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Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles

NAYEREH TOHIDI

In California, the popular face of immigration tends to be either Latin American or Asian, but large numbers of immigrants who come from other regions in the world, especially the Near East, have been quietly reshaping California demography. In this study, Nayereh Tohidi focuses on the Iranians who have come to Los Angeles in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, largely middle- and upper-middle-class Tehrani- ans who have fled the repressive policies of the current post-Shah, fundamentalist regime. But American freedoms have offered particular challenges to Iranian immi- grants, especially women, who tend to have "more egalitarian views of marital roles than Iranian men," in Tohidi's words, a "discrepancy" that has led to "new conflicts between the sexes." Thus, Iranian women immigrants are at once freer than their sisters in Iran, more conflicted, and more in need of a "new identity acceptable to their ethnic community and appropriate to the realities of their host country." Tohidi is an associate professor of women's studies at California State University, Northridge. She directs a new program in Islamic Community Studies at CSUN and is also a re- search associate at the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of Califor- nia, Los Angeles. Tohidi's publications include Feminism, Democracy, and Islamism in Iran (1996), Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity within Unity (1998), and Global- ization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts (2001).

I mmigration is a major life change, and the process of adapting to a newsociety can be extremely stressful, especially when the new environ- ment is drastically different from the old. There is evidence that the im- pact of migration on women and their roles differs from the impact of the same process on men (Espin 1987; Salgado de Snyder 1987). The mi- gration literature is not conclusive, however, about whether the overall effect is positive or negative. Despite all the trauma and stress associated with migration, some people perceive it as emancipatory, especially for women coming from environments where adherence to traditional gen- der roles is of primary importance. As [one researcher] said, "When the traditional organization of society breaks down as a result of contact and collision .. . the effect is, so to speak, to emancipate the individual man. Energies that were formerly controlled by custom and tradition are re- leased" (Furio 1979, 18).

My own observations of Iranians in Los Angeles over the past eight years, as well as survey research I carried out in 1990,1 reveal that Iranian

1 This article draws on a survey of a sample of 134 Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles, 83 females and 51 males, and on interviews with a smaller sample of women and men.

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women immigrants in Los Angeles are a homogeneous group, despite ethnic diversity. Most of them come from Tehran and represent an urban cosmopolitan subculture. And most are educated members of the upper- middle and middle classes who oppose the present regime in Iran and its repressive policies against women.

Migration has had both costs and benefits for women. Positive expe- riences include the sense of freedom, new opportunities and options, increased access to education and gainful employment, and a move to- ward egalitarian conjugal roles in many Iranian families. On the negative side is grief over the loss of the homeland, loved ones, and the social and emotional support of the kinship network. Many also feel marginal and, at least initially, experience a decline in their own socioeconomic status or that of their husbands. Moreover, conflicts between parents and their children and between women and men have heightened tension and led to an increasing divorce rate.

Migration involves culture shock. Immigrants' experiences of migra- tion and the process of adaptation are influenced by a number of vari- ables (Dane 1980; Melville 1978; Taft 1977; Salgado de Snyder 1987; Espin 1987; and Shirley 1981). Personal characteristics, such as age, language proficiency, educational level, and job skills, influence the migrants' abil- ity to adapt. Immigrants are also affected by attitudinal factors, such as their own perceptions of the decision to emigrate, their sense of respon- sibility for those left behind, and their perceptions of the conditions in both home and host countries. Economic factors also play a role, espe- cially the immigrants' ability to find a job, their financial resources, and their losses or gains in social status or class. Another set of influential conditions includes the attitudes of the citizens of the host country to- ward the migrant group and the degree of similarity between the two cultures. Finally, some personal factors, such as ego strength, decision- making skills, resolution of feelings of loss, and the ability to tolerate ambiguity (including ambiguity about gender roles), also influence the intensity of the culture shock experienced by the immigrants and their ability to adapt.

All these factors vary substantially for men and women, with the result that the processes of acculturation and adaptation differ for them as well.

The survey questionnaire consists of a demographic section and five scales measuring acculturation, national/ethnic identity, perceived prejudice, acculturative stress items, and attitudes toward gender roles. To measure the respondents' attitudes toward gen- der roles, a Persian adaptation of the Spence-Helmreich scale (1978) has been em- ployed. This scale consists of twenty-five declarative statements about proper roles and behavioral patterns for women and men. For each statement there are four response alternatives: agree strongly, agree mildly, disagree mildly, and disagree strongly.

Tohidi • Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles 1 51

Acculturation and Changes in Gender Roles

All immigrants experience acculturation, a process involving changes in values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The inevitable collision of home and host cultures ensures that some acculturation will take place. This does not mean that all values, customs, and behaviors originating in the home culture will disappear. In fact, the healthiest experiences of accul- turation result in biculturalism or multiculturalism. Not every individual immigrant, however, manages to attain a bicultural balance. Many never cease feeling alienated in the new society, while others experience com- plete assimilation.

As part of the process of acculturation, all immigrants develop a "new identity" that integrates elements from the host and home cultures (Garza-Guerrero 1974). A psychologist who experienced the challenging and often painful process of migration firsthand writes:

Immigrants in accepting a new identity (or a new version of the old one) at the price of instant identification and intense work must leave behind not only old countries but also unlived futures, and not only enemies to be dis- avowed but also friends to be left behind—maybe to perish. What right, then, does the immigrant have to usurp a new identity? (Erickson 1974, 77)

For Iranian women, the process of developing a new identity is perhaps the most psychologically challenging and delicate aspect of immigration....

Iranian women and girls are entering North American society at a time when the role of women is changing, both here and in their home- land. During the peak of the Iranian influx into the United States, the pro- gressive forces of revolution, on the one hand, and the subsequent character of the Islamic government, on the other, fostered a transforma- tion in the role of women. The Islamization of the last decade, however, has enforced a uniform identity for Iranian women, based on traditional and restricted roles. The difference between appropriate behavior for women in Iran and in the United States is much greater than that for men in the two societies. The differing demands on men and women can ei- ther facilitate acculturation or create confusion and conflicts for women.

My survey indicates that changes in traditional conceptions of wom- anhood, manhood, and marriage—from an autocratic male-dominated model to a more egalitarian one—are taking place faster among Iranian women than among Iranian men. Studies of Latina immigrants reveal similar patterns. Even though the pace of acculturation tended to be slower for Latinas in other respects, the women exhibited more egalitar- ian attitudes toward gender roles than men (Vazquez-Nuttall, Romero- Garcia, and DeLeon 1987; Espin 1987).

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In studies of the acculturation of Iranians in the United States, Ghaf- farian (1989) found the same patterns; that is, that Iranian male immi- grants were more acculturated than females and that despite their lower level of overall acculturation, Iranian women migrants had more egali- tarian views of marital roles than Iranian men. Such a discrepancy would naturally lead to new conflicts between the sexes.

This is not to say that changes in sexual attitudes and family roles are the result of migration and acculturation into American society. Actually, the cultural collision between modernism and traditionalism, between liberalism and conservatism, and between male chauvinism and femi- nism had begun in Iran long before the major waves of Iranian immigra- tion to the United States. By the turn of the century, growing urbanization and the introduction of new industries, new modes of production, and new ideas had wrought major changes and raised questions concerning the proper role and place of women in the new society, and their access both to education and to work outside the home. Long-standing cultural and religious traditions, such as the segregation of women's space from men's and veiling requirements, were called into question. During the 1978-1979 revolution, special emphasis was placed on discovering the authentic (aseel) identity of Iranian women, especially in comparison to "West-struck" or "Westoxicated" (gharb zadek) women. All these issues have remained unresolved since the . .. first decade of the twentieth century.

Women and the Family in Iran

During the years preceding the 1978-1979 revolution, the "woman ques- tion" became part of the Iranian intelligentsia's debate about national identity, development, modernization, and cultural and moral integrity. Those participating in the discussion included Iranian nationalists, Is- lamists, Marxists, and those influenced by the West.

Islam undergirds the patriarchy in Iran, just as Judeo-Christian ethics justify the same system in the United States. The family, with its patrilineal and patriarchal structure, is the basic social unit. Male and fe- male roles are organized in a hierarchy based on sex, age, and experi- ence. A traditional Iranian woman's place is in the home. Because her role and activities are limited to familial and domestic spheres, she has no identity outside the family. She is identified only by her connections to her male kin—she has status only as the daughter, sister, wife, and mother of male family members. As a wife, her status is determined by her fertility, especially her ability to give birth to sons. The wife is always under her husband's tutelage or, in his absence, that of her eldest son.

Tohidi • Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles 1 53

Her honor (namus) requires that she never be left unprotected by her fa- ther, husband, or other male kin (Nassehi-Behnam 1985, 558).

An old Persian expression illustrates the traditional conception of women in Iran: "Woman is a sweetheart when a girl and a mother when married." Such a view reduces women to their sexual and reproductive capacities.

The gender-based discrimination and double standards that pervade 15 Iranian social life restrict women's movements, the physical spaces they may enter, their work and economic autonomy, their access to education, their personal power and authority, their sexual behavior, and their ability to express themselves artistically. From childhood, the members of each sex are socialized to prescribed roles. Boys are taught to command, to protect, and to make a good living for themselves and their families. Girls learn to be chaste and beautiful and to find a good husband....

The Impact of Migration

The impact of migration on Iranian women in Los Angeles depends on the reasons for their migration and the conditions under which it took place....

Some women left Iran (with or without their husbands) to provide their children with better education and broader opportunities. They found the Islamization of the educational system and the political indoc- trination of their children unacceptable. Other women accompanied their adolescent sons into exile to ensure that the youths would not be drafted during the Iran-Iraq war. Still others came to the United States alone, leaving their husbands and other family members behind because of economic considerations or to increase the likelihood of their getting a U.S. visa. These motivations are reflected in the immigrants' sense of marginality, their development of a new identity, and other aspects of ac- culturation.

Individual and Political Freedom

In comparison with women living in Iran, migrant and refugee women have gained considerable personal and political freedom. Their basic human rights are no longer violated by such institutions of control as the mandatory veil, strict dress code, and sexual apartheid. Many middle- class and professional women who found these repressive measures in- tolerable appreciate their new freedom. The sense of relief is even more profound for those women who escaped persecution and imprisonment in Iran.

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Women who migrated alone may feel free of familial control, of con- stant surveillance by the kinship network. They may feel free to experi- ment with new patterns of behavior and to search for a more autonomous personal identity. The opportunity to become self-reliant and to develop a personal identity is often considered the most positive consequence of migration for women. Many Iranian women who immigrated alone, how- ever, feel shame and guilt for developing an American-influenced identity. Other Iranian immigrants or family members back home may criticize them for not conforming to traditional roles. Although they may have left their families behind, the success or failure of individual family members reflects on the family as a whole. A woman's misbehavior, especially sexual misbehavior, brings shame not only on her, but on all members of her family (Barakat 1985).

Iranian women who successfully adapt to American society are often 20 rejected by the home culture. Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles, espe- cially the women, have a reputation for conspicuous consumption among other Iranian immigrants in this country and in Europe, as well as back home. They are stereotyped as taghooti, a term rooted in idolatry that in this context implies decadence, narcissism, immorality, and hedonism. The Iranian community in Los Angeles is known in Iran as the source of contraband music videos—vulgar and commercial, these represent the worst elements of westernization.

Because of love-hate sentiments toward the West in general and Americans in particular, immigrants in Los Angeles, particularly the fe- males, must prove that such stereotypes do not apply to them. To be westernized or Americanized has strong negative connotations, politi- cally, culturally, and sexually.

Even before the revolution, westernized members of the urban upper-middle and middle classes were regarded as a fifth column, pro- moting imperialism, family disintegration, moral degeneration, and cultural erosion. In the campaign against westernization waged by the Iranian intelligentsia, particularly the Islamists, westernized women were held to epitomize all social ills (Najmabadi 1989; Tohidi 1993). The clergy cleverly pointed to a few highly visible upper-middle- and

middle-class women preoccupied with Western fads and fashions in condemning all unveiled, nontraditional, and progressive women as "Westoxicated." In the Islamic clergy's political discourse, modern women were stereotyped as frivolous and westernized and condemned as fitna, the erotic agents of social and moral disorder (Mernissi 1975). The clergy demanded a return to the veiled Islamic model of woman- hood. During the Islamic revolution, the Iranian women's rights move- ment, which opposed the discriminatory and retrogressive policies of the new government, was crushed as an accomplice to imperialism.

Tohidi • Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles 1 55

With such a political history, Iranian immigrant women have had to search for a new identity acceptable to their ethnic community and ap- propriate to the realities of their host country. To avoid becoming mar- ginal members of both societies, these women are trying to find their way along a painful and tangled route between tradition and modernity. The quest for personal as well as national and cultural identity has be- come a major concern of educated and politically conscious Iranian women, immigrant or otherwise. A very difficult challenge for a migrant woman is to balance her individuality and personal aspirations with a positive ethnic identity.2

Migration studies show that "light-skinned, young, and educated migrants usually encounter a more favorable reception in the United States than dark-skinned, older, and uneducated newcomers" (Espin 1987, 493). Even though the majority of Iranian women immigrants in Los Angeles possess these helpful attributes, hostile political relations between Iran and the United States have kept them from being accepted. The American bias against Arabs and other Middle Easterners was com- pounded by the "hostage crisis," making Iranians one of the least liked minority groups in American society.

Nevertheless, Iranian women migrants perceive less ethnic and 25 racial discrimination against them in American society than do Latinas, for example. They are less worried about having an Iranian surname than Latinas are about having a Spanish surname (Blair 1991). No signifi- cant differences were found in the perceived prejudice against Iranians in Los Angeles based on gender.

The marginality of Iranian immigrants and the other difficulties they encounter in the United States are not without rewards for women. Women can wield power from their position as mediators between the two cultures. But the positive potential of marginality can be realized only by women of the right age, class, and educational status, with the right reasons for migrating. For others the cost of being marginal to both societies is overwhelming. Isolation from one's family, especially if the separation from parents and loved ones is premature and traumatic, ex- acerbates the sense of belonging nowhere.

Intergenerational Conflicts Immigrant parents tend to be distressed by the rapid pace of their children's acculturation, brought about by the media, American schools, and American peers. Whereas parental au- thority in the traditional Iranian family is based on the parents' passing

2 See N. Tohidi, "Identity Politics and the Woman Question in Iran: Retrospect and Prospects/' in Identity Politics and Feminism: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. V. Mo- gadam (Oxford University Press: forthcoming).

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on to their children their own knowledge of life, children in immigrant families cannot readily apply their parents' knowledge to their own new lives. Instead, roles become somewhat reversed. The children are the ones passing on important information to their parents, correcting their English, and helping them in their daily interactions with Americans.

Such role reversals threaten traditional relations in the family and create tension. The children's development of an identity culturally dif- ferent from that of their parents intensifies intergenerational conflicts. The gap is especially wide in families whose children grow up in Ameri- can society.

One particular area of conflict concerns children's rights to privacy and personal boundaries. For example, reading mail addressed to an adolescent son or daughter is considered part of an Iranian parent's re- sponsibility rather than an invasion of privacy. Iranian parents often re- sist their children's wishes to become financially independent or to move into their own apartments once they turn eighteen. While the children complain about their parents' interference in their lives, the parents complain about their children's lack of respect.

Adolescent girls and young women, especially those who immigrated with their families, must decide how to "become American" without losing their own cultural heritage, if they decide to "become American" at all. Role models of successful and respected bicultural Iranian American women are scarce, and for young women the negative cultural and politi- cal connotations of being westernized or Americanized are particularly problematic. Given the myth prevalent among Iranians that American women are sexually loose, being Americanized may be equated with sex- ual promiscuity. Conflicts between female adolescents and their parents frequently focus on appropriate sexual behavior. Hanassab's 1991 study of dating and sexual attitudes among younger Iranian immigrants shows that the women are torn between two norms: behavior acceptable to their American peers, on the one hand, and their parents' expectations and their own obligations to their native culture, on the other. Some young women rebel against parental pressure by turning their back on Iranian culture and customs—changing their Iranian names to American ones (Blair 1991), for example, or refusing to speak Persian at home.

Gender Role Conflicts Commentators who cite cultural collision, eco- nomic pressures, and sexual freedom as the causes of familial instability among Iranian immigrants also blame women for the current crisis be- cause of their failure to fulfill their proper role. Women who have become "Americanized" are criticized for their loss of originality (esalat) and Iranian "female virtues," including obedience (etaat), chastity (nejabaf),

Tohldi • Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles 1 57

patience (saburi), and self-denial (fadakari). Americanization, which is equated with individualism and selfishness, undermines the commit- ment to family and the endurance needed to withstand the hardships of immigration.

In response, some immigrant women, particularly feminists, criti- cize Iranian men for failing to adjust their attitudes and expectations in the face of new realities. Women criticize their resistance to egalitarian relationships and their conscious or unconscious adherence to tradi- tional values and patriarchal norms.

Some men actually cling to traditional norms for gender relations as a reaction to the perceived threat of women's new independence. A simi- lar reaction is also seen among parents who perceive their children's faster pace of acculturation and parent-child role reversals as intolerable challenges to parental power and authority. When adult immigrants are uncertain and confused about what is right and wrong, many hold on to the "old ways," which they idealize in defending against a loss of identity. This refusal to accept change may intensify both intergenerational and gender-role conflicts in the immigrant families (Espin 1987, 493).

Ethnic Variations Such defensive loyalties to the traditional gender norms of the home culture seem to be less common among Muslim im- migrant families than among the religious and ethnic minorities. In my survey, for example, lewish and Armenian Iranians exhibited more conser- vative attitudes toward sexual norms and gender roles than their Muslim counterparts,3 perhaps in part because Iranian Jews and Armenians tended to migrate to the United States as families and kinship groups rather than as isolated individuals. Therefore, from the beginning of the acculturation process, ethnic pressure and the surveillance of the kinship network have reinforced conformity to traditional norms. The very presence of the kin- ship network may protect young women so that they need not develop self-reliance and autonomy.

Muslim Iranians tend to be more secularized than other Iranian eth- 35 nic groups. Perhaps they developed an antipathy to Islam and Islamic tradition out of their own political and cultural opposition to the Islamic theocratic government in Iran and found that it was reinforced in the United States by the pervasively negative image of Muslims in the media and public opinion. For most Muslim Iranians in Los Angeles, male and female alike, language and national culture, rather than religion, seem to constitute the primary components of identity (Ansari 1990).

3 The number of other Iranian ethnic or religious groups in the research sample was too small to allow any meaningful comparisons.

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