Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, But More Iranian Women Dare Divorce Anyway
New Age Islam News Bureau
12 February 2025
· Breaking up is hard to do, but more Iranian women dare divorce anyway
· As world celebrates Women and Girls in Science, Afghanistan’s education ban persists
· Iran pardons journalists who covered woman’s death that triggered protests
· Woman jailed in Sweden for keeping Yazidi slaves in Syria
· ‘A Dream Come True’: Elisa Longo Borghini and UAE Team ADQ make history at UAE Tour Women
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/iranian-women-divorce-afghanistan-education/d/134595
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Breaking up is hard to do, but more Iranian women dare divorce anyway
February 12, 2025
Young women strolling in central Tehran, Iran
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Almost four in ten marriages in Iran end in divorce, according to the latest official figures, giving rise to theocrats' cries of a crisis that may not be as obvious to some of the women gaining their freedom.
But one woman's bumpy road to reclaiming her life through divorce shows how deep-set patriarchy and Islamic rule stack the odds against Iranian ex-wives.
Take my friend Narges. She’s 41 and just-divorced. She thought she had married a feminist man, Amir, and he was in many ways. Until he wasn’t.
“We had it good, more or less, until I was promoted and earned more than him,” Narges says. “He started mocking my work, often accusing me of putting my job first and not our son. ‘You’re too self-centered to be a good mom,’ he once told me.”
It was as if Amir was constantly anxious about how others viewed him, Narges says. “It was as if he felt inadequate—which was not my view at all.”
Some studies suggest that men who earn less than their wives for extended periods are more likely to suffer from higher rates of health problems like anxiety, chronic stress, diabetes or even heart disease.
Patriarchal prejudice compels men to be the (primary) breadwinner. Failure to do so could lead to a crisis of identity—more so in male-dominated societies like Iran.
Iran’s traditions and Islamic laws put the man firmly in charge of his wife. A married woman cannot work or travel without her husband’s permission and can certainly not initiate divorce.
Narges could only because her ex granted her that right when the marriage was registered.
“It is a rare privilege to have in Iran,” she says. “The fact that I was financially independent helped, of course. And Amir, to be fair to him, had no issues with me having it. But all hell broke loose when I tried to use it.”
Amir was a vocal proponent of women’s rights. He still is. That was one reason Narges liked him. After they married, he’d do housework as much as his wife, if not more. When they had their son, he was as hands-on as dads come. Narges had hit the jackpot, our girlfriends would joke.
But things went downhill when Narges got that job—and turned downright ugly when she filed for divorce.
A new Amir emerged during the legal battle for the custody of their son. The custody, according to Iran’s law, belongs to the mother until age 7, to the father until age 10, and after that, the child chooses. But regardless of who has custody, it’s the father who has full legal authority over the child.
“It shocked me to see him resorting to the very codes of religion and patriarchy that he derided as reactionary and stupid,” Narges says. “He used to tell me about his struggles to rid himself of male privilege in Iran. And I believed him. I still think he was sincere when he said it.”
But when it mattered most, the principles vanished and the hardwiring took over.
“The law gave him power and he used it,” Narges says bitterly, blaming the law even more than her ex. “It takes an extraordinary character and restraint to not use your weapon because you believe it would be unfair.”
Amir argued in court that the demands of Narges’ job made her unfit to care for their child. He even banned the child from leaving the country when she wanted to go to Istanbul for a few days. She hit wall after wall as he deployed every legal advantage available to him.
“I thought I knew all about male privilege under Islamic Republic. But there was more, much more,” Narges says, trying not to tear up. “I knew, for instance, that a mother cannot open a bank account for her child without the father’s permission. But I never imagined I’d be told at the school to ‘fetch the dad’ to get my son’s end-year scores.”
Such stories abound, compelling many women with young children to stay in unhappy marriages. But some choose to take the bumpy road out. And their number is rising.
As Iran’s officialdom calls the rise in divorces a great shame, women like Narges—bruised as they are from their experience—see in it something positive.
“I’m not saying divorce is all good and great,” Narges says when I tell her that it is ultimately a breakdown of a contract that was supposed to last a lifetime. “You cannot deny that what we see in Iran is partly a result and a sign of women being more empowered,” she adds.
Divorce, Narges and many others argue, has to be viewed as a choice, even an opportunity, not a mere social failure.
I cannot say I fully agree with her, but I see her point. We have a crude expression in Persian that says “a woman enters her man’s house in white and leaves it in white,” the latter referring to the shroud in which Muslims wrap their dead.
“I left in sage green,” Narges chuckles.
Source:iranintl.com
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202502111811
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As world celebrates Women and Girls in Science, Afghanistan’s education ban persists
By SiyarSirat
February 12, 2025
KABUL — As the world marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11, women and girls in Afghanistan remain barred from schools and universities, unable to pursue education in any field, including science and technology.
The United Nations General Assembly established this day in 2015 to highlight the importance of women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to promote gender equality in scientific fields.
This year’s theme, “Science Without Borders: Empowering Women for a Global Future,” underscores the need for greater inclusion of women in scientific research and innovation.
Despite global progress, women remain underrepresented in many scientific fields. According to UNESCO, less than 30 percent of researchers worldwide are women. In emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, only one in five specialists is female. Women also make up just 28 percent of engineering graduates and 40 percent of graduates in computer science and information technology.
In Afghanistan, however, the Taliban’s ban on women’s education continues to prevent an entire generation of girls from accessing higher education, further widening the gender gap in science and other academic disciplines.
Source:amu.tv
https://amu.tv/156921/
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Iran pardons journalists who covered woman’s death that triggered protests
February 11, 2025
FILE - Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi, right, and Elaheh Mohammadi flash the victory sign after being released from prison on Jan. 14, 2024, in Tehran, having been released on bail pending an appeal. Iran's courts announced on Feb. 11, 2025, that the two have been pardoned.
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Iran’s top judicial authority has pardoned two journalists who uncovered the death of a young woman in police custody, the judiciary’s news outlet, Mizan, said Tuesday. The case triggered widespread protests in 2022.
Journalists ElahehMohammadi and NiloofarHamedi had been sentenced to 12 and 13 years in prison, respectively, by an Iranian Revolutionary Court in 2023 for their coverage of the death of MahsaAmini.
Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in 2022 while in the custody of Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.
The death of the 22-year-old sparked the nationwide “Woman Life Freedom” uprising, which in turn prompted a harsh crackdown by Iranian authorities.
The pardons of the two journalists were applied on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Mizan said.
“Following the approval by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of a list of pardons that was prepared by the judiciary’s head, these individuals were pardoned,” Mizan said.
Both journalists were temporarily released last year after spending 17 months behind bars and later acquitted of the charge of “collaboration with the U.S.” in an appeals court.
Other charges, such as “colluding against national security” and “propaganda against the regime,” remained. But the pardons mean those charges have now been cleared, and the legal cases against the journalists are now closed.
The jailings of the two journalists underscores the poor state of press freedom in Iran.
The country ranks among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with at least 16 behind bars for their work as of early December 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ.
Iranian authorities detained at least 95 journalists in the wake of the nationwide protests following Amini’s death, according to CPJ.
In 2024, Iran ranked 176 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index, where 180 shows the worst press freedom environment.
Source:voanews.com
https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-pardons-journalists-who-covered-woman-s-death-that-triggered-protests/7970753.html
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Woman jailed in Sweden for keeping Yazidi slaves in Syria
11 Feb 2025
A Swedish court has sentenced a woman to 12 years in prison on genocide charges for keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria, in the country’s first court case over crimes committed by the ISIL (ISIS) group against the minority.
The 52-year-old Swedish citizen, Lina Ishaq, was convicted of “genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes” in 2015, the court said on Tuesday in a statement. It noted that her actions were part of a broader ISIL campaign against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority.
For centuries, the Yazidis have been persecuted for their religious beliefs by the Ottomans, Arabs and most recently, in a brutal campaign of death and sexual slavery by ISIL.
The Swedish court said this specific case mainly concerned nine injured parties, six of whom were children at the time.
“The woman kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves for a period of, in most cases, five months,” the court said, adding that their movement was restricted and they were made to perform chores and some had been photographed in preparation to be transferred to others.
The court stressed “that the comprehensive system of enslavement” was one of “the crucial elements” implemented by ISIL in crimes against people from the Yazidi community and in turn, her crimes warranted a sentence of 16 years. But taking a previous sentence into account, the court set the sentence to 12 years.
The woman is already in jail for having been sentenced by a Swedish court to six years in prison in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a child soldier for ISIL.
‘Drop in the ocean’
Reporting from Stockholm, Al Jazeera’s Paul Rhys said Ishaq grew up in an Iraqi Christian family before she converted to Islam and one of her sons was an ISIL child soldier who was killed in battle.
“This sentence for 12 years [for Ishaq], is just a drop in the ocean of the justice the Yazidis are hoping for. Thousands are still missing and countless bodies are still trying to be identified by the authorities in Iraq,” he added.
About 300 Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined ISIL in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to the country’s intelligence service Sapo.
Sweden did not have existing legislation at the time to prosecute people for membership in an armed organisation, so prosecutors instead sought other crimes with which to charge returnees.
Under Swedish law, courts can try people for crimes against international law committed abroad.
According to the United Nations, recruiting and using children below the age of 15 as soldiers is banned under international humanitarian law and recognised as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.
Source:aljazeera.com
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/11/woman-jailed-in-sweden-for-keeping-yazidi-slaves-in-syria
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‘A Dream Come True’: Elisa Longo Borghini and UAE Team ADQ make history at UAE Tour Women
DAWN BARNABLE
February 11, 2025
Those were the words of an elated Melissa Moncada, head of team at UAE Team ADQ, after her squad made history on Sunday by securing the overall win at their home race. The UAE Tour Women, part of the Women’s WorldTour — the highest tier of women’s cycling — has been a key target for the team since the race’s first edition in 2023.
Along with team classification, Italian star Elisa Longo Borghini claimed the prestigious general classification red jersey for UAE Team ADQ, with teammate Silvia Persico securing second in the GC. Karlijn Swinkels placed fifth overall, while Lara Gillespie claimed the black jersey in the Intermediate Sprints Classification — a remarkable achievement on her Women’s WorldTour debut after being called up from the UAE squad’s development team. Teammates ElynorBackstedt and sprinter Sofie van Rooijen, who bounced back from a crash on stage one, provided crucial support throughout the four days of racing.
Longo Borghini’s decisive attack on Jebel Hafeet on Stage 3 proved to be the turning point. With Persico setting a relentless pace, Longo Borghini launched a perfectly timed attack 3 km from the finish line, securing a dominant victory and virtually sealing the overall title. Following Longo Borghini was Persico in second place. The team’s overall triumph was sealed on the final Stage 4 on Sunday, despite Lorena Wiebes of SD Worx-Protime dominating the sprint finishes, winning three of the four stages.
A pivotal moment
Speaking to Arab News at the end of the tour about the crucial moment in the race, Moncada praised the entire team’s effort, particularly the dynamic between Longo Borghini and Persico on Stage 3.
“Persico really is an athlete that can defend and fight for the victory of the leader,” said Moncada. “Even though she brought Elisa to the amazing position that she was in, she fought to the end and arrived in second position. It’s like they almost crossed the line together, so it was amazing.”
For Persico, who has known Longo Borghini for years but had never raced alongside her until now, the partnership felt instinctive.
“It really seemed that we were always racing together. We just understand each other really well,” said Persico.
“I just started to work at the bottom of the climb and I was just pacing a bit hard. I wanted to drop as many girls as possible. And then when Elisa attacked, in my mind I was ‘okay, job finished, I can rest.’ But then I saw that I was feeling pretty good — a bit tired, yes, of course. And I said, ‘okay, I’ll try to do my best for the achievement, so maybe second place.’ And yeah, I didn’t give up and, in the end, I finished second.”
Reflections on a team victory
At the team presentations at the Fatima bint Mubarak Ladies Sports Academy on Sunday morning, ahead of the final day of racing, Longo Borghini — who won the race’s inaugural edition in 2023 and counts the 2024 Giro d’Italia Women and Tour of Flanders among her many victories — reflected on her Stage 3 win.
“The race was very spectacular,” she said, acknowledging the crucial role her team played. “Everyone was really committed to trying to win the stage and take the overall, and then you saw how the team was racing — it was pretty incredible.”
Following the conclusion of the race, with UAE Team ADQ securing first and second in the GC, the sprinter classification, and the team classification, Longo Borghini emphasized the unity that led to their dominant performance.
“It feels quite amazing,” she said. “From the very beginning of the season, the team pointed out that they wanted us to perform well here in the UAE. And of course, we came here for GC, but in the end, we are walking away with first and second on GC, the sprinter classification, and the team classification. And the one I’m the most proud of is the team classification because it shows how strong we were throughout these four days. And it’s really been a team victory.”
Longo Borghini, in the first year of a three-year contract with UAE Team ADQ, has firmly established herself as a cornerstone of the team’s ambitions and according to both management and riders, the team is unified and riding as one.
“You can see the unity there. It’s not forced,” said Cherie Pridham, UAE Team ADQ’s head of sport. “It’s been actually one of my best weeks on a cycling team. To do that with these girls has been amazing. To have a leader like Elisa Longo Borghini with us, she just raises the bar and raises everybody’s expectations — and ours as well, the staff — it’s incredible.”
The rise of women’s cycling
This UAE Tour Women was not only a historic moment for UAE Team ADQ but also for women’s professional cycling. With crosswind conditions setting the scene, the UAE Tour Women set a record for the fastest-ever average speed in a Women’s WorldTour race on Day 2, with an average speed of 48.407 km/h over the 111 km Al-Mirfa Sprint Stage. The leading group of five riders — including Longo Borghini, Lorena Wiebes, Lara Gillespie, Karlijn Swinkels, and Human Powered Health’s Lily Williams — broke away early and held off the peloton.
Pridham, a trailblazer as the first woman to hold a sport director role on a men’s WorldTour team — a role she held prior to joining UAE Team ADQ — emphasized to Arab News at the conclusion of the race the significance of the race and the team’s victory, highlighting the rapid evolution and growing professionalism of women’s cycling, and in particular, UAE Team ADQ.
“I mean, we knew we were capable of it, and the work that we’ve all done in the background — the management continuously growing the team — it’s just incredible,” she said. “I’m lost for words. And I’m delighted for Melissa and the team, the management, and everyone that’s put so much work and belief into this. The way the girls rode yesterday is just astounding.
“It’s history. It really is,” she added. “To see the sport grow — from where I was 25 years ago to how quickly it has evolved in just the last three years — it’s unbelievable. And the way we operate at UAE Team ADQ is on par, I would say sometimes even better, than our men’s team. I put myself on the line saying this, but women’s cycling is definitely on the up, and it’s incredible to be part of the growth.”
The race’s growing stature has not gone unnoticed by other teams. Oskar Scarsbrook, director of communications at Human Powered Health — a US-based team that elevated its women’s squad to WorldTour status before its men’s team — praised the event’s prominence on the racing calendar.
“It’s only been going on for three years, but it already feels like a statement piece on the WorldTour calendar. It’s like, ‘yeah, of course you’re going to UAE in February for the UAE Tour.’ It already feels like it has pride of place at the start of the year purely because of how good the racing has been.”
One key factor contributing to the race’s growing prestige is its comprehensive TV coverage, showcasing the intensity of competition from start to finish.
“TV coverage is the biggest thing with that,” he added. “We’ve been lucky here because we’ve had it from kilometer one, which is massive. The crosswind stage on day two? The racing was quite literally from kilometer zero. In previous years, you would have joined with 40 minutes to go, and it would be like, ‘okay, right, this is what happened.’ And you’d have missed all the exciting stuff that set up what came later.”
With the thrilling racing of the UAE Tour Women concluded, and the season just beginning, Longo Borghini and UAE Team ADQ have set the bar high.
“I’m very proud of every single teammate who made this possible,” she said. “And I hope this is just the beginning.”
Source:arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2589794/sport
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/iranian-women-divorce-afghanistan-education/d/134595