{"id":31721,"date":"2019-02-04T06:23:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T06:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31721"},"modified":"2019-02-04T06:23:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T06:23:11","slug":"israel-begins-construction-of-new-gaza-border-barrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31721","title":{"rendered":"Israel begins construction of new Gaza border barrier"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nTEHRAN: Saba was just 25 when she left her design job in New York to work on a project renovating an art gallery back in her hometown Tehran.
Within months, she won three more contracts to do up galleries and the lobby of an apartment complex.
\u201cI had dreamt of building my own company, but I hadn\u2019t expected it to happen any time soon. If I had stayed in New York, I wouldn\u2019t have had this chance,\u201d said Saba, now 27.
She says the position of women in Iran has changed a lot over the past decade.
\u201cPeople now trust women in management positions. Still it\u2019s hard, especially on a construction site. But it\u2019s hard anywhere. It\u2019s hard in New York,\u201d she told AFP.
As the Islamic republic marks its 40th birthday, few issues are more politically sensitive or full of contradictions than the status of women.
After the revolution, Islamic laws gave women a lower legal status than men, requiring them, for example, in many cases to gain permission from their father or husband to leave the country.
They are considered to have half the value of men in various legal aspects such as inheritance and testimony in court.<\/p>\n

Education for women<\/b>
But the Islamic republic also encouraged education for women, who now outnumber men at universities \u2014 a development that has transformed expectations and overturned centuries-old traditions.
\u201cGoing to university was a path forward for girls like us who did not want to end up like our mothers in a traditional society,\u201d said Mina, a 25-year-old linguistics student in Tehran.
Mina didn\u2019t tell her father she was studying for the university entrance exam.
\u201cHe couldn\u2019t believe it when I was accepted, that I would go to some other city to live. He actually stopped talking to me for some time,\u201d she said.
\u201cWhatever you do, your gender is the deciding factor,\u201d said 26-year-old archaeology student Sara.
\u201cIt makes you believe that you have to have kids, you have to be modest. You can barely believe that you can be independent, be seen as an individual with a character,\u201d she added.
She said discrimination was rife in her field.
\u201cMale archaeologists prefer not to work with women even if they\u2019re competent. They say it\u2019s just trouble. The women must keep their hijab at all times… they won\u2019t be taken seriously by laborers,\u201d she said.
\u201cIf a woman is successful in a line of work like this, she\u2019s fought very hard. And not all women are capable of fighting so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protection?<\/b>
Iran\u2019s rulers claim that Islamic gender laws \u2014 particularly \u201chijab\u201d rules that require women to wear a headscarf and modest clothing \u2014 are designed to protect women.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted in 2018 that the #MeToo movement was evidence of how Western society had failed women.
\u201cThe Western model for women is symbolic of consumerism, cosmetics, showing off for men as a tool of male sexual arousal,\u201d he wrote.
Nonetheless, clothing norms in Iran have gradually but significantly changed in recent years.
It is now unremarkable, especially in wealthier areas, to see women in tight jeans with loose, colorful headscarves.
The morality police that patrolled the streets, adjusting headscarves or bursting into cafes to make sure any couples were related, are now rarely seen.<\/p>\n

… or oppression?<\/b>
The authorities still draw the line at actively protesting the compulsory hijab: several women were arrested last year for doing so, and a prominent rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, jailed after taking on their cases.
But many also recall how much they have clawed back since the early days of the revolution.
\u201cIt\u2019s nothing like it was. You couldn\u2019t even get a lift with a male friend,\u201d said a female journalist in Tehran.
\u201cWe were terrified of being stopped, because they were out there, checking cars. Or going for lunch with a (male) friend \u2014 it would never happen! Now no one even thinks twice about these things.\u201d
Many were still dismayed that \u201cmoderate\u201d President Hassan Rouhani, who ran on promises to improve citizens\u2019 rights, again failed to appoint a female minister after his 2017 re-election.
\u201cThere is a glass ceiling and it will continue,\u201d said Fereshteh Sadeghi, a political journalist in Tehran.
\u201cWhen Rouhani reached power it seems he didn\u2019t want to fall out with the ayatollahs, and backed down.
\u201cLittle by little, women are getting their rights but for now there is no women\u2019s movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TEHRAN: Saba was just 25 when she left her design job in New York to work on a project renovating an art gallery back in her hometown Tehran.Within months, she won three more contracts to do up galleries and the lobby of an apartment complex.\u201cI had dreamt of building my own company, but I hadn\u2019t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}