10 years in jail, monetary fines: Iran's new hijab law likened to 'gender apartheid' explained

Last week, the Iranian people memorialised 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whose death spurred mass protests and rallies across the country. Now, on Wednesday (20 September), Iran’s parliamentarians have made life more difficult for women by passing tougher laws on the matter of dressing and the hijab.

The ‘Hijab and Chastity Bill’ – a law consisting of 70 articles – received the green light from Iran’s parliament – it received 152 to 34 votes – for a trial tenure of three years after it was discussed for several months and now awaits final approval from Iran’s Guardian Council, a powerful body that vets legislation and oversees elections.

Human rights activists from the United Nations have described the legislation as “a form of gender apartheid” with the intention of suppressing women into “total submission”.

“By approving this bill, the Islamic Republic’s parliament has put a massive lock on the bodies of Iranian women. Iran was already an open prison for the women of Iran, but now they’ve extended the brutality with which they will crack down on women by giving serious powers to those implementing it on the streets,” said Iranian human rights lawyer Hossein Raeesi.

Iran’s ‘Hijab and Chastity Bill’

Formally known as the Bill to Support the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab, the legislation has toughened penalties for women found to be violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code.

Women who fail to adhere to the Islamic dress code could face prison terms of five to 10 years, as per the legislation. Furthermore, women found guilty of “nudity, lack of chastity, lack of hijab, improper dressing and acts against public decency leading to disturbance of peace” face severe punishments such as 60 lashes as well as prison time.

The legislation further specifies that “indecent attire” for women includes wearing short-sleeved clothing, round-neck T-shirts, three-quarter-length trousers, and ripped trousers. Men, meanwhile, are not allowed to wear low-waist trousers.

The law also allows for financial penalties for “promoting nudity” or “mocking the hijab” in the media and on social networks, as well as fines and bans on leaving the country for business owners whose employees do not wear a veil. Those found to provide services to individuals not wearing the hijab or not adhering to the dress code in tourism-related places will also be terminated from their employment and the person punished also risks being banned from working again in the same field for up to two years.

Gender segregation in government offices, universities, hospitals and public parks has also been mandated by the new law.

It also empowers three intelligence agencies – the Ministry of Intelligence, the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organisation, and the Intelligence Organisation of the Judiciary – along with the police, the Basij paramilitary forces, and the Command of Enjoining Good and Forbidding Wrong, to take action against women who break the rules.

The legislation has been slammed by many activists. One of them, Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, told TIME: “It is a form of economic repression that will disproportionately affect people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who can no longer justify the steep price tag behind their activism. “Can you afford to pay a fine? Can you afford not earning money at your cafe for 10 days? Can you afford to not pay your rent for two months? All of those are very deliberate measures to break the resistance.”

Another was quoted by The National as saying, “It is a completely an act of gender apartheid by Iran’s parliament. It’s a full on war against women’s rights.”

A group called Human Rights Activists in Iran also condemned the bill, saying that it “symbolises a broader pattern of limited gender equality within the legal framework, reinforcing discriminatory practices against women.”

Women, rights and Tehran

In the past one year, women in Tehran have been standing up to the authorities and demanding for their freedom and rights. Following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who died in police custody after she was apprehended by the police for not wearing her hijab correctly, there have been mass protests and agitations which saw women burning their hijabs, cutting their hair in public and calling for a change. Chants of ‘woman, life, freedom’ and ‘Death to the dictator’ – a reference to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – have rung out loud across the country.

But authorities have buckled down. Authorities have not just gone after demonstrators – some reports put the death toll at over 500 – but also the general public. They have taken a series of steps to counter increased instances of women ditching their hijabs online and in public.

These have included using smart cameras, fining owners of vehicles and then impounding the cars for repeated offences, forming court cases against celebrities, and shutting down businesses for offering services to women who are deemed to be violating the mandatory dress codes.

Also read: Mahsa Amini’s death: What’s changed for Iran’s women a year after protest movement

It’s notable how Iran’s stance on the hijab has changed over the years. In 1935, King Reza Shah Pehlavi banned the public wearing of hijab in Iran. However, in 1941, when his son, Mohammed Reza Pehlavi, became king, he made the ban on hijab into a choice – women were free to wear whatever they wanted to.

All this changed in 1979. The Islamic Revolution of Iran overthrew the monarchy and replaced it with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Soon after the Revolution, the rulers from the clergy made hijab mandatory for women in Iran.

Since then, the laws on women’s dressing and the hijab have only become stricter. It was partially reversed in 2018 when women who did not observe the Islamic dress code were made to attend Islam educational classes. This once again was changed in 2022 and the rules became stricter for women.

With inputs from agencies