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Nov 16, 2022 · Iranian girls and women are protesting discriminatory rules and calling for wholesale change to achieve their fundamental rights and freedoms.
- Gruesome Femicide in Iran | Human Rights Watch
Iranian women walk down a street in the capital Tehran on...
- Unveiling Resistance: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in Iran
The compulsory hijab and state-society relations in Iran....
- Gruesome Femicide in Iran | Human Rights Watch
Jun 26, 2023 · The compulsory hijab and state-society relations in Iran. Iran’s penal code criminalizes appearance of women in public space without “sharia hijab”.
- 'Women Came Out Into The Street'
- A Ban on Veils
- 'Golden Years For Iranian Women'
- 'The Dictator'
- The 1979 Revolution
- Crackdowns
- 'Overly Focused on Their Bodies'
- The Green Movement
- 'Enough Is Enough'
With around 85 million people, Iran's population is predominantly Persian (not Arabic) with several other ethnic minorities. From 1905-1911, the country was rocked by the Persian Constitutional Revolution, a period of unprecedented debate, which paved the way for the country's modern era. It temporarily curbed the power of the long-established mona...
The country's tumultuous history continued in 1921, when a British-backed coup led to a military commander Reza Khan crowning himself Reza Shah ('Shah' meaning 'king'). This started the Pahlavi royal dynasty, which would last for 54 years. Reza Shah promised to modernise Iran, with policies that would have major impacts on women. In 1936, Reza Shah...
In 1941, during World War II, the British forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This Shah ruled for almost 40 years, supported by the US and other Western allies. "I personally think that the reign of the Shah, when it comes to women's rights, were the golden years for Iranian women. Women got the right to vote a...
Shahin Nawai is an entomologist and political activist. She was a student in Iran at the time of the last Shah, and she has a very different view of his time in power. "During the period of the Shah, the big problem for me as a student, as a young woman, was the censorship and the dictatorship," she says. "I couldn't do anything — I couldn't read a...
Dissatisfaction with the Shah's brutal regime erupted into the streets in 1978. Once again, women were on the frontline of these protests. "The slogan of that revolution was 'independence, freedom, Islamic Republic,' [but] nobody had an idea what the 'Islamic Republic' meant," Esfandiari says. "The women who took part in marches in the millions, th...
Shahin Nawai says women's rights in the new Islamic Republic of Iran were soon curtailed. "[In] 1979 we had over 40 different women's organisations, all over the country … but in 1980, they closed. [People from these groups] were arrested and actually killed." "The oppression came all over from Khomeini." "Women lost the right to divorce, as divorc...
The following generation, which Mahdavi calls the "children of the revolution" began to challenge the regime on a larger scale. Young women played a prominent role. "This was a regime that was so overly focused on their bodies," she says. "[Young women] were frustrated by a regime that spent more time policing what women wore, than in attempting to...
From the late 1990s, there has been an ever increasing number of protests across Iran. In 2009, a disputed presidential election, which saw conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stay in power, kickstarted the massive Green Movement protests. Mahdavi says women were at the forefront "because [they] had the most at stake under a conservative regime". "It ...
Then on September 13, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police in Tehran allegedly for wearing her hijab too loosely. While in police custody, she fell into a coma. Three days later, she was dead. According to Amnesty International, "credible reports emerged from eyewitnesses that the 'morality' police had s...
Mar 1, 2022 · On the eve of International Women’s Day, the NCRI Women’s Committee publishes its Annual Report 2022, reviewing the past year as Iranian women lead the fight for freedom and equality in Iran. The recent beheading of Mona Heydari, a child bride, shocked the world.
Nov 16, 2023 · The latest round of women-led protests in Iran erupted after police killed a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman named Mahsa Jhina Amini in September 2022. Police officers beat her while she...
Sep 25, 2022 · The protest movement triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini continues to grow both inside and outside Iran. 'Le Monde' looks back at over a week of Iranian women in revolt.
Nov 18, 2022 · For two months, Iranian women have been marching in the streets, burning their hijabs and cutting off their hair in mass protests against the Islamic Republic.
