Iran: 'Woman, Life, Freedom' lives on despite war

The Mahsa Amini protests brought 'fundamental' changes to Iran, an Iranian activist told DWImage: Ying Tang/NurPhoto/picture alliance AdvertisementA 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, passed away in a Tehran hospital on September 16, 2022. She had left her home in northwestern Iran to visit the capital and was then confronted by Tehran's morality police, who claimed Amini was violating the hijab mandate ordering women to cover their hair. The police arrested her. Three days later, she was declared dead.

For many Iranians, the law enforcement's brutality towards women who allegedly broke the hijab rules is nothing new. And yet, Amini's death triggered an unprecedented outpouring of anger. Protesters all across the country took to the streets under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom." They marched for months, but the regime eventually managed to suppress the movement in a violent crackdown.

"From my perspective, the movement 'Woman, Life, Freedom' is the biggest social and cultural change in Iran in decades," said writer, poet and activist Pouran Nazemi.

Nazemi's work as a women's rights activist has gotten her arrested several times in recent years. Still, she refuses to be intimidated.

She told DW that the movement had clear goals right from the start: Ending the hijab mandate and ending state violence against Iran's population. While those goals were ultimately not met, the protests did trigger an important change — they prompted many people to recognize their own power within the society.

"The institutions still use physical violence and occasional arrests against us," said Nazemi. "But something fundamental has changed."

Even now, amid the ongoing war with the US, parts of the Iranian regime are still focusing on the hijab mandate. Many politicians are supporting a new bill which would introduce significantly stricter punishments for women violating the hijab order in public places.

One lawmaker described the missing head coverings as a "deep wound in the body of society."

The proposed law has been in limbo for years and marked by wrangling between various state institutions.

However, in a virtual parliamentary session on September 6, several lawmakers urged Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to pass the proposed legislation to the president for signing. 

A 17-year-old female student told DW that she doesn't even think about wearing a hijab in public. Like many other young women, the pupil is posting pictures and videos of herself in colorful skirts and summer clothing on social media. To her, this is the new normal.

"My mother is not wearing a hijab either," the student told DW. "She is still a bit afraid and always carries a scarf so she can cover up in an emergency." 

But even this degree of freedom would be hard to imagine just a few years ago. It was only after the 2022 protests that many woman started openly defying the government regulations and deciding for themselves if they wanted to cover up.

The resistance of Iranian women did not start with the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests. In its decades-long history, another important phase played out some 20 years ago, says women's rights activist and writer Mansoureh Shojaee.

In 2006, together with other Iranian activists and feminists, Shojaee started the "One Million Signatures" campaign. The goal was to gather 1 million signatures to change discriminatory laws targeting women. This campaign became an important role model for feminist activism and societal mobilization in Iran.

Activists went out into the streets, to universities, neighborhoods and private homes. They talked to people about divorce, custody, inheritance, court testimony, and polygamy. They also set up workshops, study groups and other cultural and media events.

From the very beginning, the initiative was met with massive state repression. Activists were summoned by the police, arrested and dragged through courts. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi was among those affected, as was human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. Other activists, including Mansoureh Shojaee, were eventually forced to flee the country.

Shojaee left Iran in 2011 and is now living in the Netherlands.

The activists never met their original goal of reaching 1 million signatures. Still, they managed to change the conversation around the legal and social position of women. For this reason, Shojaee does not see the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement as a full-on break with the past, but only as one of the chapters in the much longer story of Iran's resistance.

This article was originally published in German.