Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers by Farzaneh Milani

Interesting viewpoints 1

It is interesting that the institutional veiling of women as an initial attempt to control them and limit them to their houses has resulted in liberating some women to get involved in the public section of the society, esp in Iran.

It is eye-opening to know that in places where the mutilations of women's bodies and other such violences against women are practiced , it is mostly a sign of fearing women's power or women on their own as unknown beings.

I was not aware of the incentives such a society pours on its women to pacify their frustration with the institutional veiling. She has only mentioned this with no clear examples. Maybe only one: when the society tries to give more respect and glamor to the veiled woman than to the less veiled one.

As Milani has mentioned, veiling has been predominant in the history of Iran, even before Islam; and been used not only by authorities to control women, but also by women themselves as a means to impose their will at different stages of their political and social life.

Also she refers to two contemporary attempts on forced unveiling by Reza Shah and institutional veiling of women in Iran as respectively a shot for modernizing women and a stab at controlling and politically manipulating them. The latter effort in another hypothesis can be a reaction to women's gradual empowerment in the aftermath of the first bid.

Historically, anti-veiling Iranian women today are resisting the force from the establishment restricting them in any which way.