The Leader made the remarks in Tehran during a meeting with hundreds of women professors, seminary teachers and intellectuals.
“Many efforts have been made in the Islamic system to help women regain their rightful position,” he said. “But women are still facing many problems, especially in their family life, and these problems should be resolved by approving the necessary laws and taking practical measures,” which he did not specify.
Commenting on the West’s attitude toward women, the Leader said the Western philosophy must be confronted.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran should openly, seriously, and incessantly criticize the West’s wrong attitude toward women and fulfill its obligation to uphold the dignity and true status of women,” he said. He did not note that when Westerners criticize the treatment of women in the Islamic Republic that is condemned as illegal interference in Iranian affairs.
The problems women are facing in the modern world are the consequence of the West’s wrong attitude toward women’s status and dignity, he said.
Based on this wrong attitude, in Western societies men are allowed to abuse women and if women want to be in the limelight and reach high positions, they must try to please men, the Leader said. He did not make clear if he was suggesting that women seeking high posts in the Islamic Republic were expected to try to displease men.
He said the Western approval of the abuse of women “is the greatest injustice to women.” He went on to say that the Western strategists and policymakers have begun organized efforts to promote this wrong culture, and, along those lines, their propaganda machine is stirring a commotion about the groups that are trying to uphold moral standards and safeguard the dignity of women.
Westerners are opposed to the Islamic women’s dress code [hejab] because the observance of moral values runs contrary to the West’s strategic policy toward women, he said, apparently generalizing to the entire West the new French law banning full-face coverings. The French law, however, does not bar the style of dress mandated in the Islamic Republic, and US law neither requires nor prohibits any form of dress.
Khamenehi said family life has been undermined in the West, and the trafficking of women and children, cohabitation, and the birth of children out of wedlock are on the rise in the world.
The most recent US human rights report, however, critiques Iran for failing to take action to stop human trafficking in the Islamic Republic. It said, “Iranian women are trafficked internally for forced prostitution and forced marriage. Iranian and Afghan children living in Iran are trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation—sometimes through forced marriages, in which their new ‘husbands’ force them into prostitution and involuntary servitude as beggars or laborers to pay debts, provide income or support drug addiction.”
Khamenehi’s reference to the growth of births out of wedlock in the West is correct, however. After a pause in the 1990s, out-of-wedlock births have been rising sharply in United States in recent years. The growth, however, is mainly among older women and may reflect the rising disinterest in formal marriage in the West, which is an attitude growing among women and doesn’t reflect the exploitation of women so much as an extreme means of women claiming gender independence.
In 1970, half of all out-of-wedlock births in the United States were to women under 20; in 2007, less than a quarter of such births were to that age group. In the United States, almost 40 percent of all births were out of wedlock in 2007, while in Sweden, Norway, Iceland and France more than half of all births that year were out-of-wedlock.
