Women In Iran: Past, Present And Future

What historical and religious forces have shaped women’s lives in Iran under the current despotic totalitarian, authoritarian theocracy; and how does patriarchy show up in governance, law, and everyday control of women’s bodies and choices? What role do compulsory hijab, gender‑based violence, and restrictive family laws play in sustaining male guardianship, whilst women’s education, employment, and participation in science and public life are both advanced and constrained? Why are often educated and / or younger women resisting the regime, under slogans such as “Women, Life, Freedom”?  What particular harms do Afghan and other migrant women and children experience in Iran? Could Iran’s highly polarised society move towards a more just and peaceful future for women, and for men, in the future?

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The situation in Iran, as at early March 2026, is dangerously volatile.  Yet to many the complexities of Iranian governance, and the perspectives which underpin it, remain largely a mystery.  For that reason I have for some months been researching this essay on ‘Women in Iran’, better to understand the perspectives which have given rise to the hard-line patriarchal order of the current autocratic theocracy. Particularly, I wanted to grasp more fully the differences in understandings between ‘modern’ educated women (and men) in Iran, and their traditionally religious peers.

In my essay here, Women In Iran: Past, Present And Future, I consider some ways patriarchy is experienced by women and girls in the authoritarian theocracy (bluntly, despotic totalitarianism) of Iran, where power is rooted in severe economic control and, at times, brute force.

Specifically examined through the lens of human rights, are issues around governance, demography and pro-natalism, employment, forms of marriage, children, social control via the hijab and gender-based violence, education, science, health and judicial processes.  We consider also the increasing resistance to the constraints under which they are placed – evidenced (at whatever the cost) by the rallying cry ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ – of some, particularly, educated younger women. The especially perilous fate of Afghan migrant women and children in Iran is also discussed.

It is important to acknowledge however that the responses of Iranian citizens, female or male, to this authoritarian theocracy (despotic totalitarianism) are various – as indeed are the political, governance, legal, belief system and traditional factors which underpin the complexities to hand.  There is little consensus between different groups in Iran about how the situation came about or how a future peaceable resolution acceptable to the majority might be achieved.

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I completed this essay on International Women’s Day.  My original intention had been to submit it for publication in an academic journal, but (given the extended period required for academic publishing) time for that is now not on our side.  I therefore offer it, fully, formally referenced, and carefully advised by Iranian colleagues to whom I owe much thanks, to anyone who would like to know something more about the complex situation in which women and men in Iran now find themselves.  Your thoughts are also very welcome, in the Comments box at the bottom of this post, below.

Please continue below to read the essay on this (translatable: Google Translate) webpost…..or click the link here to read the essay, Women In Iran: Past, Present And Future as an independently published paper.

 An exploration of the positions and situations of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran,  in the context of the past century, and as seismic changes are now erupting in that nation and region.

   Patriarchy is effectively universal in contemporary societies, but its forms vary across nations, beliefs and traditions. It often operates almost invisibly yet remains powerfully coercive and skewed to the advantage of privileged men. We consider here some ways patriarchy is experienced by women and girls in the authoritarian theocracy of Iran, where power is rooted in severe economic control and, at times, brute force.

   Specifically examined are issues around governance, demography and pro-natalism, employment, forms of marriage, social control via the hijab and gender-based violence, education, science, health and judicial processes, alongside the increasing resistance evidenced by ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ (at whatever the cost) of some, including, particularly, educated younger women, to the constraints under which they are placed.     It is important to acknowledge however that the responses of Iranian citizens, female or male, to this authoritarian theocracy are various. There is little consensus between different groups about the situation in Iran, how it came about or how a peaceable resolution acceptable to the majority might be achieved.

Iran’s Civil Code – the basis for its legal institutions – is full of contradictions that allow wide scope for interpretation. While women are formally declared equal to men, their social position, rights and punishments remain markedly unequal. Men may be legally polygynous while women cannot be polyandrous; children born to unmarried mothers are often denied access to state services such as education; girls face risks of trafficking; gender-based violence, including harsh state punishments for legal defiance, child marriage and, in some areas, female genital mutilation, persists; and a glass ceiling blocks women at every level.

An over-bearing theocracy, operating alongside two sometimes competing legal systems with distinct administrations and practices, permeates Iranian society. The international #MeToo movement helped spark new forms of protest among some Iranian women, but its impact has so far been felt chiefly among relatively well-educated, privileged young women. Most women live in more traditional communities, constrained by gendered norms that are sometimes accepted and often vigilantly enforced, for example in relation to head coverings.

In the face of the momentous and violent upheavals in Iran in the mid-2020s, there are signs that relationships between women and men may be shifting, though it is equally possible that these convulsions will reinforce existing gender asymmetries. This essay reviews contemporary aspects of life for women and men in Iran as a starting point for considering what may come next. Whatever the outcome, in Iran’s strongly autocratic theocracy some form of patriarchy seems almost certain to remain.

A nation at war is a nation where women are almost invisible. Men’s lives may be at greater immediate risk in combat, but as a class they do not lose the rights their sex routinely affords them, whereas in the hierarchy of sex-based rights women and girls in belligerent states lose most. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has warned that many women and girls now face a war on their fundamental rights in their homes and communities, that hard-won gains are being reversed, and that because women’s rights are fundamentally about power, patriarchy is regaining ground as autocrats and populists attack women’s freedoms and sexual and reproductive rights under the banner of “traditional” values, even though discrimination against women stretches back millennia. (Guterres, 2024)

This diagnosis applies to Iran in its current war-like context as much as elsewhere; the patriarchal grip there often appears unyielding. To frame ‘patriarchy’ – widespread across societies, though not quite universal – we can turn to Costa Rican feminist jurist Alda Facio Montejo, who describes it as a mental, social, spiritual, economic and political structuring of society, produced by the gradual institutionalisation of sex-based power relations that different institutions create, maintain and reinforce in order to secure consensus on the lesser value of women and their roles. These institutions interlock with one another and with other systems of exclusion and domination based on real or perceived human differences, producing states that serve the needs and interests of a small group of powerful men. (Facio Montejo, 2013)

At the start of the third decade of this century, some – especially younger – Iranian women began more openly challenging aspects of this patriarchy; Woman, Life, Freedom, (‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi’ in the originating Kurdish version) became their rallying cry, despite the extreme risks. By the middle of the decade that slogan had been sustained and amplified through acts of civil disobedience. Many women adopted, or continued, the long-standing practice of refusing to wear the headscarf or hijab, while the authorities, focused on a falling birth rate and on casting women primarily as dutiful mothers, reaffirmed ‘traditional’ values and rejected Woman, Life, Freedom.

By early 2026, despite grave danger and many deaths associated with public demonstrations, men too had joined the protests, demanding ‘freedom’ for all. How this shared courage and determination will ultimately affect the lives of either sex is not yet clear. These are the themes explored in what follows, but they must be set against the rapid, often contradictory shifts – both ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ – in Iran’s recent history, governance and demography. Much in Iran has revolved around elite transactions over oil and other strategic resources, while far less attention has been paid to the well-being of ‘ordinary’ people, especially those who are not adult men.

What happens next remains uncertain in a context where the state has deployed extraordinary violence against its own citizens, killing thousands of young people, even as a regional water crisis threatens to dry out large parts of the country and its agriculture.

 Recent history

Iran has deep cultural and political histories stretching back millennia, but the country formally adopted the name ‘Iran’ only in 1935, and since then has repeatedly been embroiled in national and international disputes over the ownership and control of its oil.

In 1963 the Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, launched his ‘White Revolution’ of land reform and socio-economic modernisation, increasingly enforced by the secret police, provoking unrest and protest. In

1978 Pahlavi and his family were forced into exile and the clerical opposition leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned after 14 years abroad; a referendum followed and the Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed.

The next decade saw the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. In 1989 Khomeini died and President Khamene’i became the new Supreme Leader. Tensions then grew around Kuwait, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan and the Taliban, and the country also suffered a major earthquake.

From 1999 to 2003 a largely student-led movement in Tehran demanded democratic rights and free speech; protesters were arrested and many reformist newspapers were banned. In 2004 conservatives won an election after numerous reformist candidates were disqualified.

International disputes over Iranian uranium enrichment escalated and the USA imposed severe sanctions. In 2010 the UN Security Council added further sanctions and in 2012 the EU began a boycott of Iranian oil. The rial fell to a record low against the US dollar, losing around 80% of its value compared with 2011, food prices rose sharply and many working people were further impoverished.

In 2013 the reformist-backed cleric Hassan Rouhani, a sharia lawyer, won the presidency, which he held until 2021, when he was barred from standing again. Relations between Iran and the USA deteriorated further and hostilities with Israel intensified. Rouhani was succeeded by Ebrahim Raisi, whose presidency ended with his death in 2024. Raisi’s successor, Masoud Pezeshkian, a former cardiac surgeon, is regarded by some as a ‘moderate’.

 Governance and control

Almost uniquely, Iran has two parallel governance, legal, enforcement and military systems. (European Union Agency for Asylum, 2024) One is Artesh, under the (nominally) democratic structures of parliamentary representation; the other, Sepah, is the theocratically controlled Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, created after the 1979 Revolution to protect the new regime. The IRGC has become one of the most powerful military and enforcement bodies in the Middle East, effectively a ‘state within the state’ and a large paramilitary counterweight to the official armed forces.

Sepah controls most national matters, funded far more generously than Artesh via ownership of much of Iran’s industrial base held by the clerics. In 2025 the Artesh budget was about 310 trillion tomans (around $6bn), while Sepah’s budget was around 177 trillion tomans (around $3.4bn).

The Iranian Parliament (Islamic Consultative Assembly or Majles) is unicameral, with an elected Speaker, but candidates for the Majles and the presidency are filtered by the Guardian Council – six theologians appointed by the Supreme Leader and six jurists nominated by the judiciary.

The President is subordinate to the Supreme Leader who, as head of the theocracy, can and does overrule both Parliament and the President, and also retains effective control of the armed forces. No woman has ever been allowed to stand for these positions. In essence, Iran is governed as an authoritarian patriarchal theocracy.

 Demography¹

The population of Iran in 2024 is close to 90 million, about 10 million more than in 2016 and roughly four times the size it was in the mid-1950s. In 1960 the fertility rate was about 7 live births per woman; by 2024 it had fallen to around 1.7, well below the commonly cited ‘replacement rate’ of roughly 2.1 children per woman. Pronatalist policies have been one response, and the population is projected to stabilise at around 100 million by 2050.

Life expectancy in 2020 was about 76 years for men and 79 for women, with more women than men among older people. In 2021–22 roughly 70% of the population was aged 15–64, about a quarter were aged 0–14 and around 8% were 65 and over; the median age was nearly 32. The infant mortality rate in 2022 was about 10 deaths per 1,000 live births; in 1950 it had been well over 200, indicating major improvements in social conditions and maternal and child health.

 

1

All figures in this paper are necessarily approximate or indicative, derived from a mix of obtainable data to date. They should be checked against most recent available information before use elsewhere. Regularly updated sources include:

Amnesty International Iran; Carnegie Endowment for Peace; International Iran Times; Iran Focus; Iran Human Rights Organisation; Iran Primer; Iran Wire, Islamic Republic News Agency; National Council of Resistance in Iran; openDemocracy; Tehran Times.

In 1950 only about a quarter of Iranians lived in urban areas; by 2015 this had risen to roughly three-quarters. Today about 9 million people live in Tehran, around 3 million in Mashhad and between 1 and 2 million in each of the other six major cities. Around 99% of Iranians are Muslim, with about 90% following the Shi’a branch and around 10% the Sunni branch. Other faiths form a small minority and can be hard to identify because of persecution, which is especially significant for undocumented children.

Kurdish Iranians make up around 10% of the population, concentrated along the borders with Iraq and Turkey. Their distinct linguistic and cultural background often goes hand in hand with discrimination, starkly illustrated by the case of Jina Amini, a young Kurdish woman who died in 2022 after being detained in Tehran for allegedly wearing her headscarf ‘incorrectly’. In subsequent protests in Kurdish areas more than 120 Kurds, including children, have been killed and many more detained or executed; the region remains under heavy security surveillance.

Around 4 million forcibly displaced people also live in Iran, mostly in cities and largely from Afghanistan, with a smaller number from Iraq. Well over 100,000 Afghan children are undocumented and have very limited access to schooling and other services. Given the intensely misogynistic conditions in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021, it is likely that more Afghans, especially women and girls, will try to flee to Iran. The Iranian authorities announced plans to deport about 2 million undocumented Afghans, many of them educated professionals; by mid-2025 more than 700,000 had been sent back, and by autumn 2025 a further 450,000 or more had been deported.

This raises a persistent political dilemma: whether to welcome these incomers as skilled people who can contribute to the population and economy, or to reject them in response to growing resentment among some Iranians. At the same time, about one in every 15 Iranians now lives abroad. Large-scale emigration followed the 1979 Revolution and has resumed after the death of Mahsa Amini and other women, and amid the severe national unrest of early 2026, which has already cost at least thousands of lives.

 Low engagement of women in state organisations and other formal work

In 2009 women entered the Iranian cabinet (the executive of the Majles) for the first time since 1979. By 2022 the Majles had 290 members, of whom only 16 were women, mostly from 13 constituencies in Tehran and closely linked to influential mainstream male politicians.

Female conscription is also restricted in Iran, usually deemed inappropriate. Some women, however, are recruited by Sepah for roles from which men are excluded because they involve direct contact with women; for example, since 1985 women have been enlisted into the ‘Sisters’ Basij (Basij-e Khaharan), a hardline militia controlled by the IRGC and used in “major operations” against women not wearing the full headscarf.

Women’s participation in formal employment outside the home remains low. In 2023, out of about 24 million paid workers only around 15–20% were women, and roughly a fifth of these held middle or senior management posts. The gender wage gap in 2020, comparing similar jobs, was reportedly more than 40%. International sanctions on Iran have further depressed women’s labour force participation.

The World Bank has described a ‘MENA (Middle East and North Africa) gender paradox’ (Ragui, 2018): although women in the region spend less time in childbearing and are often well-qualified for market work, their labour force participation is still under a quarter of men’s. In Iran, in 2016 only about 15% of married women aged 25–44 were formally employed, compared with around 40% of unmarried women in the same age group. The late President Hashemi Rafsanjani explicitly framed higher education for women as preparation for motherhood, arguing that “an educated but jobless mother plays an important role in the society because she raises more educated children” (Djavad and Taghvatalab, 2024) – a view that makes motherhood the most esteemed role for women in the eyes of Iran’s patriarchal leaders.

 Forms of marriage

Conventional ‘modern’ marriage – a formal arrangement between one man and one woman – is the officially approved norm in Iran, but other forms of heterosexual union can also be legalised, even if socially disapproved. In formal marriage a woman may have only one husband, while a husband may take up to four wives. Men can divorce at will, whereas women must go through the courts, and women may obtain a passport or travel only with their husband’s permission.

Temporary marriage or mut’ah / sigheh is a written or verbal arrangement between a man and a never-married woman, widow or divorcee for a specified period – anything from an hour to many years – in return for an agreed sum or gift to the woman. Sigheh predates Islam but still carries stigma, especially for women, if it becomes known. Husbands need not inform their existing wives of such additional ‘marriages’. The second ‘wife’ has little agency or legal protection and, unlike a conventional wife, has no rights to inheritance or marital support, even though she is otherwise free to continue her everyday life.

Sigheh intersects with child ‘marriage’, trafficking and the exploitation of women in ways that resemble prostitution. It is permissible under Iranian Civil Law for ‘men’ aged 15 and over and ‘women’ from at least 13. Theocrats often frame sigheh as a channel for sexual ‘needs’, including those of widows or unmarried women in wartime, and the Civil Code requires wives in formal marriages to satisfy the sexual ‘needs’ of their husbands. The concept of sexual ‘needs’ features heavily in these matters.

Iranian law strongly emphasises control of sexuality, especially after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Penal Code forbids sexual intercourse between unmarried women and men as sinful (zena), punishable under Islamic law. Compulsory head covering and sex segregation in schools, public transport and sports facilities are meant to ‘protect’ men from supposed arousal by women’s bodies. In this context, sigheh allows (often older, wealthier) men to have sexual relationships with younger women outside conventional marriage; these women or girls may depend on the man’s payments and are highly vulnerable when the agreed term ends.

A key difference from ordinary prostitution is that children born of sigheh unions, if the father registers them as Iranian nationals, have full legal status, which is crucial for their future rights. The number of unregistered children is unknown but estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Unregistered children, whose mothers may lack resources, are especially vulnerable to human trafficking and child prostitution, (Ahmady, nd) and illegitimacy can have severe consequences for mothers as well as children.

Alongside these formal and temporary unions there are (usually younger) Iranians, women and men, who form relationships but see little prospect of traditional marriage because of economic hardship and the costs of dowry, ceremonies and setting up a home. Many are university graduates in big cities trying to build professional lives. Their relationships may be conducted secretly as ‘white marriage’ (Ahmady, 2021) – essentially non-contractual cohabitation – in an effort to avoid both legal penalties and the disapproval of more traditional families in rural or small-town settings.

There is also ‘emotional divorce’, (Barzoki, Tavakoli and Burrage, 2015) in which a woman no longer wishes to share her life, or if possible her children, with her husband but continues to rely on him for resources or maintains the marriage for appearances. This fragile distancing occurs across social classes but is complicated by the legal redefinition of a married woman’s kin relationships: once married, her natal father becomes merely her ‘father-in-law’ in legal terms and her dependency is firmly located in her husband.

Women may face multiple social, economic and support problems after formal divorce, which some come to regret. A divorcée is likely to lose custody of her children and a woman who remarries automatically forfeits any remaining custody rights, which is one reason why some women opt for ‘emotional’ rather than legal divorce. Across all these arrangements the risks for women are significantly greater than for men. Male virginity is largely irrelevant, while the virginity of women and girls is heavily policed.

Ending a sigheh relationship leaves a woman ‘tainted’ by sexual experience. For poorer women this can seriously damage prospects of formal marriage and the associated bride price; in urban professional circles bride price may be mostly symbolic, but elsewhere it remains important. Any perceived breach of female ‘purity’ – whether through consensual extra-marital sex or sexual assault – is held to damage family honour. Wealthier women may mitigate this by undergoing hymen reconstruction to simulate ‘virginity’, but while such procedures challenge the surface taboo on premarital sex, they ultimately reinforce norms that demand virginity at marriage and the underlying power relations.

Both adultery and any sexual ‘deviation’ (such as homosexuality) can incur very severe punishment, including execution, which deters reporting of such ‘crimes’. All these forms of sexual activity, grouped as zina, are punished according to the authorities’ interpretations of Islamic law, with wide variation in standards of proof and penalties, including numbers of lashes or stoning. In stoning, men are buried only to the waist and women to the neck, a difference that is literally crucial because ‘offenders’ can escape execution only if they manage to free themselves.

 Family size, pregnancy, terminations and pro-natalism

Iranian nationalism has often been imagined around the idea of the ‘pure’ soil of the homeland, now re-envisioned as a female body representing ‘Mother Iran’. In this symbolic frame, the bodies of never-married, divorced, widowed or sigheh women are seen as troubling, and the situation becomes even more fraught when relationships outside formal marriage lead to pregnancy. It is estimated that at least 250,000 illegal abortions are performed in Iran every year, while legal termination is permitted only under very strict conditions.

Iran’s current stance is firmly pro-natalist. Falling birth rates – for example, a fertility rate in Tehran of around 1.5–2 births per woman – have prompted financial incentives to have children and tighter limits on family planning and abortion. These measures are unlikely to have much long-term effect while economic hardship, emigration, shifting cultural norms and later marriage continue to shape family size. Cuts to family planning services have already pushed poorer women towards unsafe abortions using dangerous drugs bought on the black market. When most couples want only one or two children, restricting contraception and prenatal screening may fail to raise fertility but increase abortion and its harms, while deep-seated expectations rooted in family and religion persist. (Tremayne, 2022)

United Nations human rights experts have called for the repeal of the Youthful Population and Protection of the Family Law, ratified by Iran’s Guardian Council in 2021, under which performing multiple abortions can carry the death penalty. To boost the birth rate, the authorities have restricted antenatal screening tests and closely monitor everyone attending health centres for fertility treatment, pregnancy, childbirth and abortion. Free contraception in under-served rural areas has been scaled back, and permanent sterilisation of women or men is almost entirely prohibited.

Child marriage now forms part of this pronatalist strategy. Marriage is allowed from the onset of puberty or from about 13 for girls and 15 for boys, and even younger with a guardian’s permission. A court judgment in a case against an Iranian-British anthropologist researching violence and traditional harms against women and girls spelled out the authorities’ view: “increasing the age of marriage for children is one of the strategies of the enemy for weakening and ruining the family system… According to our investigation, should this project be performed, it would lead to a decrease of 100,000 marriages and also reduce about 20% of the reproductive rate in Iran… a disaster in the current situation of Iran, faced with the population crisis.” (Burrage, 2021)

This calculation treats fewer births as a national ‘disaster’ (Ahmady, 2020) but ignores the personal, often long-lasting and sometimes lethal harm – and the wider social costs – experienced by very young mothers and their children.

The government’s priorities appear to lie more in regional power-building than in the welfare of Iranian women. Powerful theocrats tolerate domestic poverty and unemployment, severe air pollution and even chronic failures in water infrastructure, (Jolley, 2026) while channelling resources into costly confrontations with Israel and the United States and support for allies in Syria, Yemen and Shia communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

In this setting many Iranian women resort to illicit abortions at great risk and expense, directly defying the intentions of the oppressive patriarchy that governs their lives.

 The hijab, embedded vulnerabilities and harms, and judicial inequity

 Headscarves / the veil or hijab

The ‘story’ of the headscarf – in its various forms as veil or hijab (Sedghi, 2007) – has been a constant thread in modern Iranian women’s lives, closely tied to their rights and status. For some women it signals modesty, safety and religious commitment; for others it represents a harsh denial of independence and adult autonomy. Likewise, some men see women’s headscarves as symbols of female subordination, while others regard compulsory veiling as incompatible with modern life, views often shaped by class and education.

Early in the last century, when King Muhammad-Ali sought to undermine the new Constitution, many upper- and upper-middle-class women adopted headscarves during clandestine work for the constitutionalist cause, exploiting the invisibility it provided. Under Reza Shah’s Pahlavi rule (roughly 1930–1979), policy shifted towards expanding women’s freedom, education and autonomy, including bans on child marriage, polygyny and segregated schooling. During the ‘Women’s Awakening’ of the late 1930s, reformers even sought to eliminate the Islamic headscarf from public life.

These changes, seen as progress in Western terms, did not benefit all social groups equally. Women who lost their head coverings could feel exposed and at odds with religious obligations, while many poorer people felt ignored as oil wealth flowed elsewhere. For them, the ‘right’ to wear a headscarf became a protest against privilege and an assertion of identity, feeding into the broader revolutionary mood. Headscarves were one among many symbols of the approaching revolution, marking out marginalised rural women and newly urbanised poor from the elite. Many turned to religious leaders or left-wing politics, and in 1979 the Shah fell, replaced to huge acclaim by Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader.

Revolutionary fervour soon hardened into conservative enforcement. The Family Protection Act of 1967 and 1975, which had strengthened women’s marital rights, was annulled. Mosque-based gangs and the emerging Revolutionary Guards, both loyal to Khomeini, patrolled streets and public spaces, imposing Islamic dress and behaviour codes even more strictly than under the Shah. The consequences of such policing have become well known internationally through the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, accused of wearing her headscarf ‘incorrectly’. Shortly afterwards, 16-year-old Nika Shakarami disappeared and was later found dead after being filmed burning a headscarf at a protest in Tehran in 2022; her act became an emblem of the Woman, Life, Freedom (Satrapi, 2024) protest movement.

As a 2022 Chatham House report observed, the hijab may not appear essential to a repressive state’s functioning, but as a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s religious authority it is central to its ideological legitimacy, and removing it is perceived as the thin end of the wedge for women’s civil rights. (Vakil, 2024) In 2023 thousands of schoolgirls were poisoned and hospitalised in a wave of apparent chemical attacks on girls’ schools, widely interpreted as punishment for removing mandatory headscarves during the 2022 uprising. Parents, teachers and journalists who protested faced intimidation, violence and arbitrary arrest.

Issues of ‘modesty’ and women’s status, however, reach far beyond clothing. While regulations on headscarves may shift at the authorities’ whim, the legal position of adult women remains deeply entrenched, particularly around marriage and sexuality. Tensions between the entitlements of men – especially powerful or wealthy men – and those of women are stark, and girls’ and women’s ‘purity’ (virginity) is often treated as a commodity in the marriage market.

 Female genital mutilation

The tradition of female genital mutilation (FGM) (Burrage, 2015) is declining but has not disappeared in the Middle East, (Burrage, 2016) and it persists in parts of Iran, particularly in some border provinces where travelling ‘midwives’ or local circumcisers continue to cut girls. (Ahmady, 2016) Communities may underestimate or ignore the severe harm caused by this practice, which is often carried out on very young children. FGM is framed as enhancing ‘purity’ and girls’ marriageability, but it inflicts serious physical and psychological damage, is associated with early marriage and drastically limits girls’ educational and life opportunities.

 Education, science, health and well-being

Women’s lives in contemporary Iran show a stark duality. Many remain vulnerable to gender-based violence – including rights abuses, domestic violence, FGM and so-called honour killings – yet some have achieved leading positions in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and in medicine, with a number ranked among the top researchers globally. Although by 2024 around 70% of Iran’s STEM graduates are women, their participation in areas such as health research is relatively low, thousands of nurses have left the profession and there is a severe shortage of doctors, with only around one gynaecologist for every 7,000 women in the country.

Alongside these highly educated women are many others for whom daily life is extremely difficult, including female heads of households living in poverty with low levels of education, precarious employment and little social support. Young women, unlike young men who may access trades and crafts, often have few options other than university education if they want decent jobs. With more than 40% of new graduates unable to find suitable employment, enduring cultural norms that define women’s primary role as within the home continue to obstruct women’s entry into the labour market. Women who marry early, experience domestic violence, FGM or other gendered harms are especially disadvantaged.

 Judicial processes and punishments

Iran’s dual legal structure – one system deriving from the elected parliament and another from Islamic authorities – generates significant contradictions, with the theocracy holding greater power to override parliamentary law. Parliamentary legislation operates in a recognisably state-law framework, but Islamic law is shaped by clerical interpretations of the Qur’an and by the everyday understandings of Islam among Revolutionary Guard personnel, many of them young men with little sense of women as equals. In this environment, gender-based violence by state officials in communities becomes more readily explicable.

There are three main types of court: civil, criminal and revolutionary ‘Revolutionary Tribunals’), alongside the Special Clerical Court that deals with clerical and Islamic matters. The revolutionary and clerical courts are under the Supreme Leader’s direct control. Civil and criminal courts are more aligned with the state justice system but are still expected to apply ‘Islamic’ punishments such as retribution in kind for murder, stoning for adultery, amputations and flogging. Iran has the world’s highest execution rate per capita, second only to China in absolute numbers, and the rate has risen sharply following the uprisings of early 2026. (Human Rights Watch, 2026)

In 2024 at least around 1,000 people were executed, the highest figure reported since 2015, including about 30 women. By 2025 the figure had risen again, to include at least 65 women, and a much higher number have been / will be executed (or e.g. shot dead on the streets) in 2026. (NCRI Women’s Committee, 2026) Many women were convicted of murder, some for killing husbands in contexts of domestic violence or forced and child marriage, with little or no judicial leniency. Several women executed in 2024 were reportedly linked to the Women, Life, Freedom protests. In Islamic courts defendants can be denied effective legal representation, and verdicts may rest solely on a judge’s claimed ‘divine knowledge’.  (Danesh and Mahmood, 2017) Only senior clerics trained in Islamic jurisprudence can serve as judges, and none are women. Women’s testimony is valued at only half that of men, and ‘blood money’ (diya) for a woman is set at half the amount for a man.

The Guardian Council polices legislation for conformity with its (contested) interpretation of Islamic law and resists reforms that would reduce gender discrimination. Women’s protests against compulsory headscarves or other restrictions are routinely tried in revolutionary courts as ‘propaganda’, ‘insults’ to the state, or attempts to change Iran’s domestic or foreign policy. Students, lawyers, journalists, religious minorities and women’s rights activists have all received long prison terms – or worse – on such charges.

One emblematic figure is Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and human rights defender who has been repeatedly arrested, imprisoned and denied vital medical care. Another is Kurdish Iranian activist Varisheh Moradi, sentenced to death in late 2024 for alleged ‘armed rebellion’ and supposed links to the Free Life Party of Kurdistan; she was denied the chance to contest the charges and awaits retrial, still declaring her commitment to Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom).

Other activists, such as Fatemeh Sepehri, have received extended prison sentences and been refused medical treatment; in her case, her lawyer was imprisoned and her replacement lawyer rejected for lack of official approval. On International Women’s Day 2024, the Human Rights Activists News Agency published a long list of women imprisoned for their ideological, political or religious beliefs. (HRANA, 2024) In 2024, women’s and labour activist Atefeh Rangriz was again jailed, partly for allegedly ‘disseminating falsehoods on the Internet to disturb public opinion’.

Digital technologies now play a central role in both protest and repression. Since the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022, (Article 19, 2024) the internet and social media have become crucial tools for organising and witnessing, even as the state intensifies online surveillance and censorship. In early 2026, amid widespread national protests, the authorities shut down the internet altogether in parts of the country; the longer-term consequences of this blackout remain uncertain.

 #MeToo and Woman, Life, Freedom

Women in traditional communities often continue long-established patterns of life, while younger and more cosmopolitan women in Tehran and other university or smaller cities have experienced repeated swings between greater permissiveness and renewed restriction. The international #MeToo movement that gained momentum around 2020 enabled many women – and some men – to challenge patriarchal dominance worldwide, echoing and amplifying struggles that had already emerged through dramatic socio-political changes inside Iran.

The headscarf has been central to these protests. For some Muslim-faith feminists, wearing it is a visible symbol of their effort to improve women’s status through more favourable interpretations of Islamic law via ‘Dynamic Interpretation’: “I believe we need to put liberal hypocrisy on trial. I sincerely want to help Muslimahs make sense of the challenging situation and take back control of the narrative but not on their own terms: on Allah’s terms.” (Amin, 2021) Others, however, reject the headscarf as incompatible with personal independence and self-determination. (Cheema, 2023)  Protest against compulsory veiling has existed in various

Muslim-majority countries for decades, but the spread of the internet created the possibility of organising and bearing witness far more widely.

In 2014 Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad, then living in the UK and USA, launched the Facebook page My Stealthy Freedom. (Alinejad, 2019) By the end of 2016 it had attracted over a million ‘likes’. In 2017 she introduced ‘White Wednesdays’, encouraging women to wear white to signal dissent from compulsory headscarves. Later that year, in central Tehran’s Enghelab Street, Vida Movahed stood on a box, waving her white headscarf on a stick; she was arrested with her baby and briefly jailed for allegedly encouraging public ‘corruption’. This act became a focal point for Iran’s own #MeToo-type mobilisation, (Yaghoobi, 2023) even before the broader global wave of disclosures about powerful men’s abuses.

By 2022 large numbers of Iranians openly opposed mandatory headscarves. After Mahsa Amini’s death, the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ spread rapidly, crystallising what some have called a previously silent revolution in the ‘Burnt Generation’. (Rouhi, 2022) Combined with uneven but vital access to social media, the slogan helped messages and images of resistance circulate inside Iran and beyond. The authorities’ reaction has frequently involved lethal force, with state killings estimated to have doubled in two years to well over 1,400 executions. (Iran Human Rights, 2024)

A newer tactic became visible in November 2024, when university student Ahoo Daryaei stripped down in public to her underwear after being challenged about her clothing. Rather than charge her solely under morality laws, the authorities declared her ‘ill’ and ordered psychiatric treatment in a newly established, well-funded clinic for women who defy mandatory headscarves. (Fakhravar, 2024) This move may reflect the impact of international outrage after footage of her violent arrest, still partially unclothed, in public by male officers, went viral on social media.

 What next?

It is unclear whether the political medicalisation of some women protesters will become a lasting strategy for

Iran’s authorities, (Iran Insights, 2024) in which contexts it might be used, or how long it will persist. (Rajabi, 2024) It also remains uncertain how #MeToo and Woman, Life, Freedom will evolve once the widespread uprisings of 2026 eventually subside, though in an age of global social media some form of continuing resonance seems likely. These movements could decisively shape the lives not only of outspoken activists but also of ‘ordinary’ women and men.

Many Iranian commentators insist that ‘white saviours’ are neither needed nor appropriate in struggles over women’s rights. (Khan, 2019) Perspectives formed in Western contexts often sit uneasily alongside how those inside Iran – whether victims, protesters, pious citizens or perpetrators – understand and articulate their own realities. Women aligned with Hezbollah, the Basij militias or veterans of the Iran–Iraq war may celebrate the martyrdom of husbands, (Farzaneh, 2020) brothers and sons, (Sadeghi, 2009) yet still seek to improve women’s and collective rights through Islamically framed concepts, rather than Western feminist language. The Islamic state and its values are still meaningful for some women who nonetheless press for less discrimination and injustice.

In the major cities, ‘modern’ Western ideas about gender and sexuality may influence younger graduates, but they are less overtly significant in the everyday lives of women outside post-revolutionary rights movements, who face many other urgent concerns. At the same time, men’s legal right to control women’s sexuality is no longer entirely uncontested, especially now that wives have some access to divorce and to the contractual divorce dowry, mehrieh, which husbands are then obliged to pay. Saeidi situates these tensions within Islamic concepts of citizenship in Iran, (Saedidi, 2024) arguing that securing gender equality has become an unavoidable struggle for both women and men, and that the state is often forced to catch up with social transformations as freedom, morals, rights, belonging and other aspects of citizenship are renegotiated.

The future trajectory for Iran and its citizens, women and men alike, remains open. On one hand, in 2019 lawmakers drafted the ‘Protection, Dignity, and Security of Women against Violence’ bill, for the first time defining violence against women and proposing penalties for causing them physical or mental harm as a ‘vulnerable gender’. On the other hand, as of mid-2025 the bill still languished, being revised to fit official notions of ‘women’s rights’ in an Islamic society. In stark contrast, protests against the headscarf have been pathologised as mental illness in Tehran while similar actions in regions such as the Kurdish borderlands can attract punishments up to the death penalty.

Literacy among Iranian women now exceeds about 85% (slightly above men’s rate), yet in 2023 around 70% of men had paid employment, compared with only about 15–20% of women, despite many women’s strong educational attainment. Official rhetoric continues to centre on women as the ‘mothers’ of Iran, valued, as the Supreme Leader has said, for domestic and child-rearing roles rather than participation in the wider world of work or politics. Women are honoured both literally and metaphorically as mothers, yet simultaneously treated as objects of suspicion by an authoritarian theocracy preoccupied with their potential for seduction and zina, offences considered gravely sinful.

Citizens therefore face the challenge of reconciling their state’s restrictive interpretation of Islam with the complexities of a rapidly changing world that now reaches almost everyone via mobile phones and digital media. For many women this means living with multiple rigid, everyday constraints while nurturing a deep desire for positive change in their daily lives. Overlaying these gendered dynamics is the reality of a nation effectively at war. The ruling theocrats, absorbed in regional power struggles, devote what they regard as their ‘God-given’ resources (theirs to do with as they alone please) to military build-up at home and in neighbouring states, while rampant inflation erodes the means of survival for ordinary Iranians.

Massive military expenditure and a looming crisis in energy, water infrastructure and supplies together create a situation many see as close to insoluble. These issues are not peripheral to gender; they shape the context in which women’s lives and choices unfold. The state’s failure to support women, cultivate their talents and heed their judgement bodes ill when careful strategic thinking for the whole population is urgently needed.

Compounding this is the reality that the most powerful men in Iran have unleashed a reign of terror, killing tens of thousands of young people and injuring many more, leaving behind huge numbers of children with no realistic prospect of proper care or support.

At the same time, advancing desertification threatens both urban life and agriculture: without water, food security collapses, regardless of the state’s military ventures, oil trade or nuclear ambitions.

Some citizens may still accept prevailing gender discrimination, but in a connected world growing numbers do not. International bodies such as the United Nations, (Aslani, 2024) the European Union (European Parliament, 2024) and organisations including Amnesty International (Amnesty International, 2023) have issued strong condemnations of Iran’s judicial practices and human rights record, particularly regarding women, and these critiques are increasingly accessible, if risky, for people inside Iran to read. For outside observers it is hard to discern amongst the historically competing groups a clearly positive path forward.

And so the gap between theocratic patriarchs and their various security arms, on one side, and ordinary Iranians, on the other, continues to widen. Those who oppose authoritarian rule search for ways to reclaim autonomy and self-determination. For some women, defying compulsory veiling and engaging in other symbolic acts of resistance – despite the dangers – are crucial means of asserting self-respect and agency. Others embrace more overt defiance; by late 2024 the slogan ‘Women, Resistance, Freedom’ (Rajavi, 2024) had joined Woman, Life, Freedom as a rallying cry. How far such demands will matter amid potentially ruinous economic and environmental changes is still unknown.

The adoption of slogans like #MeToo and Woman, Life, Freedom does not automatically signal alignment with Western feminist paradigms. Yet it is also unclear what these slogans will mean if Iran’s powerful theocratic elite collapses or re-morphs after the enormous shifts of the current belligerent situation with Israel and the USA. Or perhaps a whole new political context will arise, with inevitable upheavals between different factions?

‘Women’s rights’ carry different meanings in different contexts, and Iran’s political, religious and social configuration is distinctive, shaping how its citizens understand both their obligations and their hopes. How gendered demands will interact with the harsh national and regional scenarios now unfolding cannot yet be determined.

 

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~ ~ ~ ~ ~

NB I completed this essay in the very week (early March 2026) that conflict erupted between the USA / Israel and Iran.  I had intended the piece to be placed, after inevitably long drawn out due process, in an academic journal.  Timescales have however changed dramatically in the context of a rapidly developing war; no-one can say how things will end, but a researched account of some aspects of the situation and his/herstory may be helpful.  It is in that spirit that I offer this article, always open for others to use or critique it as they wish.

 

See also A Report to CSW70: Gender-Based Discrimination Under Iranian Law: Structural Inequality and State-Sanctioned Oppression of Women (8 March 2026)

and    Afghan Women In Peril.