40 Years After the Revolution, Iranian Society Today: Women Removing Their Scarves and Globalizing Rural Areas

Image: Imamzadeh Saleh Holy Shrine in Tajrish Square, Northern Tehran

Provided by: Mari Nukui

On December 27, 2017, on Tehran's Enghelab (Revolution) Street—where the great revolutionary marches took place 40 years ago—a young girl appeared, took off her scarf, and held it up like a flag, causing a major stir. Video of her captured by witnesses was instantly shared on social media, and many supporters followed suit. This was one scene from the protests that occurred across Iran at the end of that year.

The Islamic Republic, established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, aimed to build a political, social, cultural, and daily life based on Islamic law. A symbol of this was the regulation mandating that women wear veils in public places.

Later, during the era of President Mohammad Khatami, who promoted liberalization policies in the late 1990s, regulations on women's clothing and dating were significantly relaxed. Today, walking through the streets of Tehran, one sees women walking confidently with scarves barely clinging to the back of their heads, hair flowing at the front and sides, wearing leggings and short blouses. As someone who was once caught by the religious police in 1997 because a "white half-coat was considered indecent," I feel as though I am in a completely different era.

On February 14, 2018, in a Revolution Day public speaking, President Hassan Rouhani stated, "It is difficult to force Islamic law on young people; we should listen to their grievances and, if necessary, hold a national referendum." However, the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May of that year weakened the moderate President Rouhani and stripped away the political capital needed to hold a referendum on lifting the veil requirement against conservative opposition.

Iranian nationalist movements, repeated since the end of the 19th century, have always unfolded in cities. However, the main stage for the nationwide protests that began in late 2017 over economic grievances—and eventually included calls for the overthrow of the Islamic system—was provincial cities and rural villages, which had traditionally been uninvolved in politics.

To counter Western public opinion criticizing the regime as a "restoration of a reactionary Islamic system," the Islamic government has pushed forward with modernization and the spread of education in rural areas. Thanks to these efforts, water, electricity, and gas have now reached even remote areas, and people's lives have become surprisingly affluent. In 1979, only about 4,000 villages in Iran were electrified, but by 2003, that number rose to about 47,000, making electricity available to 96.7% of the population. Furthermore, water supply facilities, which served 74.5% of the population in 1978, reached 92.8% by 1994, and the gas supply network has spread to over 70% of rural areas.

In terms of education, the literacy rate for those aged 15 and over was 36.5% in 1976, but it reached 85.5% in 2016, and as high as 98.1% among the youth. The university enrollment rate is also about 70% (60% of whom are women), which is higher than Japan's (57.9%), and more than half of the population uses the internet. After the revolution, the Islamic government regulated the influx of Western culture as a "symbol of corruption and decadence," banning Hollywood movies as well as Western pop and rock music. As ordinary citizens hungry for overseas information tried various ways to access illegal sites and social media blocked by the government, there is a sense that the IT skills of the entire nation have been leveled up.

In November 2018, while visiting the remote village of Palangan in Kurdistan, located in northwestern Iran, I took commemorative photos with Kurdish women dressed in colorful traditional costumes. When they asked me to "send the photos via WhatsApp" and I replied that I "couldn't use it," they were very surprised.

Since 2006, Iran has been subject to severe sanctions due to its nuclear development. However, it has developed its own digital economy under these sanctions, including cashless payments, Iranian versions of Uber and Twitter, and the introduction of administrative services and utility payments via ID cards—a process that has been slow to progress in Japan.

The spread of IT has also provided young people in rural areas with opportunities to access global information. However, this may have conversely caused dissatisfaction with life under the Islamic system to accumulate, making them more susceptible to external incitement.

In fact, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MKO), an Iranian opposition group rumored to have close ties with high-ranking Trump administration officials, Israeli intelligence agencies, and Saudi royalty, has been actively disseminating information in recent years aimed at inciting social unrest and the internal collapse of the Islamic system. Certainly, many of the generation born after the revolution, who make up about 70% of the population, have doubts about maintaining the Islamic system at the cost of conflict with other countries and economic sanctions.

That said, support for the MKO, who are seen as having "betrayed Iran," is not necessarily spreading among those suffering from American sanctions. Rather, the current situation is that hardline conservatives, centered around the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are gaining more momentum under the pretext of preparing for attacks from the United States and Israel.