debating. Other universities have segregated classes, and what I've heard from someone who has taught these classes is that there's a drop in standards. Because there's no competition, as it were.

TZ - Is there any pluridisciplinary work being done?

ME - No, for several reasons. First of all, we've been shut off from the rest of the world, we don't know what's going on, we haven't heard much about all the new programs and structures. Then, the standards we follow were set long before the revolution, I'd say about fifty years ago. We have social history, literary history, geographic history, all these different departments, but no interdisciplinarity. This is especially so in the faculty of arts - the teachers are the same old people who've been there for the past 30, 40 years. And things aren't going to change until something shakes up the university, new blood, new people from abroad perhaps. Because the people we've taught ourselves only teach the same stuff all over again.

Actually, my opinion is: rather than send students abroad, we should bring teachers over from abroad, to teach for a semester or so. I'm sure it could be done, and so many more students would benefit from it, much more than if one person leaves and writes a Phd. Especially when it's on a subject you could have chosen in Iran - there are so many sources on national history here. A professor from abroad could bring books, contacts, ideas. And this has been discussed many times in Iran - whether it's better to do one or the other. I belong to a generation where they sent students abroad, so they would come back with foreign languages, and all intelligent and so forth. But I think that has failed. We may have learned a foreign language, but we lost many things too. We lost touch with many aspects of our history, our manners; without being fully in touch with European culture either. And besides, many students don't ever come back.

And I also wish there were more contacts with the rest of the Middle East: with Turkey, and the Arab countries. It's a shame, they must have very similar experiences that we could share.

In Iran, there are these anti-Arab sentiments, especially since the Islamic revolution, people say they don't want to hear about the Arab world anymore. But I try to tell them that the Islam we have in Iran has nothing to do with what it was at the time of Mohammad. It's something very modern that's going on in Iran.

MS - Much of the academic work that's done on Iran gives a distorted picture of the country. What do you think of western scholarship on Iran, have you ever been impressed by it?

ME - Oh yes, very impressed. I'm not one of those who say you have to be Iranian to understand Iran. I'm not one of them. To understand Iran, you have to understand its history. We have, for example, this phobia of foreigners, we always think there's a plot going on against Iran. Even policy decisions are often influenced by these phobias, and it's important to know about the history behind this.

Another thing that might be important is to know that Iran is different to other Middle Eastern countries. It has a preislamic past which is still very much alive. And perhaps after the revolution, this became even more obvious to us, that Iran is different to Turkey and the Arab states, that we're something in the middle.

And yet another thing is that history is so important to Iranians. It's very present, we're always very conscious of it, especially since the Islamic revolution. So to understand Iran, you have to understand this mentality.

There was this BBC interview with Jim Muir, the British journalist. He's been living in Iran for some time, and they said, 'you seem to really like this country'. And he said, 'well yes, every time I think I understand it, something happens, and I see that I don't understand after all, and I like that very much'.

MS - You've explained at one point that Iranians were historically very wary of authority. But then again, another thing you'll notice if you look at the history books is that society is very -

ME - Paternalistic?

Yes, that's true. That's the traditional upbringing, you're supposed to respect your elders. Your father knows best, then your husband knows best, then your son knows best! But that's dissolving. The whole family system, like everywhere in the world, is dissolving.

I'd still say that, on the whole, in their political mentality, Iranians are very suspicious of authority. Whenever there's a new law or regulation, the first question is 'how do I get around it?'. There's a word, 'zerang', cunning - someone who's considered intelligent is someone who's zerang, and knows how to go around the law.

Actually, it's the government's own fault. We're treated like children, and our opinion is hardly ever consulted. We don't choose, say, the members of cabinet -

And those parliamentary elections, well it's only once in a while that they say, 'come on and vote'.

MS - It is true that, as this woman once put it, if someone went on TV to say we should brush our teeth every evening, Iranians would say, 'something must be wrong, let's stop brushing our teeth'.

ME - That's right. The big difference between Iranians and Americans is that, while Americans believe everything their government tells them, Iranians believe nothing their government tells them.

TZ - One critique of the current regime is that even if there are more woman students than there used to be, most wind up at home, and never make use of what they learned.

(In 1999, 58% of the freshmen were women, with 52% the year before, but only 13% of the workforce is female; cf. The Iranian Times, 1.3.00.)

ME - Well, it's true that a lot of female students cannot find work. There's so much unemployment, and if they have the choice of giving a job to a boy or a girl, they'll give it to a boy. But women are still very motivated. Even if, afterwards, you stay at home, after four years at university, you're a different person, you know you have the potential to find a job, you're not fully dependent on your husband or father. And it opens you up to the world.

I don't know what your opinion is, but ever since the revolution, women have been much more awake. Under the old regime, many opportunities were given to women, but very few even knew they existed. Actually, I was talking to someone from the Family Protection Bureau, and she had talked to many women about their rights, and none of them knew about them back then. But now, women are aware of whatever happens, they're reading more.

You see, this is the way I see it: at one moment, after the revolution, they were afraid of losing everything. This wasn't about the hedjab, the hedjab is nothing compared to this - at one point, they were considering forcing women to stay at home, even forbidding them to drive a car.

TZ - Which is actually the case in some neighboring countries.

ME - Absolutely. And Imam Khomeini said: 'if their hedjab is alright, they can drive a car', and so forth. You see, we really passed through a moment of great crisis.

Women are encouraged, mind you, in sermons and schoolbooks, to go back home, to be good mothers and so on. They're offered to leave work and retire early.

TZ - Mahdokht Sanati was saying that it was with the revolution that women started going out in the streets, and going to Friday prayers, for example.

ME - Yes, they started going out. And it was Imam Khomeini who specified that they didn't need their husbands permission to go to those prayers. And another thing, you see, is that with this hedjab, we're supposed to live in a better society. We're supposed to be immune now, and protected. So those families who wouldn't permit their daughters to go to university now let them do their studies. Families are actually proud of their daughters going to university. This is important. I've always quoted Imam Khomeini as saying, 'the hedjab is your freedom'. And a lot of people would argue 'what kind of freedom is this? You know, you've got to wear that unbecoming veil' and so on. Many women who are emigrants would despise what I'm saying, but it's true. For a lot of girls, all this has meant freedom.

Many girls are coming from the provinces to do their studies, and in my generation, this wouldn't have happened. I studied abroad, so that was different, but within Iran, I wouldn't have been able to share an apartment with a friend and study.

MS - Many girls go and study in the mosques, it's a place where they can be for themselves. You can see them reading their textbooks, or in study groups.

ME - Yes, the mosque is open to everything. There's one just next door to our house, they have a supermarket, a dry cleaner's, boxing classes, a chello kababi (kebab house). Historically, of course, it's always been like that: mosques were placed in bazaars, and they also ran schools. Mosques have always fulfilled many important social functions.