Iranian Women Pan Polygamy

Around 250 people, mostly women, protested Wednesday against state-run Iranian TV for airing a series that promoted polygamy, saying it was evidence that the hard-line Islamic state was trampling women's rights.

Wearing brightly colored clothing as opposed to the traditional head-to-toe black chador, the women gathered at a building in central Tehran to denounce policies by hard-liners that seek to restrict women to roles such as obedient housewives.

"Our gathering today is a voice of protest against the trampling of our rights and promotion by television of polygamy," woman rights activist Parvin Ardalan told The Associated Press.

Women activists launched a protest campaign last month after state television, controlled by hard-liners, aired a series titled "Another Lady," on which a woman introduces her friend to her husband for marriage.

Under the strict form of Islamic law applied in Iran, men can keep up to four wives at the same time, a right not granted to women. Also, a woman needs her husband's permission to work or travel abroad, while a man's court testimony is considered twice as important as a woman's.

Farzaneh Sadeghi, another protester, said state TV rarely promotes the idea of women working in high public posts or as professionals.

Rather, it seeks to depict woman as people restricted to kitchen, she said.

There are no official statistics available on polygamy in Iran, but it is prevalent in many small cities and rural regions in Iran.

Despite being restricted from the nation's highest political posts, Iranian women — who number over 32 million of the nation's 68 million population — enjoy more political rights than women in most neighboring Gulf Arab states, possessing the right to vote and hold public office.

The 1997 election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami led to women enjoying greater freedoms. Khatami appointed a woman as vice president and others to top government posts, but not Cabinet positions.