Haleh Anvari: Beyond the Cliche

Image from Chador-nama

The black chador has irrevocably become what Iranian photographer and writer, Haleh Anvari describes as Iran's visual shorthand, its unregistered trademark. Haleh's quest to deconstruct and liberate the chador from reductionist stereotype occurred as a byproduct of her relationship with the foreign press reporting in Iran and that of the chador itself. Her determination to re-present the chador has resulted in the photographic projects, Chador-nama, Chador-dadar, and Peace Chador, and the performance-work, Power of Cliche.

Having studied politics and philosophy at university in UK, Haleh returned to Iran and worked as a local translator/producer for foreign journalists covering Iran. “I was a product of two cultures and it subsequently gave me license to see both sides of the coin, so to speak,” she remarks. One thing that she consistently observed while working with foreign press was that the black chador had become synonymous with Iran; regardless of the issue being reported on hand, it was the sole image being transmitted of Iran. "I was unhappy that they would see my country exclusively through that lens and I was always trying to make them see Iran differently," she says. 

"After six years of working as a 'sidekick', I started writing for myself but the Iranian authorities were not happy and subsequently, banned and threatened me," she reminsces. "I got stuck in the house with lot of bitter and depressive thoughts...and it was around that time that I received a digital camera as a birthday present."

A definitive encounter with the chador also deeply impacted her. "I was driving down a street when I saw a woman in a chador rush to me, there was so much swagger in her walk - and it made me angry! It made me think at that point how the Iranian system had somehow made me feel separate from them the way I was dressed," she says. Coming from a chadori family, Anvari mentions that as a child, she perceived it an aspirational garment, describing it as "cuddly and a safe harbor." So where did the alienation and disconnection to the chador spring up from? "Wearing the chador was no more about a personal choice of modesty; it had become a political statement instead," she says.

Image from Chador-nama

Image from Chador-dadar

Her engagement with the chador then occurred on a more emotional level, including and highlighting all that had been omitted from the chador's current avatar: color, light and movement in Chador-nama, significantly situating the chadors in the Iranian country-side. The chador then saw itself on a global journey in Chador-dadar. “If the chador had become an Irani icon, I thought of taking it to other global icons and photographing it in their midst,” she says; the project became a live installation and her journey took her to Jaipur and Agra in India, Istanbul, and Dubai [Dubai's landmark Burj al Khalifa in the background above]. “I learnt so much about the environment that I was photographing in," she mentions, elaborating that while onlookers engaged with the chador at Amber fort, Jaipur, for instance, she had had to model the chador herself in Turkey, where the chosen model declined to do due to her secular beliefs.

Why Women Still Want Children

Image credit: familiesfromwithin.wordpress.com

Most scholars claim that an increase in education lowers the number of desired children and the actual number of children that a woman will have in her reproductive life. I completely concur with this argument but what worries me is that research in the area of fertility trends mainly focuses on the reasons why fertility declines and neglects the factors driving the need to have children. While it is crucial that a family focuses on the quality rather than the quantity of children in the modern day, I still still think it highly important to discuss why educated women want to have children.

The factors that drove the need to have children in the past differ significantly from the factors that drive women to want children now. The family’s need for children as a form of labor was predominant in communities that relied on subsistence agriculture for sustenance. This meant that a family would have a large number of children who would help with chores at the farm. Instrumental value of children was highly regarded in such cases. More children meant more labor on the farm hence higher productivity. The need for gender division of labor within the farm household also drove families to have more children so that they could divide chores between sons and daughters.  

Flow of wealth was assumed to move from the children to the parents in the past. Children were viewed as a "pension scheme" that would provide support and security for the parents in old age. As a result of this conception, parents had more children so that they could maximize on their returns in old age. There were uncertainties on how each child would turn out in the success ladder and this made parents cast their investment nets wider by having more children so that the weaknesses exhibited by the children who failed could be covered up by the children who turned out successful.

High fertility was also triggered by societal expectations. The belief that there was a standard age at which women were expected to marry lowered the age at first marriage for most women. This implied that the amount of time that women would be exposed to reproduction increased significantly and with limited or no contraception at all, fertility rates increased.

Cultural beliefs that placed more value on sons compared to daughters also played a role in increasing fertility rates. In some societies, sons were valued for inheritance and for carrying forward the clan name. This meant that if a woman was to have five daughters, she would continue to bear children until she got a son, thereby raising the fertility levels.

Availability of fewer contraceptive methods meant a heavy reliance on natural fertility regulation methods. These methods relied solely on postpartum infecundability, length of breast-feeding, and the use of the withdrawal method for postponing conception and pregnancy. At that time, abortion and contraception were not yet adopted as contraceptive methods. This meant that fertility increased unchecked.

High fertility rates were also fueled by some religious practices that did not allow contraception. As a result of a huge devotion to religion, some individuals had many children, which also implies increases in fertility rates.

Most women got married at younger ages in the past because they did not have an education and a career to pursue. Marriage was seen as a necessary life event and society expected the couple to start having children soon after marriage. This increased the time that a woman would be exposed to a sexual life in which her chances to bear children were higher and it increased fertility rates.

Image credit: missescargotpudding.tumblr.com

Most of the reasons that made women have many children in the past no longer apply today because of westernization, modernity, new and improved contraceptive methods, and high levels of education but most women still desire to have children in their lives. It is almost every educated woman's dream to get married and have children one day.

I think that for a woman who is highly educated and who has a well developed career, the desire to have children can be described as a yearning to reach a self-actualization stage. I say this because increasingly most educated women have a fulfilling career and they wish to have children so that they can leave behind their offspring. I have interacted with some women who vow to have a child even outside wedlock as opposed to their values because they just want to have children of their own.

Egyptian Women Have Long Struggled to Break Societal Taboos

“In a society like Egypt, where both men and women have lived under military dictatorship for decades and have been denied their human dignity, how can we expect men to understand the importance respecting the human rights of women?” asks Doaa Abdelaal, a council member with Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML).

Egyptian women--like women in Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain--have taken a lead role in the protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Mainstream western media has overlooked how women have been at the forefront of breaking society taboos. The reality is that Egyptian women have been, for the past twenty years, working towards nationwide democratic change.