women from litigating for their rights, particularly
within the confines of family law.
Contemporary Iranian laws are explicit in their
unequal treatment of men and women in the arenas
of criminal, civil, and family law. This explicit
inequality, for instance in giving men the absolute
right to divorce and only a limited right to women,
is itself an important obstacle to access. Women,
particularly in the rural areas and smaller cities,
often assume that they do not possess any rights
even in situations in which the law does give them
limited rights, such as the right to divorce in case
of evident spousal abuse, spousal addiction to illicit
drugs, or delinquency in financial support. Oper-
ating under a patriarchal mindset, they deem their
husbands’ actions to be immune to any legal re-
course. Unmarried women also often assume the
absolute authority of their fathers or paternal
grandfathers in making decisions about their mar-
riage even though the law allows a women to marry
with the permission of the court if the father or
paternal grandfather’s opposition to the marriage is
deemed unreasonable.
The paucity of lawyers specializing in women’s
rights adds to the problem of lack of knowledge
about legal recourse. In many villages, smaller
cities, or even larger cities outside the capital city of
Tehran, lawyers are simply not available to women.
This is an important drawback, because many of
the rights with which women are endowed, partic-
ularly in the arena of family law, are ensconced in
a very complicated legal framework that requires
adequate legal representation for their attainment
in a court of law.
In cases where women do pursue their limited
rights, the embedded inequalities and the intransi-
gence of the legal system force them to compromise
and give up parts of their rights. For instance, the
legal imbalance that exists usually leads women to
forfeit all or parts of the financial claims they have
in their years of marriage in exchange for the right
to divorce.
Women are also inhibited in their legal access by
the composition of the judiciary, which does not
employ female judges. The new system of justice
that came into effect after the Islamic Revolution of
1979 dismissed all female judges, gradually allow-
ing women only to act as advisors in courts and not
pass sentences. While women’s groups continue to
put pressure on the judiciary to change, the current
essentially all male make-up of the judiciary is
undoubtedly unfriendly to women and an impor-
tant obstacle to access. In addition, the existence of
widespread corruption in the judiciary makes its
members open to bribes by husbands who are
the ottoman empire 375generally better off economically. Many lawyers
report that their clients or even they themselves
have been threatened by influential persons within
the judiciary or other revolutionary institutions
who were inspired to do so on the basis of bribes
paid by husbands.
Finally, perhaps the most important set of obsta-
cles to access to the legal system is generated by cul-
tural and social impediments, particularly in the
domain of family law. Even among families that are
seemingly modern, litigation against fathers, pater-
nal grandparents, or husbands is considered un-
seemly and a source of family shame. Women who
are seeking the right to marriage without their
father’s permission, or divorce, often feel isolated,
and married women cannot rely on other family
members to act as witnesses in cases of abuse, and
are prevented from making their cases public by
social pressures.Bibliography
H. Afshar, Islam and feminisms. An Iranian case study,
New York 1998.
M. Kàr, Raf≠-i tab≠ìz az zanàn. Muqàyisah-±i Kunvànsiyùn
Raf≠-i tab≠ìz az zanàn bàqavànìn-i dàkhilì-i îràn,
Tehran 1999.
——,Kudàm ™aqq? Kudàm taklìf?, Tehran 2001.
Z. Mir-Hosseini, Women, marriage and the law in post-
revolutionary Iran, in H. Afshar (ed.), Women in the
Middle East, London 1993, 59–84.
P. Paidar, Women and the political process in twentieth-
century Iran, Cambridge 1995.Mehrangiz KarThe Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman legal system was a complex one
that included administrative and public law
(kanun), Islamic law (Sharì≠a), and customary law
(≠urf). The Sharì≠a had the most direct impact on
women’s lives, and this examination of women’s
access to the Ottoman legal system largely focuses
on the Sharì≠a court (mu™àkama shar≠iyya).
Women in rural areas were also directly affected by
customary law, but we do not have sources that
would let us study how it affected women. Women
had significant access to the Ottoman legal system;
that they did so was closely linked to the role of the
qà∂ì(judge) and the Sharì≠a courts in imperial
administration. To bolster their authority and legit-
imacy to a greater degree than in any previous
Islamic state, the Ottomans formalized the role of
legal scholars in the state by organizing qà∂ìs into
an official hierarchy and making them part of the
state bureaucracy. They also developed a more
institutionalized Islamic legal system throughout