“Beautiful sunset over the mountains”
Saqi Laqi

The marriage contract based on Islamic law, which is the basis for marriage laws in Iran, is essentially an agreement in which the guardianship of a daughter is transferred from her father or his representative to another man, namely her husband. The guardianship of the husband over the family, including the wife and children, is mandatory and cannot be transferred. This means that a man cannot waive his guardianship even if he wants to. According to the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the marriage contract, the woman is obligated to fully comply with the man, and the man is committed to paying the specified amount as the woman’s dowry, which he must pay whenever the woman requests it.

In fact, according to the current law in Iran, in a marriage contract, the woman is completely under the control of her husband. The husband determines what the woman should or shouldn’t do, what she should wear or not wear, where she should go or not go. Whatever the husband wants, must be done. In return, the only right that this law gives to the woman in the marriage contract is the dowry. The dowry, or “kabin”, is the amount that is considered as the material value of the woman. The amount must be determined in the marriage contract, but it can be delayed indefinitely. This is something that no longer happens. Therefore, in recent years, some women have resorted to using their only legal option and by demanding the dowry, which is usually not paid by the man, they put pressure on the man to either give them other rights or to benefit from this only legal right in the marriage contract.

This materialistic view of women within the family does not have a relative equality, which is a fundamental human principle. Moreover, with the current conditions of family life, it does not seem to be in favor of men either. But can dowry be abolished without establishing legal equality and ensuring women’s rights within the family? Can we guarantee the implementation of legal equality by making marriage contracts conditional and setting conditions during the contract, so that we can move away from the tradition of dowry? Is it possible to demand the abolition of dowry in exchange for setting conditions during the contract?

In the mid-1980s, women activists protested by creating campaigns against the “Support for the Family” bill, which was in the process of becoming a law in the Islamic Consultative Assembly – and in fact, supported men’s rights in the family. These campaigns brought the issue of inequality between men and women in the family to the public and one of the main issues raised was the conditions of marriage. In this way, women’s rights activists tried to make couples, especially women, aware of their lost rights in the marriage law and now that the law is not equal, young people try to fight against inequality by including more conditions in their marriage contracts.

The right to education, employment, determining place of residence, legal representation in divorce, child custody, and equal division of assets after divorce were among the proposed conditions for having an equal life and avoiding unjust laws.

Despite more than 10 years passing since the issue of prenuptial agreements was raised, there are still many obstacles in the way of women securing these conditions. In many cases, women who have registered their marriage with conditional terms are unable to benefit from these conditions during divorce. Lack of awareness about the necessity of registering prenuptial agreements in official documents, and relying solely on registering them in the marriage certificate, ultimately renders these conditions legally worthless.

The most important point is that despite the efforts of women’s rights activists and lawyers to raise awareness among women and society, how many percent of people are actually aware of the conditions in the marriage contract? And how many percent of those who are aware, have the ability to implement it?

If social movements in our country had a natural course, now after more than 10 years, it would have been logical for us to reach the stage of changing family laws towards gender equality. Unfortunately, we still see civil activists and legal educators being arrested and restricted for promoting equal rights and conditions in marriage contracts, while lawmakers and law enforcers are trying to lower the amount of dowry to different levels and seeking to weaken the enforcement guarantees for paying dowry.

The mismatch between Iran’s social situation and the patriarchal family law is the cause of many social and familial crises. These patriarchal laws not only ignore women’s rights within the family, but also leave them with no choice but to pay a dowry. This leads to many men being imprisoned for long periods of time.

Replacing conditions instead of dowry in marriage is essentially a temporary and limited solution to a perpetual and universal problem. What should replace the current outdated law is the equal family law. This is something that not only exists in advanced Western countries, but even in many Muslim countries, including Turkey. In the modern world, it is not possible to live with laws from thousands of years ago, and equality in the family is only possible with the rule of equal law.