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What exactly do you think life is like for Iranian women? They don't have Western levels of feminism for sure, but you can watch man on the street videos from almost* any city in Iran and see an approximately even sex ratio, women walking around without male guardians, and very loose interpretations of the hijab law.
*Qom is still very conservative. It's basically the Iranian Vatican. Even so, women there wear chadors, not burqas.
I mean Iranian women are still under coverture.
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As with any country, it varies widely based on region, neighborhood, class etc. In the middle-class districts of the major cities with squishy lefty politics like all middle-class districts of all major cities? Yeah, women about, very loose interpretations of hijab etc. In the Iranian analog to Oklahoma or Alabama, not so much.
The pro-western, pro-israeli, pro-shah groups of Iranian society have always been around, their more vociferous members live in the west now. They are influential, because they are the economic middle classes, and secular elites. But they are not a majority of the country by any stretch. As with most countries, the vast majority of the population is lower and working class, more religious, more nationalistic, more bigoted against outsiders than the college professors and the accountants. And generally harder on their womenfolk.
There is a very direct comparison next door in Turkey, where the same western-oriented secular modernizers have the same political outlook, despite differences in culture and religion to Iran. It's just that Ataturk was better at it than Reza Shah, and so when the religious nationalistic backlash came, it stayed within the bounds set by his government, rather than producing a revolution.
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Probably not so bad compared to life for your average Iranian man. That's just the way of our gynocentric world.
Still, the fact that women are privileged in most parts of the world has never stopped western feminists from complaining about even the smallest (perceived) disadvantages suffered by women in comparison to men. Probably in convenience stores in Iran, they have women's disposable razors with pink handles and which cost an extra rial or so.
No, what stops western feminists from complaining is (1) they don't want to go against their allies in the progressive movement and any criticism of Iran is perceived as helping Israel, one of the big Bogeymen of the progressive movement; and (2) ultimately they care only about maximizing their goodies and gibs so it's more productive to complain about the lack of female tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
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