As a girl visiting her birth country of Iran, British actress Nazanin Boniadi got a taste of the severely restricted rights women there live with on a daily basis. That experience inspired her to get educated about women’s and human rights issues in the country, and to one day work to improve them.
"For me, it was like listening to women talking back to me from a hundred years ago," says Safaneh Mohaghegh Neyshabouri. As she read the journals, she discovered just how different these people were from the stereotype of women from that time, known as the Qajar era.
The revolution that swept through Iran 40 years ago ruptured all diplomatic ties between Iran and the United States. This we know all too well. But another bond, one between Iranian feminists and their American counterparts, was also ruptured, which, unlike the other, occurred in virtual anonymity.
Iranian authorities must stop harassing, arresting and imprisoning women’s rights defenders peacefully protesting against Iran’s degrading and discriminatory forced veiling laws, and release those detained on this basis immediately and unconditionally, said Amnesty International today.
When it comes to women and the Islamic Republic, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” For forty years, women have resisted the Islamic Republic’s attempt to deny them rights previously won. They have waged a war—on the streets, in social media and even in the privacy of their homes—for equality and against the regime’s attempts to impose on them a broad range of controls.
My name is Mitra Aliabouzar. I was a member of the Islamic Student Association at Tehran Polytechnic (AUT) and Sharif University of Technology (SUT). I was arrested three times after the disputed presidential election in 2009. I left Iran in 2013 and joined the George Washington University (GWU) for a Ph.D. program. I received my doctoral degree in mechanical engineering in 2018 and right now I am a postdoc fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UMICH).
