Modern Iran has seen its fair share of protests in the search for women’s rights. This time, while the demands are the same, the momentum is something new.

Throughout history, women have stood up for their rights in different parts of the world. As women experience more repression, the intention to make changes by women has been on the rise, most conspicuously in the Middle East. The recent protests in Iran exemplify women rising for their rights. The death of Mahsa Amini by the morality police while in custody triggered protests by Iranian and non-Iranian people worldwide. Women commenced walking without the mandatory scarves and cutting their hair in the streets to oppose the Islamic Republic. Some scholars argue that this protest and its implications are new.

Ali Ashtari, for instance, asserts that the new generation is evidently distinguishable from the “nondescript” and “timid” past generations. The current protests are distinct compared with the protests in 2009, which were accompanied by silence. Previously, protesters would request support from the police force by chanting, “Police Force! Support us! support!” The new generation has done away with this trend. They now walk without hijabs in front of the police, protesting bravely in support of each other. Furthermore, it has been noted that the primary source of current protests are neither “economic nor an isolated political decision” as before. Rather, as Mehdi Khalaji argues, they indicate a more profound opposition to the entire totalitarian system of the Islamic Republic, and the suffocation of the people in all aspects.

Going beyond these authors, I argue that the unification of men and women as a result of both gendered oppression and economic and political crises has empowered women’s activism in Iran.

After the constitutional revolution (1905-1911), women began to insist more fundamentally on their rights. This was followed by broader calls for social and political reforms, with new debates on women’s roles in society. Greater women’s roles and activities began to emerge via the creation of women’s councils and organisations, which led to a series of demands for rights equality. In this vein, as women augmented their activism in society following the White Revolution, Mohammadreza Pahlavi, the last king of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, extended rights to women, making suffrage official 3 March, 1963.  The White Revolution was a series of reforms launched to modernise Iran. Women, for instance, gained the right to serve in the judiciary – first as lawyers and later as judges. In 1967, Family Protection Law limited the power of men to get divorces, take multiple wives, and obtain child custody. It also raised the marriageable age for women to fifteen. Although the veil was never banned outright, its use in public institutions was discouraged. In addition to this, the Literacy and Health Corps established special branches designed to extend educational and medical facilities, especially birth control information, to women.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Women took to the streets on International Women’s Day (8 March) to defend their rights, shouting slogans such as “In the Dawn of Freedom, We Have No Freedom.” Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while in exile, remarked that women’s actual status would be achieved through an Islamic society and praised their courage and independence. Women were asked to wear a hijab to indicate the importance of women in a new Iran.

Reinforcing Khomeini’s seemingly moderate views, President Mohammad Khatami on 4 July 2005 announced that “We should have a comprehensive view of women’s roles and, before anything else, should not regard women as second-class citizens.” He went on to say, “[w]e should all believe that both men and women have the capability to be active in all fields, and I emphasize, in all fields.” During the more recent Hasan Rouhani presidency, women felt freer to wear the hijab, meaning less morality police cars in the streets, and it was notable that Rouhani remarked that the police should enforce the law rather than Islam. With the beginning of the conservative Ebrahim Raisi’s presidency, however, people have rightly feared a return to oppression and to the diminution of women’s rights.

As the current protests are more than a simple hijab issue, their participants are not limited to women but now also include students, teachers, middle-class families, workers, and those religious and ethnic minorities who, like women, feel like second-class citizens in their own country. The unification of these groups has created the potential to embolden women’s activism further against the government. It is still too early to anticipate what future transformations these protests will spur; however, it seems that the demands will be ongoing unless a reform or massive modification of current policies and societal norms meet their needs.

Niloufar Baghernia is PhD Student in Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, the Australian National University.  

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.