Iranian Women’s Crisis: A Global Catastrophe
Iran, a country of transcendent beauty and ancient lineage, is being watched on the world stage following the death of a 22-year-old Iranian woman after being arrested by Iran’s morality police. As one of only six member states of the UN that has not signed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, newly elected officials and enacted policies have established even more barriers between equity and equality.
Across the country, particularly in its more remote and impoverished areas, many women struggle with normalized patterns of coercion, physical violence and marital rape – a crime currently unrecognized in Iranian law. Many ongoing efforts at reform within Iran have been obstructed, with recent protests by women activists against state repression accompanied by an apparent escalation in official surveillance and intimidation. While perpetrators of violence against women, including police, have enjoyed a high level of impunity, demonstrators advocating for an end to the mandatory wearing of the hijab and other issues have faced physical attacks, detention and prosecution, with some high-profile activists handed lengthy sentences in prison. Some civil service workers and legislators have, according to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, caused elevated contention within Iran and the surrounding areas.
While it is important to recognize the atrocities faced by the Iranian people at this time, we cannot neglect to recognize how our own country impacts the conflict on a global scale. One of the reasons previous women-led protests in Iran did not receive global attention is because the U.S. and the West more broadly is primed to think about Iranian and Middle Eastern women as already oppressed, and the veil tends to be the symbol of that oppression. While the hijab is an important flashpoint for these protests, again, it's important to remember that the pushback against the veil is against mandatory or compulsory veiling—not about the hijab itself.
What may make this movement more notable to Americans is that these protests in Iran parallel the current moment that we're experiencing in the U.S. with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Women and feminists in the United States are faced with state surveillance of women's bodies, with reproductive justice and about who legislates women’s right of choice, and with how women can traverse public and private space. This is a moment of global solidarity, a unified transnational uprising to reclaim women's bodily autonomy.
While the crisis is nowhere near a resolution, there is hope that the progress made by those who are protesting can act as a beacon for the rest of the world regarding women's equality and rights.
