Maryam Ataeie
A woman carrying pocket-sized books walked around the bazaar saying: “Books for women. Educational books for cooking, nail painting, keeping your husbands happy, preserving skin youthfulness…”
Are these really the only needs of women?
Women who are educated, have an income and an understanding of their societies… is this truly what we need? The people who have published these books have not done so in vain because women buy these books. They love these books and they suggest it to each other.
The heart of the problem is this that people’s taste is shaped over time.
Movies, shows and books often portray women as being concerned only with cooking and beauty. Women who read are often portrayed as reading about keeping their husbands happy and growing their children.
Historically there has been a systematic effort to ensure that our reading and thinking remains at this level. I have rarely seen women around me read newspapers, speak about politics or react to social issues with intellect. Even those of us who are aware of this problem, this lack of depth in our thinking and the constraints society has created for our intellectual growth, have not tried enough to change women’s taste and enable them to be concerned about other things.
I wish we could publish a pocket-sized book about women’s rights, a topic many women avoid. I wish we wrote of news at an in-depth level and explore the roots of day-to-day incidents.
I wish we used our words to teach other women that justice is important. I wish we wrote that laws are to be respected and a world without discrimination is beautiful.
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Read this piece in Persian here.