Howard, Jane (Mary) 1959-

views updated

HOWARD, Jane (Mary) 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born December 20, 1959; daughter of Gilbert Edward and Mary Teresa (Slater) Howard; married Laurens Jolles, May, 1992; children: Alexander, Thomas. Education: Girton College, Cambridge University, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Styles' Piece, Little Green, Thrandeston, Diss, Norfolk IP21 4BX, England. E-mail—janemaryhoward@yahoo.com.

CAREER:

Journalist. Evening Gazette, Middlesbrough, England, 1982-84; BBC World Service, foreign correspondent, 1986-96; Guardian, London, England, foreign correspondent, 1988-91.

WRITINGS:

Inside Iran: Women's Lives, Mage Publishers (Washington, DC), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

As a correspondent for the BBC, Jane Howard covered wars and revolutions in Bosnia, Croatia, and Bulgaria. Between 1996 and 2000 she lived in Iran with her husband, a U.N. diplomat. There she studied a different kind of struggle, the attempts by Iranian women to adjust to life in a regime that is ostensibly hostile to women's equality. Her position and reportorial instincts allowed Howard to interview numerous women and draw on a wealth of personal observations. "She attempts to evoke the atmosphere of dinner parties and of rice paddies," noted Library Journal reviewer Cynthia Harrison.

What she finds is a regime of harsh laws but often surprising paradoxes. While a father can marry off his daughter at age nine, the government has vastly expanded spending on primary schools, and 97 percent of girls between six and ten are in school. For the first time, in the year 2000, more women than men were entering universities, with most focused on getting a good job rather than finding a rich husband. Couples do manage to find ways around the laws against mixing in public, often sitting together in cafes and slipping out the back door when a policeman walks in. The laws against women's freedom remain, but Howard finds some cracks in the dike. New York Times reviewer Nahid Rachlin, herself an Iranian emigrant, found, "The blending of research and personal experience isn't seamless … but it is still very much worth reading. The personal stories Howard presents are moving and colorful, and they enable us to understand Iranian women more fully than cold statistics would allow. In the end, the book gives hope for the future of Iranian women, hope that American observers sometimes fail to convey."