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Women and child rights

Khomeini took on extensive and proactive support of the female populace during the ousting of the Shah and his subsequent homecoming, advocating for mainstreaming of women into all spheres of life and even hypothesizing about a woman head of state. However, once he returned, his stances on women's rights exhibited drastic changes. Khomeini revoked Iran's 1967 divorce law, considering any divorce granted under this law to be invalid. Nevertheless, Khomeini supported women's right to divorce as allowed by Islamic law. Khomeini reaffirmed the traditional position of rape in Islamic law in which rape by a spouse was not equivalent to rape or zina, declaring "Issue 2412- A woman who has entered into a permanent marriage should not go out of the house without her husband's permission, and she should surrender herself to whatever pleasure he wants and not prevent him from getting close to her without a legitimate excuse. If she obeys the husband in these matters, it is obligatory on the husband to provide her food, clothes, house and other items mentioned in the books, and if he does not provide, he is indebted to the wife, whether he has the ability or not. Issue 2413- If a woman does not obey her husband in the matters mentioned in the previous issue, she is a sinner and has no right to food, clothing, housing, and co-sleeping, but her dowry is not lost. Issue 2414- A man has no right to force his wife to serve the house."

A mere three weeks after assuming power, under the pretext of reversing the Shah's affinity for westernization and backed by a vocal conservative section of Iranian society, he revoked the divorce law. Under Khomeini the minimum age of marriage was lowered to 15 for boys and 13 for girls; nevertheless, the average age of women at marriage continued to increase.

Laws were passed that encouraged polygamy, made it impossible for women to divorce men, and treated adultery as the highest form of criminal offense. Women were compelled to wear veils and the image of Western women was carefully reconstructed as a symbol of impiety. Morality and modesty were perceived as fundamental womanly traits that needed state protection, and concepts of individual gender rights were relegated to women's social rights as ordained in Islam. Fatima was widely presented as the ideal emulatable woman.

At the same time, amidst the religious orthodoxy, there was an active effort to rehabilitate women into employment. Female participation in healthcare, education and the workforce increased drastically during his regime.

Reception among women of his regime has been mixed. Whilst a section were dismayed at the increasing Islamisation and concurrent degradation of women's rights, others did notice more opportunities and mainstreaming of relatively religiously conservative women.