Dowry: A Guarantee of Women’s Rights or a Tool for Reproducing Gender Inequality?/ Alireza Goodarzi
Dowry (Mahr) can be understood within the broader context of tradition: it has come down to us from a distant past and represents a period that may not necessarily align with the needs of our present. I put forth this claim on the basis of questions that have been persistently asked within our society for many years. Every few years, Iranian lawmakers make minor—or sometimes even major—adjustments to Dowry regulations in an attempt to, as the writer Mohammad Ghaed once said about mechanics, “tweak it just enough to make it fit” into today’s society. But today’s Iran is not a brand-new, high-tech vehicle. If we consider Dowry as akin to a cartwheel due to its historical background, no type of automobile can run on it. Contemporary Iranian society is a mixture of cartwheels and automobiles. A cartwheel might have been useful a century ago, but beyond that, it lacks clear utility.
From the days when our grandmothers were breaking ice in the courtyard pools to today, when women are active participants in society—despite all the glass ceilings—even in the most conservative sectors, the world of Iranian women has changed. It is now rare for women to have five or six children and devote themselves entirely to the minutiae of household work. Those who still live such lives are often on the margins of society, voiceless, and untouched by the waves of change. Yet, policymakers frequently attempt—through propaganda or even official policy—to nudge the rest of society closer to this marginalized model. This apparent regression may not be ideal for society, but it clearly illustrates the gap between the cartwheel and the automobile.
For a woman who has spent her entire life in the kitchen and by the water basin, dowry could serve as a safety net, ensuring that if the man of the house ever decided to “discard” her, she would not be left destitute and could claim some share of what had been built under the name of “family.” Such a woman, who worked without official hours or wages to keep the household running, could find partial compensation in the form of dowry. This function may still exist in certain segments of society. To be honest, I don’t personally know anyone in such circumstances and perhaps cannot accurately convey their experiences, but I do know that even in traditional contexts, pursuing such a path is not without hardship and is not necessarily just.
Consider a woman from an upper-class family marrying someone of lesser status. The mehr al-mithl—the Dowry deemed appropriate by societal norms—is higher for her than it would be for a woman from a lower-class background. It’s as if cooking, cleaning, and bearing children in a household entitles a woman from an upper class to a higher sum. Dowry is only one example of such class-based distinctions. Bride price, maintenance, housing, and “suitable” employment fall into this same category, though they go beyond the scope of this discussion. In any case, while dowry may not ensure justice at the societal level, it might still offer a degree of financial security to an individual woman facing an uncertain future. From this angle, for those whose voices are not represented here, dowry might still serve a function.
However, as a legal construct—which is presumed to govern all members of society—it appears unlikely to solve any major issues for a significant portion of the population. It’s clear that a woman who works for pay outside the home contributes directly to the family economy; she brings money into the household and, based on cultural expectations, may still bear the larger burden of domestic work. Such a woman might also live independently in her own home, financially unbound to her father or husband. If we look at her through the same lens as in the past, it either results in overprotection (which creates its own set of problems) or simply fails to align with the rhythm of her life. The goal here is not to assign value between a woman who stays at home and lacks economic independence and one who earns an income. The issue is that the solution envisioned by lawmakers to secure the livelihood of one woman cannot be “tweaked” to fit the life of the other.
There are still segments of society that insist dowry is a tool for protecting women. Perhaps that’s true for some, but certainly not for all. The lawmaker, by leaning on its religious legitimacy, only introduces minor adjustments to dowry laws—and ultimately, these changes fail to resolve the societal issues at hand. Some parts of society have not yet grasped their position in the current moment: they insist their daughters obtain higher education, not to secure independent economic lives, but so that their dowry value will increase. Reality changes, and sometimes our mindset fails to keep pace with that change. This rigidity of thought ensnares lawmakers, beneficiaries of the previous system, and those who are simply accustomed to it and find adapting to new realities difficult. In any case, one thing I am sure of: if our mindset regarding women and the economy that governs their lives changes, these traditions—whether legally sanctioned or not—will inevitably evolve.
written by Alireza Goodarzi
Originally published in Khat-e Solh (Peace Mark) monthly magazine on April 21, 2025.
