Breaking up is hard to do, but more Iranian women dare divorce anyway

Almost four in ten marriages in Iran end in divorce, according to the latest official figures, giving rise to theocrats' cries of a crisis that may not be as obvious to some of the women gaining their freedom.

But one woman's bumpy road to reclaiming her life through divorce shows how deep-set patriarchy and Islamic rule stack the odds against Iranian ex-wives.

Take my friend Narges. She’s 41 and just-divorced. She thought she had married a feminist man, Amir, and he was in many ways. Until he wasn’t.

“We had it good, more or less, until I was promoted and earned more than him,” Narges says. “He started mocking my work, often accusing me of putting my job first and not our son. ‘You’re too self-centered to be a good mom,’ he once told me.”

It was as if Amir was constantly anxious about how others viewed him, Narges says. “It was as if he felt inadequate—which was not my view at all.”

Some studies suggest that men who earn less than their wives for extended periods are more likely to suffer from higher rates of health problems like anxiety, chronic stress, diabetes or even heart disease.

Patriarchal prejudice compels men to be the (primary) breadwinner. Failure to do so could lead to a crisis of identity—more so in male-dominated societies like Iran.

Iran’s traditions and Islamic laws put the man firmly in charge of his wife. A married woman cannot work or travel without her husband’s permission and can certainly not initiate divorce.

Narges could only because her ex granted her that right when the marriage was registered.

“It is a rare privilege to have in Iran,” she says. “The fact that I was financially independent helped, of course. And Amir, to be fair to him, had no issues with me having it. But all hell broke loose when I tried to use it.”

Amir was a vocal proponent of women’s rights. He still is. That was one reason Narges liked him. After they married, he’d do housework as much as his wife, if not more. When they had their son, he was as hands-on as dads come. Narges had hit the jackpot, our girlfriends would joke.

But things went downhill when Narges got that job—and turned downright ugly when she filed for divorce.

A new Amir emerged during the legal battle for the custody of their son. The custody, according to Iran’s law, belongs to the mother until age 7, to the father until age 10, and after that, the child chooses. But regardless of who has custody, it’s the father who has full legal authority over the child.

“It shocked me to see him resorting to the very codes of religion and patriarchy that he derided as reactionary and stupid,” Narges says. “He used to tell me about his struggles to rid himself of male privilege in Iran. And I believed him. I still think he was sincere when he said it.”

But when it mattered most, the principles vanished and the hardwiring took over.

“The law gave him power and he used it,” Narges says bitterly, blaming the law even more than her ex. “It takes an extraordinary character and restraint to not use your weapon because you believe it would be unfair.”

Amir argued in court that the demands of Narges’ job made her unfit to care for their child. He even banned the child from leaving the country when she wanted to go to Istanbul for a few days. She hit wall after wall as he deployed every legal advantage available to him.

“I thought I knew all about male privilege under Islamic Republic. But there was more, much more,” Narges says, trying not to tear up. “I knew, for instance, that a mother cannot open a bank account for her child without the father’s permission. But I never imagined I’d be told at the school to ‘fetch the dad’ to get my son’s end-year scores.”

Such stories abound, compelling many women with young children to stay in unhappy marriages. But some choose to take the bumpy road out. And their number is rising.

As Iran’s officialdom calls the rise in divorces a great shame, women like Narges—bruised as they are from their experience—see in it something positive.

“I’m not saying divorce is all good and great,” Narges says when I tell her that it is ultimately a breakdown of a contract that was supposed to last a lifetime. “You cannot deny that what we see in Iran is partly a result and a sign of women being more empowered,” she adds.

Divorce, Narges and many others argue, has to be viewed as a choice, even an opportunity, not a mere social failure.

I cannot say I fully agree with her, but I see her point. We have a crude expression in Persian that says “a woman enters her man’s house in white and leaves it in white,” the latter referring to the shroud in which Muslims wrap their dead.

“I left in sage green,” Narges chuckles.