The research idea for this book started back in the year 2003 when the US government under the Bush administration assumed that the invasion of Baghdad and the pulling down of the statue of Saddam Hussein would result in parades of joy by Iraqis. This was to be a relatively simple US mission that would be welcomed by the people. There has been nothing simple or pleasant about this invasion, in fact it brought about great devastation and complications that have lasted to this day. It was then that I became determined to document what I had observed over the course of more than a decade of fieldwork in Iran and other Middle Eastern and North African countriesâthat invasion of Iran and a US military operation will bring similar surprises and another disaster for the region. Just as in the case of Iraq, there is support for those in power in Iran and some of that comes from women, many of them from low-income households who, for the most part, remain invisible in the eyes of those who support military solutions to US-Iranian relations. After eight years of President Obama, who moved away from military solution and signed a deal, in 2016 President Trump came to office. Since then the administration has leaned more towards military action and has been imposing more sanctions on Iran even though Iran has, according to the US state department, been in compliance with the nuclear deal, and some suspect an invasion of the country is looming in the background.
While conducting research in Iran, I came across a great deal of community
mobilization and mutual help, partly rooted in the traditional social fabric of the country and partly energized and sprouting because of the 1979 Revolution
and war in the 1980s. Effectively, both the revolution
and the war were crises that sent major shock waves throughout the society, creating an invisible safety
net, which enabled the economy to deal with them. These types of safety
net mechanisms are by no means limited to Iran nor specifically to situation of war and revolution
. However, what is perhaps unique in the case of Iran is that many women, who from an outside perspective appear passive, religious, obedient citizens, are actually highly engaged in community care. Travelling inside Iran, this was the case throughout the country in many different ways. These seemingly quiet women, when holding religious gatherings, make an important contribution to the country through their informal
networks and have in effect spread an invisible safety
net. In every low-income neighborhood, in every town, this type of safety
net has spread widely and quietly. Since these safety
nets are created predominantly through religious practices, they are in accordance with Islamic
tradition. In other words, the assistance provided via these safety
nets are treated as acts of God and therefore must be kept in confidence. Those who give and those who receive do so for their faith and must withhold the identity of both parties.
Yet, the importance of this stream of cash and in-kind assistance running throughout the country, arguably holding it together in dealing with economic problems, remains hidden from the eyes of most academics, researchers and other observes; many of whom do not travel beyond North Tehran and perhaps almost exclusively meet with middle-class secular women. This book is a snapshot of how the vast majority of women who tend to remain observant of their religion and who deal with poverty and unemployment in their own community, by and large come from low- and lower-middle income households. This by no means suggests that non-religious women of middle- and higher-income groups are inactive in the battle against poverty but they tend to engage in more formal organizations and non
-governmental organizations (NGOs), a shortlist of which is included in Chap. 5. Yet, since religious women are rarely the subject of fieldwork research, getting access and trust building to share information has been far from easy. I have had to spend a great deal of time with university students who come from low-income households in order to get access to focus groups.
While I was able to break that barrier, fieldwork without having a broader context remains incoherent for academic analysis, and for this reason I have used a broader theoretical frameâthat of social or solidarity economy. Ironically, social
economy is more commonly used by the secular left yet it seemed a perfect way of contextualizing the highly complex and multi-faceted findings of this research.
In Chap. 2, there is a discussion of the solidarity economy, its definition and how it is applied to the fieldwork included in the book. The solidarity economy (otherwise also known as the third
sector), separate from the public and the private economies, has been growing and there has been an increasing interest by academics and policy makers about its benefits. This sector includes a wide range of institutions comprised of foundations and non-profit organizations, which tend to be more formal and regulated than the informal
, community
-based networks which deliver assistance, and some of them work on the basis of mutual help and are outside of the market
economy. In this book, the focus is on the most informal, community-based types run by women and rooted in low-income neighborhoods. The creation of the solidarity economy (or this third
sector) has both pros and cons. On the one hand, critics argue that it undermines the responsibility of the government and the welfare state to provide for its citizen. On the other hand, it is viewed as complementary to the welfare state, filling the gaps in the welfare state which is subject to a global trend in its declining role of catering to issues relating to poverty in particular.
In Chap. 3 a literature review of women as related to socio-economic issues is included. It provides a background to current events in the past 50 years with the emphasis on post-revolutionary Iran (1979). It examines how the literature on Iran, similar to most of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, tends to pay less attention to issues pertaining to the economic status of women. But more importantly, the literature on low-income women, many of them observant Muslims, tends to overlook their views and their voices are often not heard as they are regarded as victims. As the data suggests, these women take an active role in community care and community well-being and in some cases through religious institutions.
Chapter 4 includes a discussion which invites the reader to develop a more complex understanding of Islamist
women as they are not a homogenous group and differ in the degree to which they are supportive or critical of the established power. Chapter 5 presents the data resulting from several focus groups comprised of 47 participants as well as 12 individual interviews conducted based on the findings of the focus groups. The timing of the interviews is interesting: they were conducted during the Presidency of Ahmadinejad when Iran was politically highly polarized and after what became known as the green revolution
and mass protests which took place in 2009. It was a difficult time for data gathering for Western-based academics.
Perhaps the importance of the data is that it gives a window to the rest of the world on the majority of women in Iran who come from low- and lower-middle income households and the degree to which they are committed to the well-being of their communities. This is where those who support a military option for Iran need to think very carefully: invasion of the country will not be welcome even by those who are viewed as the most oppressed segment of the society, women of low-income status.
In conclusion (Chap. 6), two long interviews are presented to wrap up the data. In the first interview, a woman in her fifties, who has spent much of her active life in post-revolutionary Iran and has worked as a volunteer for the Red Crescent, elaborates on how she collects charity
funds and delivers aid especially to children in poverty stricken areas of rural Iran. A second interview, with a young woman from a shantytown in Ahvaz a South-Western city, reveals her life and her commitment towards girls and young women. She explains how hard she herself has had to fight against poverty and prejudices to attend higher education and to become a technician in an operations room. Earning a decent salary, she has no intention of marriage or moving out of the notorious shanty town. She chooses to stay and instead of buying or renting a place outside of the shanty town, rents a place within it, turning it into a community house for the girls and young women of her community. Her dream is to change the attitude of her community towards higher education for girls and to give girls opportunities to strive high and achieve their dreams. She continues to be highly religious nonetheless, for her the community is her life and the well-being of her community is not separate from her pursuit of individual happiness. This is an interesting case since part of the discussion over the solidarity economy revolves around how it creates an opportunity for people to transform their community.