Current Event #4; Iranians Protest Bill on Rights of Women

To read the full article, Iranians Protest Bill on Rights of Women, click here. Recently, 1,200 Iranians signed a statement against a bill that would further hinder the rights of women. The bill being protested was approved last month by Parliament's legal committee and allows men to marry additional wives without telling their current wives under certain conditions such as, if the wife is absent for more than six months for any reason including imprisonment, or if she has an incurable disease. The bill not only makes a woman's alimony subject to reassessment but has also made alimony taxable. Women have been a very major part of the protests and many have been jailed and several killed in government crackdowns on protests since the vote. Until last month many advocates, including Nobel Peace Prize Laurette Shirin Ebadim, thought they had won the battle but now they fear that conservatives are using the current social unrest to push more restrictions on women. This article relates to what we have been learning about in Comparative Government because the Civil Rights and Liberties of women in Iran are being called into question and this is hurting the legitimacy of Iran as a democracy.

**Thankyou to jsamuelson of Flickr for the image

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