Region | Iran
Women take key role in Iran anti-government protests
For years, women's defiance in Iran came in carefully planned flashes of hair under their head scarves, brightly painted fingernails and trendy clothing that could be glimpsed under bulky coats and cloaks.
- AP
- Published: 23:01 June 25, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- An Iranian woman carries stones at an anti-government protest in Tehran. Such images have catapulted Iran's female demonstrators into the forefront of the country's opposition movement.
Tehran: For years, women's defiance in Iran came in carefully planned flashes of hair under their head scarves, brightly painted fingernails and trendy clothing that could be glimpsed under bulky coats and cloaks.
But these small acts of rebellion against the theocratic government have been quickly eclipsed in the wake of the disputed June 12 presidential elections.
In their place came images of Iranian women marching alongside men, of their scuffles with burly militiamen, of the sobering footage of a young woman named Neda, blood pouring from her mouth and nose minutes after her fatal shooting.
"Iranian women are very powerful and they want their freedom," said one woman in Tehran who said she's been taking part in the protests.
Like all women in Iran interviewed for this story, she did not want to be named, fearing government retribution.
The election seemed to open the floodgates for airing that sense of frustration.
Claims by Ahmadinejad's chief rival for the presidency, Mir Hussain Mousavi, that the election was riddled with fraud were the catalyst for days of protest following the vote.
The government's harsh response - evidenced in hundreds of arrests, the deaths of over a dozen demonstrators, clampdowns on the media, the refusal of the country's theocratic leaders to entertain the possibility of a re-count - fuelled popular discontent across wide swaths of the population.
But there is an extra layer of resentment and anger among many of Iran's 35 million women. Many fear that a second term for a man who was first elected in 2005 in part on a platform of restoring Islamic values will only prove to be worse than the first.
"The root of the current unrest is the people's dissatisfaction and frustration at their plight going back before the election," said Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. "Because women are the most dissatisfied people in society, that is why their presence is more prominent."
Across the Middle East, women have often joined men in protest movements.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, women took part in street demonstrations in the Gulf country. Over the years, images of Palestinian women, fists raised in anger against Israel and tears flowing in despair over children and husbands killed, have become a staple of that conflict.
But Iran's protests have elevated such images to a new level.
While Iranian women have been politically active in the past, coming out in large numbers in support of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the latest demonstrations showed them standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their male counterparts, enduring the same blows and threats.
"We were all together, and we helped each other despite our sexuality, and we will be together," said one 34-year-old Tehran woman who is active in the protests.
They have also given the movement some of its most high-profile arrests - former President Hashemi Rafsanjani's 46-year-old activist daughter - and its first martyr, Neda Agha Soltan.
Neda, who was allegedly shot by pro-government militia as she walked through a protest on Saturday, became the public face of the government's repression - a female martyr in a culture that celebrates such symbols, but usually relegates women to the role of the martyr's mother or wife.
Video images of Neda lying on the street, blood pouring from her mouth and nose as a few men crouch down, struggling to save her, quickly made their way onto the Internet. From there, they bounced around the world.
"She represents this youth who went there with such hope and idealism," said Ziba Mir Hussaini, who researches the situation of women in Iran, at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. "In a way, she is the first woman martyr. She is a martyr for democracy."
President Barack Obama on Tuesday summed it up as such: "We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets."
In the convoluted, and fluid, calculus of Iranian politics, it remains to be seen how the government will deal with these challenges. Also unclear is how these developments will shape policy.
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