Progress Amid Resistance

134 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAoften forfeit their mehriyeh and other financial benefits in exchange for adivorce, buying their freedom from unhappy or abusive marriages.Women’s extensive legal vulnerability to divorce, polygamy, sigheh,and loss of child custody, combined with broader economic difficultiesin Iran, has led prospective wives and their families to demand extremelylarge mehriyeh as a protective measure. This in turn adds to prospectivehusbands’ apprehension about marriage, given rising unemployment andhousing costs and their obligation to support their new families financially.The resulting delayed or precarious marriages have added to social problemsin the country.Women are legally protected from slavery and gender-based, slavery-likepractices. Iran is a member of all major international conventions againstslavery and human trafficking for both labor and sexual exploitation. However,academic research and official reports indicate that the number of runawaysand the rate of drug addiction and prostitution among girls is rising,adding to the vulnerability of poor or lower-class women. 38Women and men are both subject to state-sanctioned torture andcruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments for political activism or sexualtransgressions. For example, individuals found guilty of adultery can besentenced to death by stoning under Article 83 of the penal code, althoughsuch convictions are rare due to relatively strict evidentiary requirements.In practice, significantly more women than men are sentenced to stoning.The punishment’s legality has important implications and is basedon the assumption that sexual relationships are to be punitively controlledby religious authorities rather than governed by the mutual consent oftwo adults. Moreover, the public ritual surrounding these tortuous killingsreinforces violence, cruelty, and misogyny in general.Iran and the Sudan are the only Muslim-majority countries that haveincluded stoning in their criminal codes. 39 In the 1980s, bowing underdomestic and international pressure, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a decreebanning the practice, but after his death, some local judges began implementingthe punishment again. 40 In 2002, Ayatollah Mahmoud HashemiShahroudi, the head of the judiciary, declared a moratorium on stoning,but the practice continued, particularly in small towns. State authoritiesusually deny that this punishment is carried out, but because it hasnot been outlawed, some local judges consider it a matter of discretion.Following the stoning of two men in January 2009, a spokesman for the