Under the direct declaration of Khomeini, the age of marriage for girls was reduced from eighteen to thirteen, with the fathers’ right to reduce it further to nine.
The Assembly of Islamic Experts drafted the new constitution for the Islamic Republic, against women.
In the new constitution, the women of Iran became the slaves of men. The constitution included a number of disturbing provisions:
- Women and children are the property of men with limited rights.
- The value of a woman’s life is one-half the value of a man’s life.
- The testimony of one man is equal to the testimony of two women.
- Daughters get half the inheritance that sons get.
- A woman does not have the right to divorce her husband.
- A man can divorce his wife any time he wishes, even without her knowledge.
- Men are allowed to marry four “permanent” wives and as many temporary wives as they want.
- Women cannot travel, work, go to school, or even leave the house without the permission of their husband or father.
- A woman must live where her husband decides.
- Mothers do not get custody of their children after sons reach the age of two and daughters reach the age of seven, in the case of divorce.
- Children belong to their father, as soon as they are born.
- Husbands can take children away from their mother and have another woman raise the child.
- A widow does not get custody of her children after the death of her husband. Paternal grandparents or paternal relatives get custody of the children, and the mother has no right of visitation.
- If a father does not have any family, a local cleric takes custody of the woman’s children, as well as the family assets and possessions.
- The age of criminal responsibility, under article 1210(1) of Iran’s Civil Code, is set at fifteen for boys, but only nine for girls.
- The law sanctions marriage of girls at the age of thirteen, but gives fathers the right to sell their daughters at the age of nine.
- In the case of inheritance, an older widow with grown children only gets one-eighth of the value of a dwelling.
Ayatollah Khomeini also required that child brides live at the home of their husbands before they reach puberty.
To justify its gross violations of women’s human rights, the regime used women as a political tool, establishing an “women hijab police” to carry out its new regime of gender apartheid.