Women driving women: drivers of women-only taxis in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Women's Studies International Forum 78 (2020) 102324

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Women driving women: drivers of women-only taxis in the Islamic Republic of Iran

T

Negin Sattari Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, United States of America.

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Gender Middle Eastern women Patriarchy Muslim women Gender segregation Iran

This paper explores the work narratives of drivers of women-only taxis in Iran to gain an understanding of how they navigate the world of driving segregated taxis. Iran's shift from a secular to an Islamic state in 1979 reinforced the gendered constructions of the public sphere through policies and practices that encouraged women’'s roles in the private sphere and channeled their realms of public participation into traditionally feminine domains to the greatest extent possible. Previous research provides important insights into the consequences of the post-revolutionary gender discourse for women. However, little attention has been paid to on-the-ground nuances of women’s day-to-day navigations of the public realm. Using in-depth qualitative data from interviews with 40 female taxi drivers, this study shows how these women incorporate cultural beliefs and values that have been central to the “gendering” of public life in the post-revolutionary context into their daily strategies of negotiations and resilience.

Introduction The post-revolutionary state in Iran, established after the victory of the 1979 Islamic revolution, relied heavily on the lives and bodies of women to transform what was to become a modernized and Westernized society under the Pahlavi regime into an Islamic nation (Esfandiari, 1997; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2016; Moallem, 2005; Moghissi, 1996, 2008). The hejab became mandatory after the revolution, and the institutionalization of gender-based segregation channeled women's realms of public life, including work, education, and entertainment, into women-only or feminine domains to the greatest extent possible. While not eradicating women's public presence, the Islamic revolution has altered women's experiences with and navigations of gender in the public sphere through an essentialist discourse that (1) conceptualizes segregation and the hejab as tools for protecting women's modesty and safety in the public sphere; (2) rejects the transnational discourse (Bunch, 2012) of gender equality as a path to women's empowerment; and (3) centers the essence of femininity on domesticity, especially motherhood. Although a wealth of research provides us with valuable insights into the complicated, and to a great extent, contradictory impacts of the post-revolutionary gender discourse on women's lives (Andrews and Shahrokni, 2014; Bahramitash, 2007; Bahramitash and Hooglund, 2011; Bayat, 2007; Shahrokni, 2014), little attention has been paid to the nuances of women's day-to-day navigations of public life in the

years following the revolution. Few studies have pursued an ethnographic focus on women's everyday negotiations of the dominant discourse that has been producing the gendered constructions of public life (Honarbin-Holliday, 2009; Mahdavi, 2008; Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam, 2011(Mills, 2007)(Massey, 1994). How do women perceive, navigate, and negotiate the boundaries that shape and set the limits on their public participation? This study bridges this gap by examining the narratives of drivers of women-only taxis, a group of women who are uniquely situated to reflect on the nuances of women's day-to-day navigations of public life in the post-revolutionary context. Women-only taxis were first introduced in Iran in 2006 by a private company in Tehran. The idea was to create taxis exclusively for women and driven by women. The widely publicized anecdotes about women and girls being kidnapped by male taxi drivers in large cities legitimized the company's initiative for creating this non-traditional career possibility for women in a traditional and segregated labor market. With high rates of sexual assault and harassment in mixed-sex taxis, womenonly taxis would not only appeal to the needs of women but would also fit well with the state's approach to women's public presence. The ideology of segregation centered on protecting women's bodies from sexualization and abuse justified the establishment of segregated taxis with the same rationale that had justified the segregation of other spaces, such as public buses, recreation centers, and hospitals, in the post-revolutionary era. Women-only taxis, however, have turned out to be different from

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2019.102324 Received 26 March 2019; Received in revised form 30 August 2019; Accepted 26 November 2019 0277-5395/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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work opportunities for women (Bahramitash and Esfahani, 2011), and the expansion of segregated public buses improved women's mobility, especially in urban areas (Shahrokni, 2014; Andrew and Shahrokni, 2014). However, the state's gender discourse legitimized numerous forms of discrimination against women. For example, women lost many of the family rights that were granted by the Shah's reforms, including the right to initiate divorce and assume custody of children; they also became barred from becoming judges and discouraged from entering certain professions through segregation and quota systems (Kian, 1995; Hoodfar and Sadr, 2010; Hoodfar and Sadeghi, 2009). Lack of opportunities for women's employment and discrimination in the labor market despite their economic needs became an important impetus for women to problematize the state's gender ideology. In a recent national survey on women's expectations from the government, the majority of women viewed gender discrimination and unemployment as the main issues impacting their lives. The same survey shows that women aspire to gain more representation in macro-level decision-making and to take more active roles in the public domain (Center for Women and Family Affairs, 2015). Moallem (2005) argues that such discord between the imagined Islamic female subject and how women's lives unfolded was the inevitable outcome of the uneasy encounter between modernity and Islamic fundamentalism. Islamist ideology and its success in mobilizing masses of women despite its traditional gender discourse “put in crisis” the liberal feminist assumptions about women's accounts of empowerment. At the same time, the model put forward by Islamists fell into crisis due to the questions that women's demands posed to the state. The state struggled with ideological and political contradictions to reconcile its “transnational claims of Islamic particularities”—which aimed to put forward the Islamic state as an alternative form of governing—with mundane technologies of nation-building and addressing questions of rights, access, and equality. Today, there is much diversity among Iranian women, and it is not possible to homogenize their views and experiences. Even among religious women, there are significant differences in their attitudes toward the revolution and the Islamic state (Bahramitash, 2014; Bahramitash, Sadegh, & Sattari, 2018). The state's gender ideology, however, is placed into crisis by women in one way or another. Those religious women who became educated professionals and political activists owing to the Islamization of public spaces do not silently tolerate discriminatory treatment. Islamic feminists push for reinterpretation of Islamic texts to advocate for gender equality from within Islam, and secular activists rely on the transnational discourse of human rights (Nussbaum, 2016) to problematize discrimination against women (Hoodfar and Sadeghi, 2009;Hoodfar and Sadr, 2010). Women who struggle economically lament the state for failing to protect vulnerable groups despite its early promises of justice for the poor. Using the narratives of drivers of women-only taxis, I will discuss women's day-today navigations of and negotiations with the gendered constructions of the public realm in the post-revolutionary context.

other segregated spaces. Rather than reducing women's public visibility by channeling their activities into closed spaces—as in the case of women-only green parks, swimming pools, hair salons, or recreation centers—the job of driving taxis bestowed a unique opportunity for women to transgress gender boundaries in the midst of urban streets, something that was rarely witnessed in the urban space. Segregation, therefore, as an institution and a core element of the state's gender ideology, ironically facilitated the desegregation of a hypermasculine occupation in an already male-dominated labor market. My findings also show that these taxis served as unique resources for these women, the majority of whom were responsible for taking care of themselves and keeping their families out of poverty. At the same time, considering that most of these women were previously homemakers, the job exposed them to the masculine constructions of the public sphere, especially incidences of harassment and discrimination, to a greater extent than before; this experience has caused these women to be more critical and outspoken about women's marginalization. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 female taxi drivers in Tehran and Isfahan, the country's capital and its third-largest city, this study will explore how these women interpret and articulate their day-to-day navigations of the public sphere as drivers of womenonly taxis. My analysis suggests that these women have incorporated cultural beliefs and values that have been central to the “gendering” of public life in the post-revolutionary context into their day-to-day strategies of negotiations and resilience and their discourse of empowerment. In the following sections, I will first provide an overview of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary gender discourse. I will then contextualize the emergence of women-only taxis and discuss the backgrounds and demographics of female taxi drivers. Next, I will describe the methodology used, followed by three sections that describe the main themes that emerged from my analysis of the women's narratives. Finally, I will discuss the findings and draw conclusions about the implications of my findings for understanding women's on-theground gender negotiations under patriarchal states. Gender in post-revolutionary Iran The 1979 revolution would not have materialized without the passionate participation of women. Masses of women—both religious and secular, and from a range of economic and social backgrounds—responded to Ayatollah Khomeini's call and participated in revolutionary events that led to the overthrow of the secular Pahlavi dynasty. Central to the revolutionary discourse was the promise of “liberating” women from what was framed as Western cultural toxification. The revolutionary discourse produced a contrast between Muslim and Western female subjects, one being pious and moral, and the other being hypersexualized and exploited within a neoliberal political economy (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2016; Moallem, 2005; Shams, 2016; Terman, 2010). Women's transgressions into masculine domains were rejected as a pathway to women's empowerment; instead, domesticity was politicized by conceptualizing motherhood, wifehood, and sisterhood as women's responsibility toward the nation and the revolution. It has been well established by scholars that simplifying Islamization in post-revolutionary Iran as a mere suppression of women's public life is reductionist, as it fails to capture the complexities imbedded in how the revolution changed women's lives (Bahramitash and Esfahani, 2011; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2016; Javaheri, 2015; Moghadam, 2003, 2004, 2011). The Islamization of society benefited many women, especially those from religious groups, by creating more opportunities for their public participation (Halper, 2005; Shahrokni 2014; Mirhosseini, 1999). A large percentage of women today owe their education to the segregation of schools and the Islamization of curricula, which eased religious families' resentment toward girls' education. The segregation of schools and other public sites, such as hospitals, hair salons, recreation centers, mosques, and some public offices, created exclusive

Methodology This paper relies on data from a broader ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted between July and December of 2015 in Tehran and Isfahan. Ethnography allows researchers to immerse themselves in the social environment they seek to reflect on and produce knowledge through a collaborative process with their interlocutors (Agar, 1996; Fetterman, 2009; Mosher et al., 2017). Ethnographic knowledge emerges from interactions between the researcher and subjects, and is the product of the positionality and agency of both sides (Denzin, 1999; Collins, 2000; Chattopadhyay, 2013; Bakas, 2017; (Denzin, 1996)). As an Iranian citizen who has spent the last decade of her life and received most of her education outside of Iran, I was situated on the borders of being an insider and an outsider in relation to the social 2

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context of my study (Sattari, 2018). Despite my close engagement with the sociocultural, political, and economic realities of Iran during my years outside, a lack of personal exposure to the particularities of the day-to-day manifestations of the gendered constructions of public life in the context of Iran for years limited my ability to establish an entirely insider positionality in the eyes of my participants. In addition, the differences between myself and the participants in terms of socioeconomic standings and educational capitals—especially considering that the fieldwork was carried out during a time of economic instability and hardship for the working class—are surely essential to the knowledge I have produced about the lives of these women (; Nazneen and Sultan, 2014). The data collection involved interviews in the form of one-on-one or focused group discussions and in-depth observations of women's working conditions. I conducted 40 interviews, including 30 individual interviews and three focus groups of two, three, and five participants. While my intention in the research design was to only conduct individual interviews, in three cases, women suggested having a group conversation because it would provide them with an opportunity to connect with their colleagues and meet more female drivers. To adjust the research design to the preference of the women, I accommodated three focus groups. Both semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus groups are valuable methods for exploring individuals' perceptions of and experiences with their surrounding social setting (Lofland et al., 2005; Seidman, 2005; Weiss, 1995)(Greenbaum, 1999). Through guided questions, researchers can create a space for participants to inform the research by sharing their views and experiences, simultaneously empowering them by making their voices heard. The focus groups particularly enriched the data by raising meaningful conversations among the women about their challenges, aspirations, work strategies, and stories. I was able to gain valuable information from listening to these internal conversations which otherwise might not have emerged in one-on-one interviews because of my positionality in relation to the women. After nearly 1 week of spending time at regular taxi stations in the city and acquiring information from male taxi drivers and taxi firms, I recruited my first participant in Tehran while visiting a taxi services company that encompassed most of the women-only taxis at that time. She agreed to have me in her home, and invited two of her coworkers for a group interview. This was my point of entry into the network of female drivers through which I managed to interview 19 more women in their homes or in public places such as parks. In Esfahan, I contacted and talked with each participant while they were parked on the street and waiting for passengers; in all cases, they were called on during the interviews, but kindly accepted having me in their taxis as they picked up and dropped off passengers. At such times, I paused the interviews in the presence of passengers and conducted observations. In all cases, I was introduced to the passengers by the drivers and in most occasions, I chatted with them about why they had chosen women-only taxis over mixed-sex taxis and their views on those taxis. The individual interviews lasted between 30 and 100 min, and the focus groups lasted between 95 and 165 min. The interview questions revolved around women's motivations for choosing this job, their working experiences, attitudes toward women's work in Iran, gender segregation, and gender roles. Interview questions opened up a space for the participants to reflect on women's issues in the Iranian labor market in general, beyond their particular jobs. In most of the interviews, women took advantage of the opportunity to express their views on women's status in post-revolutionary Iran, and their attitudes toward the impact of Islamization following the revolution. Women also shared their opinions about normative gender roles and constructions of masculinity in the Iranian context. Accounting for the feminist sensitivities to power dynamics between the researcher and the researched (Nazneen and Sultan, 2014 I situated myself as a listener, learner, and participant in the fieldwork rather than claiming a position of power as an educator or scholar. This

sensitivity was particularly important in this project because the majority of the women expressed belonging to economically vulnerable families during the time of the interviews, with 93% of them being the primary or only breadwinners of their households. Except for one unmarried participant, the rest had children. Nineteen were divorced, two were widowed, and 18 were married. Among the married group, only two were married to well-off men. The rest had husbands who had lowincome jobs, or who were unemployed due to physical disabilities, illness, drug addiction, or bankruptcy. In terms of formal education, the women had a high school diploma or less, except for four women with some post-secondary education. I intentionally opened up spaces for participants to raise questions about who I was and my intentions for defining this project. This, as Karen Ross (2017) has argued, placed me in “vulnerable moments” when I had to be open and honest about elements of my personal life—in the same way I was expecting my participants to be—and expose myself to the uncertain conditions of being judged and evaluated by participants. All interviews were tape recorded, manually transcribed, and analyzed following an inductive approach and using grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1994) as the informing methodology. Data analysis involved three rounds of coding by the author; the first two rounds involved reading the interviews line by line for initial codes and memos. This phase was followed by a round of axial coding to connect the initial codes and make theoretical inferences about how women were interpreting, navigating, and negotiating gendered constructions of public life as drivers of women-only taxis. This final phase of analysis revealed that the system of beliefs and values that shaped women's discourse of empowerment and strategies of resilience intersected with the underlaying discourse that has been shaping post-revolutionary gender politics in interesting ways. My positionality as a member of post-revolutionary generation, someone who was born into the climate of mandatory hijab and enforced segregation, has undoubtedly impacted my inferences from the data. My lived experiences with seeking empowerment from within the state-imposed constrains and restrictions enabled me to avoid conceptualizing women's experiences as narrations of victimization despite the conventional depictions of Muslim women living under patriarchal states especially in journalistic accounts. In the following sections, I will discuss the emerging themes from my analysis. Women-only taxis: unique resources for women in a tight labor market The first women-only taxi service company was established in 2006 in Tehran by a private sector company, and was later expanded to other major cities such as Isfahan and Mashhad. Iran was among the first countries to implement the idea, with other countries, including India, Mexico, Lebanon, the UAE, and more recently, Saudi Arabia, to follow. These companies framed their service as a response to women's right to safe public mobility (Shahrokni, 2014) and a new way of creating job opportunities for women in economic need. As of 2015, when I conducted the fieldwork, more than 2000 women in Tehran and Isfahan were registered as taxi drivers. Gender segregation in the public sphere has been crucial to demarcating the conservative versus reformist-progressive political ideologies in the Middle East region (Meijer, 2010). In Iran, letting women formally operate as taxi drivers on the urban streets—even in segregated taxis—would not align with the conservative views on proper forms for women's public participation. However, the state's promises of bringing justice to economically vulnerable groups (mostazafin) helped these companies to legitimize their non-traditional business initiatives and receive permits. Azar, one of the drivers in Isfahan, noted: There was resistance among the religious community of the city, especially the Friday prayer Imam. But eventually, two war veterans were able to start the company … They assured the religious 3

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sisterhood in ways different from what was imagined within the revolutionary and post-revolutionary discourse. While traditional conceptualizations of motherhood and sisterhood rest on women's domesticity, in the participants' narratives, they were reconstructed as a means for lamenting structural barriers and cultural intolerance toward women's equal access to the public space. For example, Azar's statement about police officers' double standards for female drivers shows how the sanctity of motherhood underlies these women's accounts of the discourse that justifies their decision to undertake a masculine job:

community that their intention is to benefit those women who need jobs to provide for their children. Taxi driving is a suitable source of income for vulnerable and low-skill groups, especially in large cities with a high demand for public transport. Taxi driving income can be taken home on a daily basis and is well suited to those in immediate need. Women-only taxis, as my participants discussed, opened a door for them to save their families from falling into poverty. As Malmal, a divorced woman with four children in Tehran, stated:

A while ago, when a couple of my coworkers were awaiting riders, a police officer had approached and accused them in a very brutal way for making that street corner their “hangout.” This is very interesting, isn't it?! We, as mothers, are out on the streets to work and earn for our children, and this country's police officer says we are just ‘hanging out.’

How would I have been able to afford my children's life if the Khomeini Relief Foundation had not given us loans for taxis? Four children, rent, utilities? I would have had to send them to their [drug-addicted] dad, who would have sent them to live with his relatives. Considering the high rate of female unemployment (Human Rights Watch, 2017), and their lack of competitive educational and work backgrounds, the alternatives for many of these women were servicesector, industry blue-collar, or home-based jobs. Taxi driving came with several advantages compared to those alternatives, as it gave women autonomy regarding their work schedules and a better income. Several participants, for example, were previously carpet weavers, a traditionally female job, especially in rural areas and small towns. They had not been able to handle their lives with the low income, which was particularly caused by the deterioration of the carpet export industry after the 2006 round of international sanctions against the country. Women-only taxis also constituted safe spaces for drivers to merge their motherhood and career responsibilities. For example, Shokooh, whose husband was permanently injured in a workplace accident shortly after the birth of their child, noted:

Women's belief in what they viewed as the essence of motherhood was also enabling, as it provided them with an alternative to missing institutional supports and resources to cope with the conditions facing them. Motherhood, in the women's narratives, was reconstructed from an uninterrupted devotion to maternal nurturing, as the traditional maternal ideologies dictate, to a source of resilience in conditions which they were finding onerous. Senobar, from Tehran and the single mother of two children, commented: Unfortunately, our society always downgrades women. Despite all of these discriminations, all of us stand courageously! I have no doubt that if conditions were the other way around, not even one man would stay in this job! But thank God we have all stood courageously just for the love of our children! These accounts refute reductionist conceptualizations of motherhood, especially in the context of the Middle East, as a burden to women's participation in paid work, and they highlight the centrality of motherhood to working women's discourse of resilience (Zraly et al., 2013) in adverse labor markets. Ashraf, a mother of two and married to a drug-addicted, unemployed man, stated:

I had a newborn and I could not take her with me to [office-based] jobs. With this job, I could do this. Many of my riders knew me and would let me pull over for a couple of minutes and breastfeed my baby. Therefore, as a new job opportunity, women-only taxis opened doors to many women who otherwise would have had difficulty dealing with challenges particular to their personal and family situations. These women could now afford food, housing, and clothing for their families, education for their children, the medical expenses of their disabled spouses, and many more necessities. Besides fulfilling their financial needs, many of them enjoyed the public mobility that came with the job and their ability to break gender stereotypes. In the next sections, I will delve into the experiences and narratives of these women to understand how they navigate the gendered constructions of the public sphere as taxi drivers and their strategies of negotiations, empowerment, and resilience.

When [women] work outside the house, [their] children and husbands still get hungry at noon. No matter how tired [they] are from work or how much pain [they] have because [they] are on their period, the food must be on the table. Only women can handle it because of the love they have in their hearts. The discourse of motherhood in some cases enabled women to incorporate their own evaluation of the extent to which the state's structural restrictions, particularly segregation, impacted their work. Being a taxi driver came with a plethora of situations in which women could take control over the extent to which they abided by the norms and regulations related to segregation. For example, while, according to the law, women were not allowed to pick up male riders (unless accompanied by women) or work as rotating taxis, a few of them mentioned doing so after hours to make some extra cash. In these situations, the discourse of motherhood enabled women to negotiate their deviation from laws and norms with both authorities and male passengers. Saboor recalled an experience when she was caught by a police officer while picking up male riders:

Driving women-only taxis, negotiating motherhood and sisterhood The discourse of the 1979 revolution constructed women as mothers of the nation and sisters to their Muslim brothers (Moallem, 2005). However, as an economically underprivileged and socially unprotected group, the day-to-day lives of my participants by no means resembled the elevated image of protected mothers and sisters of the nation. My fieldwork provided in-depth evidence of hostility toward these women; women shared extensive experiences of sexual harassment and assault which go beyond the scope of this paper. The women were also struggling with overt discrimination within their companies, the city transportation councils, police officers, male drivers, customers, and beyond. The non-traditional nature of the job had also reduced many of these women's social standing within their families and communities. In navigating the gendered constructions of the public space, a masculine job, discriminatory practices, and unfriendly cultural spheres, these women adopted the discourse of motherhood and

It was Ramazan; my children and I were all fasting, we did not have any dates in the fridge for the Iftar, and I had no cash in my pocket! I jumped in the car, drove to the nearest crowded area, and picked up four male passengers. A police officer stopped me right away. He confiscated my car registration and driver's license … I went to the main police office the next day to get my documents back! The officer told me, “you have broken the laws!” I said: “I needed money to get some dates for my children's Iftar. I have not stolen from anyone nor done anything unethical! I just picked up and dropped off a few passengers just like men do!” He was clearly ashamed and 4

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despite its difficulties, Somayeh, a retired high school teacher and a self-identified religious woman, stated:

gave my documents back. Motherhood and sisterhood were also integral to how these women interacted with male passengers. Zohreh, a driver who was working for a small neighborhood taxi-service agency, adopted motherhood and sisterhood to produce cultural spaces in which her role as a female taxi driver was normalized. When asked whether she felt comfortable having male passengers in her car, she responded:

The fact that I can do something and make an impact on the society keeps me motivated … I always keep my car clean and treat my riders with respect. I think these behaviors remain in my riders' minds and make a good reputation for women-only taxis. Azar, from Isfahan, emphasized following a decent and pious dress code in order to present taxi driving as suitable for women and counter those accounts that conceptualize it as masculine and incompatible with how femininity is constructed in the post-revolutionary context:

I see all of them as my sons and brothers. Sometimes male passengers ask me if they can sit in the front. I always say, “No problem! You are my brother!”

When I am driving this taxi, I am responsible for following some rules. For example, I need to follow the standard dress code to send this message to men and people that we, women, can do anything while protecting our dignity and decency.

On a similar note, Saboor recounted one of her experiences with a male rider It was after midnight. I stopped for a young man on the street side. He sat in the front seat without looking at me. After a while, when he was handing me the ride-fee, he said, “Here, sir!” Suddenly he looked at me [and noticed I am a woman]. He apologized and asked, “Weren't you scared to let me in your car [late at night]?” I said: “No, my dear! Why would I be scared? You are as young as my son!”

I rode with Azar in Isfahan as she picked up a girl from summer school and drove her home. She was a high school girl wearing a chador. On the way back, Azar said: Giving families the peace of mind to let their young daughters use taxis inspires me to continue. I have a teenage girl, myself, and this gives me great joy that I can provide safety for girls of other families. I thank God that families trust us. I, as a mother, have this peace of mind that if I sell my taxi one day, we have women-only taxis in the city that my daughter can use.

Therefore, while motherhood and sisterhood constituted the backbone of the state's discourse for producing womanhood as a sanctified status which was to be protected through policies and practices such as segregation and the hejab, women's accounts in this section show how these same concepts are appropriated by women to develop resilience and maintain their livelihood in the face of the state's failure to deliver on its promises of safety and dignity for women.

While working women’'s engagement with social responsibility is predominantly studied in the context of the industrialized corporate world and is focused on women in leadership (Alonso-Almeida, 2015; Cook and Glass, 2018), the quotes from Azar and Somayeh show how women's non-traditional blue-collar work translates into social transformations in contexts where conservative gender ideologies about women's work are predominant. These women viewed their segregated taxis as venues of empowerment despite the liberal approaches to segregation, which ultimately presume it to be a barrier to equal access to the public sphere. Women's accounts in this section highlight their agency in giving empowering meanings to their segregated taxis through interpretive practices that depict their labor as a necessity for women's safe mobility in the public space as well as their social responsibility to change public views on what women can and should do.

Driving women-only taxis, negotiating social responsibility The normalcy of mixed-sex taxis and male drivers as the faces of public transport in urban areas urged women to engage in “interpretive” practices (Broad et al., 2004) to construct their taxis as a needed public service and to give meaning to their career choices. Interpretive practices involve “procedures, conditions, and resources through which reality is apprehended, understood, organized, and represented in the course of everyday life” (Gubrium and Holstein, 1997 cited by Broad et al., 2004) (Smart, 1998). For women who participated in my study, these interpretive practices were informed by a discourse of gender difference, one that conceptualizes men as inherently different from women (Lewis, 2013) and thus unfit to serve them in the public domain. Shohreh, a woman from Isfahan, asserted:

Driving women-only taxis, negotiating equality Based on the women's accounts, the mobility and status that came with driving taxis transformed how they imagined their position in the labor market and gave them a sense of entitlement to question restrictions on women's equal access to all sectors. This, for example, is represented in Avaas statement:

Our job is very beneficial to the society. Imagine you, as a woman, are heading to a party, in makeup and dress. If you ride with a male driver, you won't feel comfortable because he might ogle you or say something inappropriate. But with me, you feel much safer because I am a woman like you. I warrant your safety!

Now, in society, women are more successful than men. We wanted to show our ability to work outside the house and that we like to be active in society. Nothing is impossible, and we can do everything.

Drawing on a discourse that justifies segregation as a protection against unwanted disturbances from men, participants conceptualized their taxis as spatial domains where—despite mixed-sex taxis—problematic practices of masculinity were not prevalent. In the women's accounts, women-only taxis were constructed as inherently safe domains which improved other women's experiences with public transport. As Mahvash, from Isfahan, recounted:

While participating in the institution of segregation through their job, these women lamented the restrictions imposed on their mobility in the labor market that have been caused by the ideology of segregation. As the quote from Zahra, one of the drivers in Isfahan, shows, rather than interpreting their practice of driving women-only taxis as their approval of or participation in the institution of segregation, these women aspired to negotiate equal access to other traditionally masculine domains:

Before becoming a taxi driver, myself, I did not feel comfortable with male taxi drivers because they look for excuses to start mingling with you or staring at you from the mirror. But now, sometimes I have riders who breastfeed their kids in my car and pray for me for doing this job.

I do not like labeling jobs as masculine and feminine. What is wrong with having women in all types of jobs? I am so sad for the fact that women cannot work as judges in our country! Or why don't they let women in police and military departments? When women have proven that they can do anything, there is no reason to limit them …

The difference discourse (Crompton and Lyonette, 2005; Lewis, 2013; Ronen, 2018) enabled some of these women to expand the scope of what they did beyond an economic activity and frame their labor as a social responsibility. Regarding her motivation to remain in this job 5

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leverage their demonstrated ability to undertake a traditionally masculine career to debunk the very assumptions that have been justifying segregation in the post-revolutionary context. Many scholars have already made the point that to reduce women in the Muslim Middle East to victims of religious patriarchy is simplistic (Mohanty, 1988; Grünenfelder, 2012; Abu-Lughod, 2002; Keddie, 2007). However, the academic and journalistic accounts of these women still develop and perpetuate a homogenizing picture of the state's construction of patriarchy as a major barrier to women's empowerment (Haghighat-Sordellini, 2009; Soltani, 2017) without delving into nuances of how women navigate the patriarchal practices and ideologies. As Patricia Collins (2000) argues, oppression is complex and multifaceted, as is the notion of empowerment. Incidences and acts of oppression are embedded in our day-to-day lives in all their mundaneness as much as they can be found in macrostructures and institutions. In the same way, activism for empowerment among women covers a range of activities from individual navigations of day-to-day inequalities to collective movements. Collins warns against “labeling one form of oppression as more important than others, or one expression of activism as more radical than another” (Collins, 2000, 288). The findings of this paper shed light on women's day-to-day acts of resistance against inequalities and the nuances of their discourse of resilience and empowerment. These women's stories show how women's strategies of resilience and discourses of empowerment in the face of unfriendly working environments cannot be simplified to explicit and direct backlash against inequalities, as liberal feminist accounts of empowerment prefer to argue. The daily lives of women in Iran are pervaded with alternative forms of empowerment that urge us to expand our understanding of forms and manifestations of women's empowerment beyond these liberal accounts. This is not to undervalue the movements among women that target the core of the state's patriarchy explicitly and radically. Such actions are surely courageous, invaluable, and influential. However, in order to construct a realistic account of gender dynamics in post-revolutionary Iran, we need to incorporate different perspectives, understandings, and actions of empowerment among women as they navigate day-to-day incidences of discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion. Positioned in the margins of the margins, the experiences of female taxi drivers provide us with a unique opportunity to expand our theoretical understanding of the elements that empower women under patriarchal states. These complexities cannot be captured and appreciated if we do not expand our definition of what counts as acts of empowerment, as Collins and many other feminists have encouraged us to do (AbuLughod, 2002; Mahmood, 2005; Mohanty, 1988). Using the narratives and experiences of my participants, I have discussed how, despite what may be expected based on the liberal definition of empowerment, women's discourse surrounding empowerment does not necessarily contradict with the state's gender discourse. Interestingly, in many senses, what fed these women's discourse and strategies of empowerment resonated with the state-promoted models of womanhood. Based on the narratives of my participants, I showed how women incorporate concepts like motherhood, sisterhood, domesticity, modesty, segregation, and gender essentialism to carve out empowering spaces for themselves in a career severely unfriendly toward women. This is not to grant any credit to the state, however. This study recommends a framework for thinking about women living under patriarchal states, particularly in the Middle East and Iran, that goes beyond the reductionist “women versus state” model and recognizes the complexities of the state's approach to womanhood and women's responses to its structural oppressions. My findings help to destabilize modern dichotomies (Avishai, 2008; Essers et al., 2010; Mahmood, 2005; Moallem, 2005)(Rinaldo, 2014) such as progressive versus traditional, liberated versus oppressed, and agency versus patriarchy. These notions, along with the very concepts of womanhood and gender, are

Right now, we do not have any female bus drivers in Isfahan, but if one day they give us the option, I will be among those who go for it. Bayat (2009), a pioneer scholar in theorizing about how social changes occur in the Middle East context, argues that women's public presence during the years following the revolution established the core of their success in overturning some of the patriarchal dominations over their lives. Without the freedom to form a collective movement for pressing for equality, women managed to assert their right to access public spaces for work, education, and entertainment through what he calls the “art of presence.” Women's mundane activities that preserve their lives and livelihoods, in his account, have had implications for their collective social transformations that go beyond their individual life experiences. This power of “presence” was evident in my participants' narratives. Women viewed their day-to-day transgressions in the public sphere as steps toward long-lasting improvements for women. Zohreh, one of the drivers in Tehran, stated: Our society assumes that women cannot handle some jobs! But haven't you seen other countries? Women do the roughest jobs. I have seen women on TV who do welding. We [Iranian women] must do these types of jobs so we can prove to other women that we can do it too! Not just men! Soodabeh, one of the first-generation drivers in Tehran, remarked We stepped into this field because of our economic needs. However, we opened this road for other women too. We set the ground for other women to do these types of jobs. Therefore, while they were created within the scope of the state-promoted project of spatial segregation, women-only taxis have had inevitable consequences for how public space, as a social and gendered domain, is interpreted by women, and for how they perceive their positions in the public arena. The social exposure, mobility, and experiences that come with driving taxis in the midst of urban streets have consequences for women's mindsets that cannot be reversed. These women drive segregated taxis, but simultaneously destabilize the boundaries between what is constructed as masculine and feminine in the public domain. They owe their career to the institution of segregation, but reject passively accepting its restrictive implications for their own and other women's lives. While mostly belonging to low-income backgrounds, many of them view the job as being beyond an economic activity, representing an opportunity for making social transformations. Discussion and conclusion This paper explored the work experiences of drivers of women-only taxis in Iran to gain an understanding of how these women interpret and navigate the world of driving women-only taxis in the context of post-revolutionary Iran. Three main themes emerged from my analysis of how these women described their day-to-day experiences. First, although cultural definitions of women's family responsibilities, especially motherhood, are often discussed as barriers to their social transgressions in the context of the Middle East, women's narratives in this study showed how these very same concepts are discursively transformed into means of empowerment as women negotiate better opportunities in the public realm. Second, while taxi driving is a unique economic resource for women living under restrictive economic conditions, many of the participants interpreted their job as having significance beyond being an economic activity, viewing their career choices as a step toward destabilizing the dominant discourse that has been producing limits to women's public participation in the post-revolutionary context. Third, although they were participating in the institution of segregation through their job, these women did not approve of the ideology of segregation and its manifested forms of discrimination against women in the labor market. Instead, they aspired to 6

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economic needs and struggles with discriminations and marginalization appeared to cause severe emotional pressures and psychological insecurities among women. Being secured from the anxieties and hopelessness of these years, I was disabled to fully engage with the suffering of my participants most of whom belonged to vulnerable groups. Therefore, the findings and arguments of this paper must be interpreted by considering the imbedded, and to a great extent, inevitable limitations of the research caused by the differences between myself and my participants' positionalities.

contextually contingent (Borgerson, 2005; Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1982; Ghasemi, 2015)(Julia, 2012)(Burke, 2012). In the context of post-revolutionary Iran, the narratives of women in my study show how patriarchal institutions like segregation can have “unintended consequences” (Andrew and Shahrokni, 2014) by providing venues for women to express their agency and develop an empowering discourse in the face of discrimination from within the state's traditional gender ideology. My findings also have useful implications for understanding constructions of femininity among Muslim women or in the Middle East in general. As voluntary participants of the segregation institution, followers of the Islamic hejab, and women who make social transformations by pursuing a masculine career, do women like my participants reinforce or destabilize the Islamic state's idea(l)s of womanhood and femininity? Where do they fall within the binary of traditional versus liberal femininity? Do these women embody agency in the face of structural patriarchy or patriarchal suppressions of women's freedom and mobility? As I hoped to suggest in this paper, beyond falling into the binaries that constitute the core of the modern liberal discourse (Mahmood, 2005; Moallem, 2005), the narratives of these women expose the inaccuracy of these very binaries in describing the lives of women living under patriarchal states. These women navigate the public arena and the challenges and opportunities that come with destabilizing gender norms in their own way, undermining those accounts that either reduce Muslim women in the Middle East to silent victims of patriarchy or imagine their empowerment only in collective movements against the states. The narratives of these women are about the complexity of how oppression and empowerment happen; about alternative understandings of gender inequality and also equality in the maledominated labor markets of the Middle East; about the lives of women who transform their lives from within the ideology of segregation and a patriarchal state. As discussed in the beginning of this paper, the state's approach to women's issues and women's response to its gender politics have not been homogenous and thus not simple to grasp theoretically. The Islamic State of Iran, as Moallem (2005) has argued, envisioned women's social empowerment in ways that violated the liberal and progressive sensitivities while at the same time, providing alternative opportunities for their public participations. Four decades into the revolution, women's status has been shaped and reshaped by a plethora of social, political, and economic realities beyond the revolutionary gender discourse. One issue, however, remains intact; the state's gender politics and women's strategies to navigate empowerment under the shadow of state's patriarchy speak to the calls by post-colonial and black feminist scholarship for expanding conceptualizations of agency, empowerment, and oppression. As a closing note, my data must be interpreted by considering the fact that the fieldwork was conducted during the time of what many inside scholars call, collective hopelessness, toward improvement of conditions in the whole country. As I mentioned in the methodology section, I was not well-positioned to connect with major events and realities that shaped the dominant public discourse, concerns, and struggles. During my fieldwork, the country's economy was shrunk under the impacts of west-imposed economic sanctions, which were meant to dismantle Iran's nuclear program but had sever impacts on people's lives, and there seemed to be public hopelessness toward economic conditions. While these sanctions were placed in 2006, before I left the country, their impacts on ordinary people's lives reached their peak when I was in the U.S. It was only through talking to my participants and field observations that I could see the depth of serious economic challenges facing lower and even middle-class groups. The price of housing and merchandises were astonishingly higher than when I left while the level of income, for lower and middle class in formal sectors of economy, had not raised proportionately. Some of my participants expressed extreme feelings of despair and pessimism toward their future. The job did not suffice in helping them meet all their

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Negin Sattari is a Post-Doctoral fellow and instructor at the Clemson University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice and the Women in Leadership program. Her research explores the experiences of women in male-dominated jobs to address various research questions about how masculine constructions of space are navigated by women.

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