Choosing the head of the household and the
dividing the inheritance among the living members
was the duty of the father and the head of the fam-
ily (Mazdàpùr 1990, 80, 86), even though the
kadagbànùg(housewife) could choose the dùdag-
sàlàrafter the death of her husband.
The contemporary Zoroastrian family is monog-
amous and children take the father’s surname. The
Zoroastrian wife, like other Iranian women, usually
continues to carry her father’s name after marriage.
There are special marriage and divorce registries
for Zoroastrians in Tehran, Yazd, Kirman, and
Ardakan.
A wife could not be divorced without her consent
according to Pahlavìtexts. In modern times, and
before the 1967 Family Protection Law, there was
no official divorce in the traditional Zoroastrian
community. Subsequently, divorce became com-
mon, with a sudden increase recently, and no mahr
(or kàbìn) for women.
The pàdikhshàyìhwife’s inheritance from her
husband was equal to that of the pàdikhshàyìh’s
son from his father. Her husband could not nullify
her inheritance in his will. The mahrwas consid-
ered the husband’s debt and had to be paid from
his estate before all other payments. A daughter’s
inheritance from the father was half that of a
brother. The economic relationship of the chakar
wives was based on an agreement. At various
points in time chakarchildren took from half the
pàdikhshàyìhchildren’s inheritance to none at all.
Today, a daughter’s inheritance is equal to that of a
son but may be altered by agreement. It is not cus-
tomary to distribute the inheritance while one of
the parents is alive, unless all inheritors agree. Of
course, contemporary Zoroastrians can also use
the state laws. According to the Iranian Islamic
Inheritance Law (Article 881), if there is a Muslim
in the family, non-Muslims cannot inherit. There is
evidence that many Zoroastrians in the past con-
verted to Islam to take advantage of this distinction.
A good part of the extant jurisprudential ancient
texts deal with female-related taboos, such as men-
struation and impurities associated with preg-
nancy, and their attendant purification. During
menstruation and after childbirth, women were
banned from participating in social and religious
ceremonies. Therefore women could not be priests
or achieve other official religious positions. They
were also prohibited from holding positions that
required attendance every day. Such prohibitions
and purifications are no longer followed except in
religious ceremonies.
Although there is no formal evidence, Zoro-
astrian women are believed on average to enjoy bet-
overview 801ter health and more comforts of modern living than
other women in Iran. Higher educational levels, the
establishment of Zoroastrian hospitals, and the
availability of trained obstetricians gradually altered
the practice of home birth, especially in cities. Even
though rural women are still largely deprived of
proper medical care, they have had access to serv-
ices for the past 60 years.Zoroastrian women today
The Islamic community’s measures to convert
others to Islam put pressure on the Zoroastrian
community (Boyce 2001, 145–215). This weighed
heavier on Zoroastrian women. When the power-
ful Zoroastrian community of the Sasanian period
submitted to laws that were unfavorable to them,
the role of Zoroastrian women was greatly trans-
formed. It was left to Zoroastrian women to raise
their children to cleave to the ancestral religion
under difficult circumstances and tolerate depriva-
tions to protect their ancient way of life. At the
same time, Zoroastrians were able to establish,
albeit with some distance, a friendly relationship
with a majority that considered them impure and
imposed the jizya (poll tax) on them.
When the jizya was abolished in 1882, the
Zoroastrian community moved closer to equality
with other Iranians and achieved better living con-
ditions. With the forced unveiling of women
(1936), Zoroastrian women often abandoned their
traditional colorful clothing whose details and
adornments were different from the clothing of
Muslims. Even though many women remained
faithful to their way of life, there are few visible
differences between Zoroastrian and non-Zoro-
astrian women today.
Modernity and new research into the Zoro-
astrian religion and customs have changed the gen-
eral public’s perception of Zoroastrians. Iranian
Muslims have long considered Zoroastrians to be a
sincere and honest community. It is even possible
currently to detect a kind of nostalgia for the
ancient past. Although in Iranian society today a
Zoroastrian woman is first an Iranian, she is still
subject to discrimination on the basis of her reli-
gion. The biggest injustice was the unequal diya
(compensation) allotted to non-Muslims, especially
women. Recently, a law abolished this inequity.
There is ample evidence that until recent times,
Zoroastrians, especially young girls, were forced to
convert to Islam. They were denied employment or
education, often when their merits qualified them.
In modern Iranian society, Zoroastrian women
are largely like other women and often benefit from
the prevailing laws and state facilities, except in