foucault-and-the-iranian-revolution-janet-afary

246 Appendix
4. Women must be guaranteed security in the exercise of their legal rights
and freedoms.
5. True access to principal freedoms such as freedom of the pen, freedom
of expression, freedom of opinion, freedom of employment, and social free­
doms must be guaranteed for men and women of the nation.
6. All inequalities between men and women in national law, such as in
labor and employment law, must be removed.
7. Women's present employment must be maintained.
8. We express our gratitude to the government for its decision to reinstate
the Family Protection Law, and we ask that the limits of the law be addressed
so that women's rights are restored. We demand that the provisional govern­
ment of Engineer Bazargan declare its view with regard to this statement by
women.
Speech by Simone de Beauvoir
Delivered at a press conference in Paris on the eve of a trip to Iran by an
international women's delegation, which departed on March 19, 1979.
We have created the International Committee for Women's Rights (ClOF) in
response to calls from a large number of Iranian women. Their situation and
their revolt have greatly moved us. We have decided to create this committee,
which has set itself several tasks. The first one is information. It is a matter of
becoming informed about the situation of women across the world, a situa­
tion that to a very, very great extent is extremely difficult, painful. and even
odious. Therefore, we wish to inform ourselves, in very precise cases, of this
situation.
We then wish to inform others of it; that is, to communicate the knowl­
edge that we have gained by publishing articles. And finally, we wish to sup­
port the struggle of the women who fight against the situation that affects
them. That is the general idea of the CIDF.
The first task we have taken up is a very, very burning one for today. It
is the task of acquiring information concerning the struggle of the Iranian
women, communicating that information, and supporting their struggle. We
have received an appeal from a very large number of these women. We have
also seen their struggles, their fights, and their actions. We have appreciated
the depth of the utter humiliation into which others wanted to make them
fall, and we have therefore resolved to fight on their behalf.
Thus, the first practical step that will make our call to action concrete is