russiangirlsformarriage

More women in Iran are forgoing marriage. A woman shops russian iranian marriage textbooks in downtown Tehran. Iran are female, according to official statistics.

Then in her late 20s and rebounding from a string of broken relationships, Fahimeh Azadi moved alone into an apartment in working-class southern Tehran. Her very presence, she recalled, was “a walking challenge to the men. Azadi had joined a growing number of women in Iran who are electing to remain single, defying their parents’ expectations and the strict conventions of the Islamic Republic. Still, Azadi had to balance independence with caution. She ascended the staircase only when it was clear of neighbors and admonished visiting friends to walk on tiptoes to avoid attracting attention. But men in the building still wondered about the single young woman upstairs. The connotation being: Is she available for sex?

My guard was up,” Azadi recalled. I behaved in a way that men didn’t dare poke their noses into my affairs. And I managed to live there for two years without anyone harassing me. Fahimeh Azadi, 35, a university graduate and tour guide who is fluent in English and Russian, is among a growing number of women in Iran who are electing to remain single. Now 35, Azadi has moved to a more genteel part of town but still lives by herself. More than 3 million educated Iranian women over 30 are unmarried, according to Mizan, the official news agency of Iran’s judiciary.

Their numbers are increasing as divorce becomes more common and more women attend universities, exposing them to careers and incomes independent of men who, by law and custom, are supposed to be their guardians. That is a profound generational shift in a society of 80 million whose theocracy preaches that a woman’s main purpose in life is to be a wife and mother. Clerics promote marriage relentlessly and often cite the prophet Muhammad, who is quoted as saying about his own marriage: “He who does not follow my tradition is not my follower. But as Iran has promoted higher education, throngs of women have answered the call, in part to improve their prospects in a job market stagnating under international economic sanctions. But once equipped with degrees, many struggle to find men willing to embrace a more liberated woman.