By IPS Correspondents
TEHRAN, May 20 2004 (IPS)

A soap opera on Iran’s state-run television has created a backlash among female journalists and other educated women in the capital, who have denounced the show as a ”propaganda machine for sexism and discrimination against women.”

‘Bano ye Digar’ (Another Lady), broadcast nearly nationwide on Channel 5, follows the stories of two husbands. One is an uneducated, almost illiterate, man who has an appetite for more wives. The other is a journalist whose childless wife searches for a fertile woman who can make her husband a happy father.

As the soap opera unfolds, viewers find out that the barren wife faces imminent death due to a malignant disease she has kept secret. God ”rewards” her search for someone to have her husband’s child by making her pregnant. As a result, the journalist becomes the father of two children from two wives.

Infuriated by its portrayal of the role it suggests women should play in Iranian society, women’s rights advocates recently staged a sit-in protest against the soap opera in the Iranian Journalists Association building.

More than 200 people, including several men, gathered in the first floor of the building for the protest, which was organised over the Internet by web loggers.

”In our patriarchal society, the top statesmen give lip service to women rights, but there is a wide gap between what they say and what they actually support. With this soap opera, the officials advocate their backward and narrow-minded solution for our society,” said Momtaz Langaroudi in an angry speech to the crowd.

The 55-year-old journalist and political activist hailed the protest as an ”unprecedented, impulsive move” by non-governmental organisations against an ”anti-feminist soap opera”.

Fariba Davoudi Mohajer, who chairs the Women NGO Syndicates, denounced state-run television for promoting ”Dark Age ideas,” adding that it ”acts as a propaganda machine for sexism and discrimination against women.” She said it justifies its views ”by casting women as too sentimental and not sensible beings and zaeefeh (inferior in mental faculty) in the name of tradition and Islam.”

These and other speeches resonated with the audience. Saeed Kalanki, a 21-year-old activist with the outlawed Iran’s Democratic Front, told IPS, ”The Islamic Republic of Iran’s state-run TV is promoting polygamy which is desirable for mullahs in Qom,” referring to the holy city that is a bastion of the theocratic regime.

Parisa Eshqee, a documentary filmmaker who claims to have faced many obstacles in her career merely for being a woman, said, ”Iranian girls are no longer similar to what is depicted on the screens of our TV. We are not keen to be a mother and be imprisoned in our husband’s home to devote ourselves to bearing and raising children.”

”Before long, the flood of egalitarian women will wash away the male chauvinism in our society,” she predicted.

Firouzeh Mohajer, chief editor of the quarterly ‘Fasle Zanan’ (Season of Women), said, ”In the capitalist society, no matter where we live, Iran or in Western countries, people’s minds are manipulated. We should stop watching TV.”

She encouraged audience to move beyond just protesting the soap opera, telling them they should begin ”exercising people’s power” to ”show what the genuine demands of people are and fight against any worn-out, patriarchal clich? in our country”.

This call to wider battle was echoed by others, including web logger Mitra Shojaee, who criticised television programmes for routinely portraying women as ”tear-shedding Eves – passive, impulsive and prone to screaming”.

The 40-year-old activist said, ”All women web loggers and women rights activists should muster their energy and start a campaign against the discriminatory laws which make Iranian wives home-staying creatures.” She recommended that women take action to address the issue.

Mehdi Habibi, a 22-year-old activist at Tehran’s Polytechnic University, said: ”According to our constitution, women are not entitled to stand for presidential election. As long as the constitution is not amended and becomes gender fair, women should boycott voting in any presidential election.”

Zahra Shojaee, a presidential adviser on women’s affairs, said there are demographic reasons for some of the problems women face.

”Thanks to the eight-year war (with Iraq) and the brain drain of educated men, there are more than 1.7 million women between 27 and 38 years of age living and working in Iran who cannot find a husband within their own group age,” she told IPS, suggesting that ”young women should look for husbands among older age groups.”

Women’s rights activists, however, refused to accept this explanation. In an interview with IPS, dissident Akaram Eqbali, a single mother with two grown sons, said that whatever the reason is for the ”scarcity” of men, it ”does not simply mean that polygamy is a solution or that affluent men should have right to have four wives and countless ‘sigheh’ (concubine) based on temporary marriage.”

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