LONDON – Iran’s alpine ski trainer Samira Zargari was unable to join her team for the world championship in Italy last week.
The reason? Her husband prevented her from leaving the country.
The reaction on social media was swift, and many Iranians expressed their fury by demanding that the government change the law to give women the right to travel abroad, along with other rights withdrawn after marriage.
Based on the domestic family law in the Islamic Republic, women renounce the right to leave the country, seek education or even choose where to live and work when signing a marriage document. The only exception is if a woman’s husband waives these rights, which rarely happens.
The only rights that married women retain are limited child custody and the right to divorce.
Zargari’s case, however, went viral and different hashtags on women’s rights started popping up on social media, including the “right to leave the country” and “no discrimination against women”.
When asked to comment on Zargari’s case, the International Ski Federation provided a statement to ABC News, but did not mention Zargari’s name.
“FIS sympathizes with any team member who cannot travel to our World Championship,” says the statement. “However, the FIS is also not in a position to challenge any nation’s laws.”
Zahra Abdi, an Iranian poet, wrote on Twitter: “It is impossible for a society to move towards the future when the hands and feet of half the population are tied. This is well understood by developed countries and that is why they are fighting discriminatory laws against women. Where there are signs of development, this struggle is taken more seriously ”.
An online campaign calling for the revision of regulations on women leaving the country was signed by almost 50,000 people in less than a week.
“The basis of family law in Iran is that the husband has all rights,” an Iranian lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told ABC News. “Any woman who wants any of the rights back has to swim against the river and prove it in court.”
Despite the outcry, the Iranian government has not moved.
In response to the social media campaign, Masoumeh Ebtekar, vice president for Women and Family Affairs, tweeted that, in an emergency, women can ask the court to review the husband’s decision, but that can only happen after a judge he is convinced that the trip is “necessary,” and even so, the woman could only leave “on bail”.
The Iranian lawyer said that a bill that addresses the issue of travel is coming to the government, but it first needs to be approved by parliament, and the language, as it currently stands, is very “vague” when it comes to exactly how judges would judge necessary trips. The lack of clarity can also delay any movement in the account.
“Basically,” the lawyer told ABC News, “the ‘need’ mentioned in the project is based on the need for medical treatment outside the country, participating in scientific congresses and, more recently, in sporting events such as international championships.”
In one of the first reactions to the problem, Zargari wrote in a story on her Instagram page that her husband was born in the United States and was not raised in Iran, which seems to imply that discriminatory laws remain in force regardless of the person’s citizenship.
However, when she later told the Iranian Students News Agency in an interview that government officials should “at least remove this law for women champions and those who are active in international fields”, a big reaction was triggered, this time against Zargari. Many who supported her on social media during her ordeal began to criticize her for not defending all women – not just those who work internationally.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Zargari said she hopes that the law that needs permission from husbands to leave the country will be removed for women working in the international field. The right thing to say would be that this law is cruel, humiliating and medieval, and no woman needs her husband’s ‘permission’ to travel, “tweeted journalist Yosra Bakhakh.
Explaining how these social media campaigns can help restore these rights to women, the Iranian lawyer referred to ambiguities in the law that can result in minimal reforms.
“For example, it is up to the court’s good sense of what ‘need’ means for a woman’s demand to leave the country. In the past, traveling abroad to watch sporting events would not be a necessity. But, thanks to all the activism over the years, it has become. It is important that people do not stop asking for more, “she said.
It is clear, however, that women’s rights activists are paying a heavy price to achieve equality.
Last week, Najmeh Vahedi, a sociologist, and Hoda Amid, a lawyer, who organized workshops to tell women how to preserve their rights in marriage, were sentenced to seven and eight years in prison, respectively.