Day 1: lunch with Parsa and Ranna

After nearly 24 hours of traveling, I was completely exhausted by the time we got to the school. But the welcoming crew at the school (the Royal University for Women, or RUW) was worth the wait: NesQuik cereal, jams, honey, and white bread were on the counter, and a stick of butter, cheese, and milk in the fridge. Such a nice, generous gesture and a hilarious combination of food. I slept well, and don’t think jet lag has hit me hard, though I have had some trouble forming sentences. Hopefully the rest of this post is comprehensible.

Today we went to the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) club for lunch, and went shopping a little bit. The best part of the day was the conversation we had with Parsa (RUW’s Director of General Studies) and his wife, Rana, who teaches at RUW.

Parsa and Ranna are Iranian (they refer to themselves at Persian), and have been our tour guides/care takers so far. When Parsa heard about the survey Lisa is administering at class tomorrow (a qualitative research survey for students’ pre- and post-ideas about what leadership is, and how they perceive leaders, and what leadership qualities they see in themselves, etc.), he mentioned that Lisa need to be clear about what kind of leadership she is referring to: leadership in the work, or leadership in the home.

Women from countries with Islamic law—the women taking this class with us, who are largely from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—would answer these questions extremely differently depending on what kind of leadership is being asked about, and would probably not be able to reconcile feelings/thoughts about the different kinds of leadership. Leadership in the home does not exist. One of the hopes that Parsa has is that by learning leadership and critical thinking skills in the work place, RUW graduates will apply some of those skills in the home.

Independent thought is hard for a woman in a country with Islamic law to exert on her married life, when disobeying her husband’s wish is legal grounds for her husband to divorce her and leave her with nothing. One of Parsa’s students had to drop out of school after one year because she got pregnant. Now she has four kids and is pregnant with her fifth, and she attended school last semester. If she does not get at least two A’s, her husband says she cannot continue going to RUW. And that is her reality, no matter how unfair, because disobeying her husband is not an option.

So, in order to get interpretable and meaningful results, Lisa has to be really careful in how she frames the question.

So how do people who disagree with this system marry each other and/or divorce each other? Parsa and Ranna chose to sign a pre-nuptial agreement of sorts, stating that if they divorce (and either of them can file for divorce), the same standards apply to both of them. The lawyer (a woman) who assisted them with this process said to Parsa, “You are so generous!” Even the woman overseeing the situation didn’t see it as Ranna’s right to have the same say as Parsa in any situation, but saw it as Parsa’s generosity. Parsa and Ranna say that the way the did things is not common, and that they are friends with one other couple that did the same.

In Iran, some marriages end with an legal agreement that is not a legal divorce, but split assets fairly and such so that the marriage is effectively a divorce. This practice is becoming more and more common thanks to the behavior of the Iranian government twenty years ago. In the late 80s/early 90s, if an unmarried male and female couple were outside (like outside a private home…just in public) together, they would be arrested and taken to jail. At the police station, a clergyman would force them to marry each other (because otherwise it would be inappropriate for them to have been in public together). Also, it’s common practice for the husband to agree to give the wife something in the case of a divorce. These clergymen who were forcing couples to marry would put down “[the husband}’s right hand” as the compensation for a divorce, so that if the couple ever wanted to legally divorce, the husband would first have to cut off his hand and give to his wife. So couples married in this fashion who later wanted to divorce each other now make agreements that are more reasonable.

It is difficult for me to comprehend the idea of anything less than complete submission to your husband putting you at risk for divorce and disgrace. It is more difficult for me to comprehend the struggle of being in that situation and acting on the want to do anything that is different from your husband’s wishes. Also, how can a woman in such a submissive position at home assert herself and be a leader in the workplace? Can there be such a dichotomy in home and work life that a woman can be a “good” Muslim wife and a successful leader? In this cultural context, what does it mean for a woman to be a leader? Does it mean a woman adopting male leadership techniques, and acting like a man?

I’ve learned so much and have so many more questions, and just from a lunchtime conversation. I’m really excited for class tomorrow.