Iran Snapshot: Is It a "US Victory" over Tehran on Women's Rights?

The big Iran story in The New York Times this morning is of Iran's failure to win a seat on the executive board of the new United Nations organization on women's rights.

Tehran was foiled by the last-minute candidacy of East Timor, which meant there were 11 candidates for the 10 seats allocated to the Asia region.

The Times story goes much farther, however, hailing American organisation of "a global diplomatic effort to block Iran from the board, with its ambassadors approaching dozens of foreign ministries" as part of "the broader American strategy to isolate Iran". US Ambassador Susan Rice was beaming afterwards, "[Iran] lost, and they lost handily,” she added. “The slate that was selected, including the late candidacy of Timor-Leste, is one that is largely comprised of countries that are committed to women’s rights and have a good record of support of women’s rights and human rights.”

Indeed, the tone is so effusive that I wonder if there may a backlash over the American gloating beyond the Iranian delegation's claim that the US was playing "childish" political games. It has been noticed that Saudi Arabia's candidacy for the board was unchallenged; Rice said defensively, “I am not going to deny that there were several countries that are going to join the board of UN Women that have less than stellar records on women’s rights, indeed human rights.”

Before the vote, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi had denounced not only the candidacy but of Iran but of Saudi Arabia,saying the election of either would be "a joke" but adding that the Saudi record on women's rights was worse than that of Tehran.

This morning, the activist group Mission Free Iran greets the omission of Iran from the board as a victory for women but continues:

Preventing the Islamic Republic from joining the board of UN Women was a success. But we cannot ignore the fact that another equally anti-woman state, Saudi Arabia, whose misogyny is also codified into their legal and penal system, was handed a seat on the board of UN Women, with neither contest nor comment. We cannot ignore the fact that the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which participated in the rape of 15,000 women last year alone has now ascended, uncontested, to seats on both the UN Commission on the Status of Women and on the board of UN Women. As long as these kinds of regimes have any decisionmaking authority whatsoever over the functions and direction of UN organizations whose sole declared purpose is to work for gender equality and women’s empowerment, those organizations will continue to have no legitimacy. We emphasize that we have not forgotten that the Islamic Republic still holds a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and we will continue our demand for their removal from that post at our protest in front of the United Nations on December 11.

It should also be noted that the United States of America, along with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Sudan, and Somalia, Qatar, and 3 island nations are the only 8 countries in the world that have not ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The United States has also never passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which would ensure equal treatment under the law for women in the US. Although the United States led the charge against one of the world’s most misogynist regimes and helped to ensure that the Islamic Republic did not obtain a position on UN Women, it is not itself a bastion of women’s equality in the world. People of the United States, and supporters of women’s equality worldwide, must also press for gender equality in America.