certain circumstances. Zoroastrian women no
longer dress in distinctive clothing and avoid other
limitations to activity; with certain restrictions,
they can enter various educational fields and occu-
pations – from medicine, teaching, and state
employment to menial work. Often, their lives are
indistinguishable from the lives of other Iranian
women. True, the small Zoroastrian population
and its scattered situation, resulting from migra-
tions, creates certain problems, especially for
women at the age of marriage. But in general, the
doors to better lives are not closed to Zoroastrian
women and girls, and within the old structures,
most can cope with current conditions.Education
From the distant past, the education of Zoro-
astrian girls has been acceptable. Knowledgeable
and experienced women in the neighborhood con-
ducted private instruction. They taught various
kinds of housework, from washing dishes, sewing
patterns, and knitting, to taking care of sheep, and
sometimes even reading and writing. This tradition
can perhaps be attributed to the emphasis that Pah-
lavìtexts placed on girls’ education (Navvàbì1976,
474, Mazdàpùr 1990, 104). Illustrations of female
education are also found in early books, such as
Màdàyan-ìHazàr Dàdistàn. They indicate that
women were familiar with difficult court rulings and
were well versed in the law (Mazdàpùr 1990, 105).
Beginning in the nineteenth century, Zoroastrian
girls attended Christian missionary and American
girls’ schools and later girls’ schools were estab-
lished in Yazd, Kirman, and Tehran. The first such
school was established in Kirman in 1892. The per-
centages of literate Zoroastrian girls at the end of
the Qàjàr period is noteworthy (Amini, 210–11).
Today, the number of illiterate Zoroastrian women
is negligible.
The oldest Zoroastrian girls’ schools, which are
still in existence, were founded in 1908. The most
famous is in Tehran (Anùshìravàn Dàdgar, estab-
lished in 1936). Today, of the approximately 50
Zoroastrian schools, 20 are girls’ schools. From the
beginning, the staff and students in these schools
were often composed of both Zoroastrians and
non-Zoroastrians.Employment
Teaching and school administration in Tehran
and other big cities as well as in rural areas with
more traditional schools were the first forms of
employment for women in the modern period.
Next were midwifery and nursing, and a wide array
of other vocations including university-level teach-802 zoroastrian women
ing, state employment, journalism, medicine, painting,
and commerce. There was also the maintenance
and cleaning of other Zoroastrian homes and the
fire altars and other tasks linked with religious cer-
emonies, which have always been customary among
Zoroastrians.
In former times, women performed what today
would be considered masculine work, such as the
grafting of trees and animal husbandry. There are
reports of Zoroastrian women midwives and hakìms
(healers) who practiced medicine and orthopedics.
In the absence of men who had to pay their jizya
with their labor or who went searching for income-
producing labor, women were forced to run house-
hold and farm and to manage the household
expenses after the payment of jizya. Once they com-
pleted the arduous farm work and household tasks,
they turned to their traditional duties, such as
weaving fabrics or textiles, making shirts and wool
clothing, and sewing and stitching.
Women no longer sew old, intricate patterns on
clothes. Traditional domestic weaving looms can
no longer compete with factory-produced fabrics.
Zoroastrian woven products required skill and
were different from those of the Muslims. They var-
ied according to the fabric and the use for which
they were intended. Nowadays, there are only a
handful of looms in operation. While the spinning
of cotton has been abandoned, spinning wool is still
practiced and women still knit wool clothing.
Formerly, to save fuel and heat, girls and young
women gathered in the winter and work together in
a designated place.
The gender division of labor was rooted in the
Pahlavìtext, Ardà-Wiràf Nàmag, which attributes
man’s sins generally to his labor and employment,
while the woman’s are fixed in her sexuality and her
relationship with her children (Mazdàpùr 1990,
108). While the text lauds the role of woman in
farming and animal husbandry, it disapproves
vocations thought to encourage impurity or sinful
behavior. Thus, wet-nursing is prohibited because
of the possibility that a mother might inflict damage
on her own child. Prostitution is an absolute sin. In
Pahlavìtexts, the source of a female prostitute’s sin-
fulness lies in the mixing of men’s sperm (shuhr
gumìzishnìh) inside a woman’s womb. Any man
who has unsanctioned sex with a woman will
acquire all her sins and she all his spiritual reward.
The Zoroastrian community, at least in the modern
age, lacks women prostitutes.
Aside from royalty, women are not mentioned in
Zoroastrian history. A woman who played a deter-
mining role in changes in Iranian society is Gulistàn
Bànùfrom Kirman. She emigrated to India in 1795