THE NEW PERSIAN WOMAN
Western nations are not alone in the rapid change of today; the unchangeableness and despotism of the East are yielding as never before. The greatest factor in this, is Western contact. The fruits of Christianity are welcomed all over the Orient, for non-Christian and antiChristian faiths never work for the progress of a country, for the uplift of individuals, nor for the relief of suffering woman, except as a mother is a negligible quantity.
For centuries the position of the Eastern woman has been a crying evil; it has seldom, however, been recognized as such by her, but simply accepted as her lot. Man has legislated to his own advantage, and woman has acquiesced, no other way being open or known to her. Today contact has changed this.
Few countries are more familiar than the land of the Shah, yet how little is generally known of its present condition? The fame of its cats and carpets, its poets and philosophers, its wine and its rose gardens is widespread; but of the fame of its men and women little is heard. Persia still lives on the credit of its past glory, yet nationality is indestructible, and the germ of the power which made such a bold bid for world conquest, though it has lain dormant for the greater part of the last 2,250 years, is still vital, and with the help and guidance of the West, Persia may yet take an honourable place among the nations of the Middle East. Isolation and sleep have gone, and huge changes are bound to come.
The greatest weakness in the social and national life of Persia has been its estimate of woman. The seclusion and swaddling of her life has been a religious command and a political policy; this wastage of "a nation's greatest asset" has kept Persia in a backwater. Emancipation will not come through protest or pleading. Persia's
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