A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare. -Mahmoud Darwish

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – A few days before the invasion of Iraq by American forces under G.W.  Bush, on March 16, 2003, a young woman from Seattle, Washington, who had gone to Rafah, in Gaza to help Palestinians halt the demolition of homes died under the bulldozer of the Israeli army.  

Her name was Rachel Corrie. 

She was 23 years old. She was a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM) 

Her parents fought the judiciary system in Israel for two decades to no avail.  The court rejected their appeals, and no one was prosecuted.  It is the usual case in Israel, the only “democracy” in the Middle East.

On May 11, 2022, the renowned Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, while reporting at the Jenin refugee camp and having reported from the occupied territories for nearly 25 years, was shot in the neck by IDF while reporting for Al Jazeera.   It took more than a year for the Israeli officials to admit that their army was responsible for her death.   Was anyone put on trial for her murder?  No. 

She was wearing a blue vest with the word Press on it.  An Israeli solider shot her just below her helmet.  While her funeral was being held, all kinds of barriers were set to prolong the procession.  She was finally laid to rest in the Mount Zion cemetery in Jerusalem where she was buried next to her parents.  She was a Roman Catholic.

On September 7, 2024, a young woman also from Seattle, this time a Turkish American aged 26 had gone to the West Bank for the very same reasons.  She was shot in the head by the Israeli Army.

Her name was Ayşenur Eygi.

She was also a volunteer with the ISM and had recently graduated from the University of Washington.  She and others including many Jewish activists had been demonstrating against an illegal outpost called Evyatar, an offshoot of the settlement of Beita. 

She had arrived there only two days before her untimely death by a gunfire of an Israeli soldier. Jonathan Pollack, an Israeli peace activist, participating in Friday’s protest was an eyewitness. He held her bleeding head before the ambulance arrived.  She died at the hospital.

She, like Rachel, had a full life ahead of her. 

Not only did these women want a better world but they also put their aspirations into action. They could have had a career like so many others but instead they took a different route: To be instrumental in making a change in this very unjust world of ours. 

Rachel had been born into a middle class, peace-loving family.

Ayşenur was born into a Turkish American family. She resisted and struggled for the right of a people whose livelihood and land were being stolen by settlers, guarded by the most immoral army in the world.

She was shot to death like countless others since and before October 7. 

The Americans and the Israelis did nothing to secure justice for any of these women. 

 In another part of the Middle East, on 16 September 16, 2022, a young woman named Mahsa Amini, also known by her Kurdish name Jina, went to Tehran with her brother and friends to have a good time.  She was twenty-two.   She was stopped by the morality police and taken to a van by force.  She was interrogated viciously for not having the right hijab and was hit hard on her head.  She was taken to the hospital and a few days later, after going into a coma, she was pronounced dead.  She was not political.  Her only sin was that her attire was not to the liking of the authorities.   What followed later after her shocking death was the largest uprising in Iran called Woman Life Freedom, perhaps the largest feminist movement in our time.  

Photo by Inimafoto A: https://www.pexels.com/photo/plate-with-a-slogan-woman-life-freedom-14413071/

In the Middle East and elsewhere, women have proven that they will take to the streets and encounter the oppressors to fight for freedom whether for others or themselves. 

It will not be the last time nor the only time.

Just like a century ago,  Mary Harris Jones—aka “ Mother Jones ” who was also called “the most dangerous woman in America”,  walked miles to fight for freedom and the rights of workers,  these young women also took their fight to the streets of Jerusalem, Rafah, the West Bank, Tehran and elsewhere to prove that women will not be stopped — not by guns, by bulldozers nor intimidation.

The war on women is everywhere: in the home, locally, nationally and globally.

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In 2018, the US National Sexual Violence Resource Center published that 81% of women reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault in their lifetime.  Further, the majority of violence against women is perpetrated by male intimate partners and acquaintances.

There are myriad other misogynist wars on women worldwide – including military wars; sex trafficking, prostitution and pornography; the theft of female and lesbian sexual identity by some in the trans movement; child marriage, female genital mutilation, and so on.  But none at this moment is so intensive as Israel’s and the US’ genocidal war on Gaza: 70 percent of those killed are women and their children.   Israel’s bombing of hospitals with maternity wards; the starvation of pregnant and breast-feeding women and the record-acute malnutrition among newborns and young children speak loud and clear — End Palestinian women’s potential to give life and the survival of Palestinian babies and children.

How cruelly ironic that as US weapons murder life in Gaza and elsewhere in the world with impunity, 14 US states have criminalized women’s choice of abortion as murder, not even allowing abortion for the hateful acts of rape or incest, six more states have early gestational limits. There were 65,000 rape-related pregnancies between July 2022 and January 2024 in those US states banning or putting extreme limits on abortion, with the end of Roe v Wade in the 2022 Dobbs’ Supreme Court decision.

Today a majority of US-adults including from every religion, race, ethnicity; moderate and liberal Republicans and a vast majority of Democrats (women and men), agree that abortion should be legal. Thus, the end of Roe v Wade in the 2022 Dobbs’ Supreme Court decision is a both a War on Women and a War on Democracy, given that the will of the majority of US citizens does not prevail nor influence government policy. 

According to the Economist, the United States ranks among “flawed democracies.”   Another recent, comprehensive study of democracies worldwide concluded that “only 15 percent of people globally live in places where women and lower income groups have at least somewhat equal access to power.”  No surprise that the US, cluelessly vaunted as the indispensable nation, is not one of them.

What fuels the control of women’s bodies in our country?  It is misogyny and injustice.  After all, there is no comparable moral or medical control of men’s bodies.

Yet the moralistic urgency to preserve life in the womb evaporates once a poor child is born.  One in six children under five years of age lives in poverty – the highest rate of all industrial countries; four million youth are homeless.  Clearly, controlling a woman’s right to her own body, is not about the unborn’s right to life; otherwise, all kinds of social legislation for maternal and child health, adequate housing, a living wage, and well-funded education would accompany legislation criminalizing women for abortion. 

Regarding women’s loss of economic democracy, women have higher rates of poverty than men.  And why?  For at least three reasons:

1.)   Domestic violence causes women victims to lose altogether an average of 8 million days of paid work per year and is a strong factor in women’s homelessness.

2.)    Women’s reproductive labor – giving birth, breastfeeding and caring for children is not compensated with free childcare and paid parental leave in the United States, unlike all other comparable countries. Thus, women who give birth are cheated of savings, pensions and Social Security.  No surprise then that the greatest risk factor for being poor in old age is having been a mother..

3.)   More women than men struggle to cover everyday expenses due to the gender wage gap, which has remained stagnant for 20 years – at 82% – a significant factor contributing to the substantial disparity in poverty rates between women and men age 75 and older.  Even for college graduates in 2024 the same economic inequality persists: male college graduates have been hired at an average sightly over $30/hour; women, at slightly over $25/hour. This wage inequality of 82% will follow these women college graduates all their working lives and in retirement.

Salary is symbolic: Why are we women worth 82% of men in the workplace?.

Ponderous realities:

More American lives were lost in the 20^th century through violence against women than during all 20^th century wars and civil strife.  Yet, while thousands of monuments throughout the United States honor those who lost their lives for their country in war, only one —the first of its kind—is currently being planned for women who lost their lives giving birth to the country’s children.  The counterpoint reality is that feminist revolutions to gain human rights and equality for women (however incomplete that goal remains) have freed and saved the lives of millions of women and girls—without weapons, without fists, and without a drop of blood spilled.  

Women have more than a lot that men can learn from: men commit 90% of homicides and almost all sexual violence; men are the primary wagers of war.  Were our skills, our social and intellectual intelligence, and our wisdom valued and promoted in all places of social and political decision-making: in every home and all national governments and the UN, the world might get a chance at global peace and restoring our beautiful planet.

*Given as the keynote talk at Bigger than Dobbs:  The War on Women and War on Democracy, a June 23 event sponsored by the Reproductive Justice Task Force of Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution with multiple co-sponsors.  

Speeches of the presenters will be available soon at http://www.fccpr.us 

Related Video link added by IC: MSNBC: “How GOP may lose 24: Trump conviction collides with MAGA legal ‘war’ on women, minorities, equality”

Both were 22-year-olds. Their deaths in 2023 serve as a reminder on International Women’s Day that the tragedies of femicide and gender-based violence (GBV) will continue into 2024. “Honor killings” need to be recognized as problems that are not only confined to the global south and developing world.

 While governments often react to direct violence, this problem will not end unless both state and society recognize endemic structural and cultural violence that enable femicide. The failure to act on these problems becomes a form of “necropolitics,” where the states allow women to succumb to the fate of femicide.

Direct Violence

Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung’s Triangle of Violence begins with “direct violence,” which often gets the most attention.

The father of Tiba Al-Ali projected direct violence against his daughter by strangling her. The last thing Tiba saw was the eyes of her father before she died.

Turetta projected direct violence against Giulia, a video camera capturing him beating her, and then later stabbing her 20 times to the neck and head. The last thing Giulia saw was the eyes of her ex-partner.

Tiba chose to defy her father.  Giulia chose to leave Filippo and she was graduating before him, which he could not accept.

Structural Violence

Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe defines “necropolitics” as how political actors allow certain demographics to die. When states fail to prevent femicide that is a form of necropolitics, or what Galtung would call “structural violence.”

Ali’s murder is part of the rise of GBV due to a revival of tribal culture that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein encouraged after the 1991 Gulf War to maintain domestic order, as his security forces were diminished. Iraq’s gendered insecurity continued unabated as the security sector collapsed after the 2003 invasion.  The US touted post-Saddam Iraq as a model state that would inspire a wave of democratization in the region. Yet Articles 41 and 409 of the Iraqi Penal Code, to this day, permits males to “punish” female members of a household. Those codes are a form of structural violence and necropolitics, enabling “honor killings.” It allows “practices of patriarchy” at the state level.

Women’s rights in Iraq • FRANCE 24 English Video

Structural violence and state patriarchy is evident by the security sector failing to address this issue, as the police allegedly knew beforehand that Al-Ali’s life was at risk and failed to take action.

Let us turn to Europe. Surprisingly, the Italian state engages in necropolitics by not legally recognizing “femicide” as a separate crime. Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, referred to this problem when said, “Femicide is a murder committed by the state because the state doesn’t protect us.” The state’s failure in this case to prevent direct violence is itself a form of violence. In the absence of the state Elena refers to the need for Italian civil society and NGOs to step in: “We need to fund anti-violence centres and give the possibility to those who need to ask for help.”

After the murder, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she would increase funds to women’s shelters and anti-violence centers. However, Meloni was also part of the problem, since her misogynistic right-wing politics and “Brothers of Italy”(Fratelli d’Italia) party enabled gendered cultural violence in Italy.   

Cultural Violence

After the murder in Iraq, a twitter user, Ali Bey, wrote that women should “behave or face the same fate as Tiba Al-Ali,” along with a series of other voices in the Iraqi cybersphere condoning, if not celebrating the murder. These outbursts are examples of cultural violence or societal patriarchy that enables such crimes.

Elena links the murder of her younger sister to the patriarchal culture of violence that pervades Italy, a form of cultural necropolitics, which normalises the toxic behaviour of men like Turetta and eventually commits femicide. She said “Turetta is often described as a monster, but he’s not a monster.”  She then addresses cultural elements: “A monster is an exception, a person who’s outside society, a person for whom society doesn’t need to take responsibility. But there’s a responsibility. Monsters aren’t sick, they’re healthy sons of the patriarchy and rape culture.” 

Meloni promised promised a new educational campaign in schools to eradicate “the toxic culture of violence” in the country. While Meloni had condemned sexual violence in the past, it was usually when a migrant committed GBV, to support the anti-immigrant politics of her party.

In 2023 I conducted two digital autopsies on Tiba’s YouTube account and Giulia’s Instagram account. Both were beautiful souls that made the earth a better place. Tiba’s vibrant videos described her new life in Istanbul, to pursue her education. Guilia loved her mom, had a collection of beer bottle tops, and apparently had a fear of going to the hospital alone, but overcame her fear.  That fear apparently had to do with the fact that she was taking care of her mom who eventually died of cancer.

The triangle of violence and necropolitics offers a nuanced means of analyzing the agents of patriarchy.  But a simple linguistic exercise can also achieve this goal, using patriarchy as a verb instead of an abstract noun. We must each ask ourselves “Who or what has patriarched me or others in the past, present, and future?” and “Who or what have I patriarched?” Difficult questions, yes, but by bringing them into focus we can begin to identify the active agents and institutions that have patriarched and continue to patriarch in Iraq, Italy and the world.  On this International Women’s Day, Iraq and Italy have failed to ensure gendered security.

In the spirit of International Women’s Day, let’s look at a brief profile of women’s status today and the consequences for our country and the world.

If I asked my brothers, my many nephews, male friends and colleagues, did they think women are as capable as men, I wager that most, if not all, would say yes. Beyond doubt we women have all the talent, intelligence, and potential for leadership and political responsibility as men. But I have also learned from recent history that, in some cases – such as negotiating an end to conflict; working toward long-standing peace; and prioritizing health, education and social welfare in government – women outperform men.

I would go so far as to say that the fate of nations is tied to the status of women. Studies back this up. A team of researchers has created the largest global database on the status of women called WomanStats. Their findings are profoundly illuminating for global security and world peace. In a sentence: the degree of women’s equality predicts best how peaceful or conflict-ridden their countries are. Consider that feminist revolutions to gain human rights and equality for women and girls have freed and saved the lives of millions of women and girls—without weapons, without fists, without a drop of blood spilled.

Let’s bring the injustice of female inequality down to the personal level, where millions of women and girls here and throughout the world experience sexual violence, sex trafficking and prostitution; neglect of girls because of son preference; and preventable maternal mortality. Ponder this shocking finding: More lives were lost in the 20th century through male violence against women in all its forms than during 20th century wars and civil strife. Yet, while thousands of monuments in parks and plazas throughout the United States honor those who gave their lives for their country, only one – the first of its kind – is being planned for women who lost their lives giving birth to their country’s children.

World Association for Sustainable Development Video: “International Women’s Day 2024 and Most Influential Women 2024 Sustainability Awards ”

The scourge of men raping women and girls is now compounded in those US states that have denied or greatly diminished the reproductive right to abortion. It is estimated that there were 65,000 rape-related pregnancies between July 2022 and January 2024 in US states banning abortion since the US Supreme Court overturned the 50-year women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions.

Looking into women’s economic status, we find that women have higher rates of poverty than men across most races and ethnicities, with women of color having the highest. Women are hired at a lower level than male counterparts and paid less for the same work, and this wage discrepancy follows them throughout their work life. Domestic violence causes women to lose an average of 8 million days of paid work per year and is a strong factor in women’s homelessness.

Not only do more women than men struggle to cover everyday expenses due to the gender wage gap, which has remained stagnant for 20 years – at about 82% – but the gap compounds over a lifetime, a significant factor contributing to the disparity in poverty rates among women and men age 75 and older.

Women’s birth of and care for children are not compensated with paid parental leave in the United States, unlike all other comparable countries; thus, women who give birth are cheated of savings, pensions and Social Security. No surprise then that the greatest risk factor for being poor in old age is having been a mother.

On a personal note: My fairest employer was my brother Michael: when I delivered papers for him in 7th and 8th grades, he paid me the same rate as himself. Bless you, Mike

• Fairer than the US Environmental Protection Agency New England, which hired me a grade below a comparable male environmental engineer employed at the same time. (When I confronted the director about the inequity, he responded “Doesn’t your husband work?”)

• Fairer than my next employer, which hired me at a significantly lower salary than a comparable male colleague, forcing me to enter into (successful) litigation to win equal pay for equal work and retroactive compensation.

Finally, studies of women and men negotiating post-conflict agreements found that all-male groups take riskier, less empathic and more aggressive positions. They also break down more quickly than negotiations that include women. Interestingly, men are more satisfied with decisions made with women involved than by all-male groups.

So where are the women in negotiations for permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, return of Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Israeli jails, and life-saving aid to Gaza? Where are the women in efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end? When will men dare to use the wisdom and skill of women to end their wars and create peace agreements that endure?

International Women’s Day is not only about the arithmetic of equality but also about its consequences – justice for women and girls and a better future for all in our country and the world.

Since the 1987 Revolution, women’s bodies and female sexuality have served as focal points for promoting Islamic nationalism in Iran. The veil, in particular, became a powerful marker of resistance against the penetration of Western values. Although the politicization of female bodies and sexuality did not begin with the Islamic Revolution, here the focus is on the period surrounding the revolution and its aftermath. On the discursive level, two strategies or social technologies have been employed in attempts to govern female sexuality. The first, identity formation, involves crafting the “Ideal Woman” to be imitated, as exemplified by Ali Shariati’s depiction of “Fatemeh” (Mohammad’s daughter), as simple, pure, and devoid of sexual instincts. This form of identity formation remains an ongoing project, evident in the publication of books on “The Balanced Woman” and the organization of conferences on the subject where the balanced woman is envisioned as a defender of the Islamic revolution and its martyrs. The second strategy, knowledge production and discourses on female sexuality and women’s role in an Islamic society have varied around temporal and political contexts. For instance, Farhi (1994) explores how Khomeini’s writings attributed different functions to women’s sexuality and behavior depending on the political contexts, e.g., a shift from a set of instructions for legitimate reproduction to insistence on the role of veiled women in resisting western forces during the years of the Islamic revolution.

With respect to the material dimension, a number of apparatuses emerged almost immediately after the revolution to make sure that women abided by alleged Islamic dress codes through the imposition of uniforms in schools and by mandating the wearing of the Chador as a pre-condition for accessing particular services, such as some healthcare facilities. These measures transformed the wearing of the hijab into a coercive institutional mandate.

The portrayal of women as the guardians of the revolutionary cause and the imposition of the mandatory hijab were never universally accepted or endorsed by women. Groups of women resisted these from the outset. Among middle-class women, resistance took the form of not following the hijab regulations strictly by, for example, participating in large-scale street demonstrations in 1981 after the hijab became officially mandatory or allowing some hair to remain visible.  Additionally, Iranian women have participated in a number of campaigns over the years, including The One Million Signatures Campaign and the Stealthy Freedom campaign, and of course, most recently last year’s Women, Life, Freedom movement.

Photo by Craig Melville on Unsplash

More than a year has passed since Mahsa Amini’s death. The repercussions of that tragic incident were undeniably significant. While the Women, Life, Freedom movement emerged in Iran, it rapidly gained international attention and received substantial support, primarily from the Iranian diaspora. The expansive scale of the protests, the international attention, and the expressions of solidarity, coupled with widespread media coverage, led many, me included, to anticipate an eventful protest on the one-year anniversary of Amini’s death. However, it was quieter than one would have imagined.

Does this apparent quietness signify a failure of the movement, or a weakening of Iranian women’s resolve to resist? Drawing on firsthand observations, my response leans towards a “No”. I am an Iranian woman in diaspora who lived through dress-code regulations imposed by the Iranian government. I also witnessed daily life both during the Women, Life, Freedom uprising’s active phase and on the first anniversary of Amini’s death. Moreover, my ongoing research explores the governance of sexuality in contemporary Iran, contributing to my contextual understanding. These factors position me to address and engage with the question posed. As I said, my short answer to the question is no. My longer answer unfolds below.

As mentioned earlier, I was in Tehran when the protests in response to Amini’s death began. Participating in protests was not the only way women responded, they demonstrated their solidarity through alternative means, such as uncovering their hair and navigating daily life without traditional coverings. The prevalence of women without hijabs increased notably on the days when there was a call for protest. Although I left Tehran a few months into the uprising, upon my return several months later, I observed a substantial rise in the number of women confidently navigating the streets without hijabs. I understand this as a continuation of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.

The Iranian authorities have proposed and discussed new measures to enforce the compulsory wearing of the hijab. Rather than physical punishment, alternative measures include preventing those women who do not conform from accessing certain services, such as internet connectivity or employment opportunities. A member of Iran’s parliament, citing the interior minister, stated that if violators persist in breaking the hijab rules after receiving a warning via text message, they would be denied public services, potentially affecting access to banks, government offices, schools, and university campuses. In April 2023, Iran’s Education Ministry declared that schooling would be withheld from those who break hijab rules. Technologies like surveillance cameras are said to be deployed in public spaces to monitor individuals and identify women not adhering to hijab regulations.

The Iranian government has implemented some of these plans: for instance, numerous car owners received text notifications about fines for not wearing the hijab while driving. The question that arises is to what extent can the government use these new measures to successfully compel women to abide by the hijab rules. Below, I try to delve into specific observations that might provide the reader with a better perspective.

My observations of street life reveal a significant increase in the number of women navigating public spaces without veils. While the morality police have not utilized the same violent measures as in the past, and there have been no widespread arrests of unveiled women, officers, typically one female and at least two to three males, stationed at the entrances of subway stations, continue monitoring and instructing unveiled women to “correct” their hijab. In all instances observed, no woman obeyed these commands, and there were even occasions when elderly individuals expressed admiration for the acts of disobedience of younger women.

The proposed punishment of denying women’s access to services like banks for persistently appearing in public without a hijab was one of the new enforcement measures. However, I witnessed an incident where a woman entered a bank without wearing a hijab was treated respectfully by the staff, receiving the service she needed. While this is a single example, and I do not mean to overgeneralize it, my observations at various organizations and institutions have led me to conclude that what I term “ordinary staff members” generally do not discriminate against women without hijabs. On the contrary, my experiences during data collection at an important organization in Iran indicated that such staff members exhibit sympathy or at least tolerance toward women who contravene hijab regulations.

The persistence of women breaking hijab laws extends beyond Tehran. During my stay, I had the opportunity to travel to two other cities, namely Kerman and Shiraz, the former recognized for its comparatively religious or conservative nature. In these two cities, there was a lighter presence of officers on the streets. In Kerman, although there were fewer unveiled women on the streets, there seemed to be significant tolerance towards them. In Shiraz, the number of unveiled women engaging in daily life was considerably high.

In conclusion, while the state continues to monitor women and employ measures against hijab rule breakers, it is highly unlikely that it will achieve its goals. The state appears to lack the necessary capacity, including technologies and more importantly support from the majority of the people, to succeed. Moreover, the occupation of public spaces by women engaging in acts of “civil disobedience,” putting their bodies at risk, appears to be capable of contesting the state’s capacity to control women’s bodies. This insight may provide valuable guidance for determining effective forms of activism and resistance for Iranian women and offers hopeful prospects for their activism in the future.  

If we had to trace back the start of women rights in Tunisia, many would guide you back to the historic promulgation of progressive family law in Tunisia in 1956 right after the independence from France. This law made Tunisia a pioneer of women rights in the Arab world. Many Tunisian women give credit to the 1956 civil rights code (Code of Personal Status) to all the suffrage Tunisian women gained thereafter, alongside a focus on an accessible and an egalitarian education system that began to flourish after Tunisia’s independence. Since the unveiling of this code in 1956 by former President Habib Bourguiba, this day has become a celebration for Tunisian women every 13^th of August as the women’s National day.

Despite critics of former President Bourguiba who argue that this code was nothing more than a facade used by the previous president, the effects were undoubtedly a big gain for Tunisian women. Although the country soon moved into a repressive authoritarian regime for more than 20 years led by former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the political and societal gains in women rights were safeguarded and even pushed forward. Yet, while these rights may appear to be modern and progressive, they were used by this regime to pander to the west and to hide the ugly realities of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime that all came to collapse in 2011.

Global Land Tool Network: “Success stories: Women securing their housing, land, and property rights in Tunisia”

Political and economic instability and corruption in Tunisia were the catalyst for the 2011 Jasmine Revolution. However, Tunisian women took the chance provided by the revolution to push women’s rights into the central stage. Women were as essential as men in the protests leading to the success of the Revolution, and according to Lawyer Bilel Larbi, women from all walks of life were present in the protests; from veiled women to women in mini-skirts. Thanks to the Jasmine Revolution, women protected their already established rights, and gained even more political rights such as the 2014 gender-parity law in the parliament, the passing of the 2017 legislation concerning violence against women, or the fact that in 2018, women secured 47 percent of seats in local elections.

Since the 2011 revolution, women have truly established themselves in the political scene and fought hard to maintain and improve their rights. However, the fight for equality and representation is still an ongoing issue in the country especially with the new government. According to Ahlam Boursal, general secretary of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, women in Tunisia still suffer from systematic violence and hate speech along with other major issues that still plague the Tunisian scene. Hence, Tunisian women do have major gains when it comes to women rights but it’s not enough. It was and still is an ongoing fight to protect these rights and push them even forward.

On the other hand, if we want to talk about women rights in Iran, we need to start with pre-revolutionary Iran. The Pahlavi era provided major gains in terms of women rights; Education was free and equal for boys and girls, in 1963, women gained the right to vote and run for parliament, the legal marriage age for women was raised from 13 to 18, and women were protected from unilateral divorce. However, many of these advancements came to a halt after the 1979 Revolution under Khomeini. The new government undid most of the progress in women rights as they were seen as a rejection of Islamic rules and as an imposition of western values.

Since the 1979 Revolution, compulsory hijab laws and the removal of Pahlavi era reforms in Iran have penetrated and restricted almost all aspects of women’s life in the country. For instance, The compulsory hijab laws in modern day Iran restrict Iranian women’s access to employment, education, social benefits and proper health care. Also, due to the removal of the 1967 Family Protection Act, Iranian women can lawfully wed at the age of 13 and even younger than that through judicial and parental consent. Hence, instead of pushing women rights forward, the revolution provided the contrary effects and brought them back years behind.

Throughout this era of regression in women rights in Iran, women activists were unable to sustain any strong political support to champion their case but they are hailed with social support all over the world. A major example of their situation is the many names of socially influential activists who were faced with harassment, intimidation, detention, and smear campaigns in the pursuit of their rights such as Narges Mohammadi, who received an 11 years sentence for leading a human rights organization on charges of “colluding against national security,” and “generating propaganda against the state.”.

A simple comparison of Iran and Tunisia’s cases would undoubtedly lead to the conclusion that Tunisia’s revolutions — first against France and then against Ben Ali’s regime — led to the improvement of women’s rights and their solidification. As for Iran’s case, the Khomeini revolution irreversibly led to the regression of women’s rights in Iran. However, a deeper analysis would provide a better explanation and a closer look at both countries.

Democracy Now! “Woman, Life, Freedom: Narges Mohammadi, Imprisoned Iranian Activist, Awarded 2023 Nobel Peace Prize”

For starters, the Khomeini revolution of 1979 deployed women in their protests against the Pahlavi rule but in contrast to the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, women were used as instruments for the revolution, not as agents of change championing their own cause like in the Tunisian revolution. Hence, the main difference was that women rights were an essential cause in Tunisia’s case, and a hindrance and a liability for the Iranian’s revolution’s goals.

Furthermore, deeper down in history, women rights in Tunisia starting from the rule of Habib Bourguiba became an integral part in Tunisians’ lives and norms, starting with the Code of Personal Status, which is celebrated and hailed to this day by Tunisian women. Yet, these progressive changes in Iran at the hands of the Pahlavi rulers were seen by the masses as western norms imposed on the people and were massively rejected and seen as a rejection of Iran’s culture.

In the end, while many women in Tunisia do still face numerous challenges in Tunisian society, the core concepts of women’s rights “were considered important to Tunisians from the creation of their sovereign national identity” which led them to survive multiple revolutions and stay on the forefront of the country’s social issues. On the other hand, these same concepts were imposed on the public and favored by the pre-revolution government in Iran making them feel unauthentic and a tool to please the west which rendered them in the end ineffective and detrimental in the long run to the women’s cause.

She is currently in Evin Prison on multiple charges, including spreading propaganda against the government, with 10 years, nine months left on her sentence. She issued a statement on hearing the news: “I will continue to fight against the relentless discrimination, tyranny and gender-based oppression by the oppressive religious government until the liberation of all women.”

She supported last year’s movement for “Woman, Life, Liberty” from behind bars, have long criticized compulsory veiling.

Mohammadi’s causes included women’s rights, of course. But she has also campaigned for human rights more generally, including the right of women to be safe from sexual harassment even in prison and of prisoners to be safe from torture and from the death penalty.

Although many observers in the United States will applaud this award as a black eye for the self-styled Islamic Republic of Iran, the fact is that Mohammadi would be critical of American policies as well. That is, if we are to listen to her prophetic voice with approval, we must do more than use her politically to denigrate our enemies; we must take to heart the implications of her ethical witness for our own society, too.

For instance, there were 18 executions of prisoners in the United States in 2022, up 64% from the total of 11 killed by the state in 2021. Although the US executes many fewer prisoners each year than Iran or Saudi Arabia, and although the number in the US has fallen significantly since the 1990s, it still does execute prisoners, and Ms. Mohammadi deeply believes that is wrong. She might well be in jail here if she lived in the United States, from protesting in front of city halls and jails. Only 13 states still permit executions in the US, and half of those killed in 2022 were executed in Texas and Oklahoma.

Moreover, 7 of these executions were seriously botched. In one instance, it took 3 hours of trying to get a fatal intravenous line into the arm of an Alabama convict. Some initial attempts to kill the convict were called off because of difficulties with the intravenous injection or because proper protocols has not been followed.

Between 46% and 54% of Americans believe in capital punishment, depending on which poll you believe. So Mohammadi might well be in a minority on this issue in the US, as well.

As for torture, Karen J. Greenburg wrote this week about the scandal that the Guantánamo Prison Camp still has not been closed. One of the difficulties has been that some prisoners were so badly tortured that no court, including a military tribunal, can now conduct a legitimate trial.

There has never been a reckoning by the US establishment with the Bush administration’s extensive use of torture.

If Mohammadi had been an American she might have been put on trial, as Josie Setzler was, for protesting torture at Guantánamo.

As for sexual abuse of female prisoners by male guards in federal prisons, a Senate report from last year makes it clear that this is a real issue and that it hasn’t been adequately addressed by the Bureau of Prisons.

Regarding women’s rights, I doubt Ms. Mohammadi would approve of Nebraska jailing a woman for two years for giving abortion pills to her daughter. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that she would not like our current Supreme Court much at all. She rails against religious theocrats’ repression of women.

So a warm congratulations to her, and to her cause, of women’s rights and human rights in Iran. But we owe it to ourselves also actually to listen to what she is saying and to take to heart the principles for which she has spent so much of her life in jail, torn from her husband and children.

A year after Mahsa Amini’s death, Iran intensifies surveillance on women

Written byGuest Contributor

This piece was first published by Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), on September 16, 2023, and was written by Emma Gibson, the global coordinator for AUDRi.  An edited version is republished here with permission

( Globalvoices.org ) – September 16, 2023, marked a year since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the Iranian government’s “morality” police. In the week leading up to the anniversary, human rights organizations Equality Now, Femena, and Centre for Supporters of Human Rights (CSHR), made a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Committee expressing “deep concerns about the condition of women and girls in Iran regarding the continued prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage, and sex-discriminatory personal status laws in the country.” 

In recent years, protests against the mandatory hijab or the so-called “morality police” in Iran have made international headlines. The bravery of women, often leading the charge, cannot be overstated. However, these protests are often met with severe consequences, increasingly driven by the government’s sophisticated digital surveillance apparatus. 

A controversial new hijab bill includes 70 articles that prescribe harsher penalties for women, as well as severe sanctions against public figures, businesses, and service providers who support them. The bill proposes the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enforce dress code violations, reflecting a disturbing manifestation of gender-based persecution.

In today’s digital age, Iran’s government has been wielding a two-edged sword: the same technology that has the potential to empower voices is being used to silence them, especially when those voices call for gender equality. Using advanced facial recognition software and tracking online interactions, the government identifies and harasses those who dare to dissent. 

This technological might is disproportionately used against women, whose demands for equal rights are seen as direct threats to the state’s ideological foundation.

It’s not just about cameras on street corners or drones in the sky. The real Orwellian nightmare lies in the shadows of the internet. Popular platforms are censored, and encrypted messaging apps, on which protesters often rely to organize, are blocked. Bloggers, influencers, and even ordinary citizens face intimidation, arrest, or worse for simply expressing their opinions online.

Iran Protests,’ Ottawa, Canada, September 25, 2022, by Taymaz Valley on Flickr (CC BY 2.0.).

Perhaps most disturbing is the state’s increasingly invasive eye into private spaces: the cars and walking routes of private citizens. 

A chilling testament to this is the fact that, within a mere span of three months, almost a million women were texted warnings from the nation’s police force. Their crime? Being captured by ever-watchful cameras without a hijab, as detailed by a harrowing report from Amnesty International.

According to the report, the police “issued 133,174 SMS messages requiring the immobilization of vehicles for a specific duration, confiscated 2,000 cars, and referred more than 4,000 ‘repeat offenders’ to the judiciary across the country.”

From Iran to the world: An international call to action

Digital rights are, at their core, human rights. A society where individuals cannot communicate freely, privately, and securely is one where fundamental freedoms are under assault. 

Digital rights exist alongside the right to peaceful protests in multiple ways. Encrypted communication tools can offer activists and protesters a way to communicate without the fear of government interception or retribution. When mainstream media is censored or muzzled, social media platforms can allow for the rapid dissemination of information, rallying supporters for a cause. Furthermore, the digital realm offers an expansive library of resources on peaceful protest tactics, rights awareness, and international solidarity efforts.

Iran is far from being the only regime restricting digital freedoms while using technology to suppress dissent or co-opting its surveillance. In India, for example, police have made use of an app which allows them to access privately-gathered CCTV footage.

In China, mass surveillance has been used to gather information about the movements and activities of private individuals in a form of “predictive policing.” Across all these examples, there is evidence that surveillance and infringement on privacy rights disproportionately target individuals and groups whose identities make them vulnerable, such as women or minorities, or whose political activities challenge the status quo. 

But here lies the challenge: As governments like these become more adept at quelling online dissent, how can activists stay a step ahead?

The international community can play a crucial role. Tech companies must be pressured to safeguard user data and prioritize end-to-end encryption. Digital rights organizations and civil society should be consulted on the threats posed by state-led digital surveillance and censorship and the implications of the technology being produced. 

Most importantly, the global community should consistently spotlight abuses, ensuring governments understand that the world is watching. And regulation of the digital space along human rights principles will ensure that this does not become a new environment in which Iranian women, or any others, are vulnerable to abuse and harm. 

While the Iranian government’s tactics are emblematic of a more significant global issue, the world must remember and uplift the unique bravery of Iran’s women, who stand tall even when shadows loom large. For Mahsa Amini and countless others like her, we must persist in our shared fight for digital and human rights. Their courage deserves nothing less. 

The Bridge features personal essays, commentary, and creative non-fiction that illuminate differences in perception between local and international coverage of news events, from the unique perspective of members of the Global Voices community. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinion of the community as a whole. All Posts

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Via Globalvoices.org

Small clashes over the issue continued on Monday in Tel Aviv and other cities. Far right wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu condemned the secular protesters as “leftists” demonstrating “hatred” for “Jewish” worshipers.

Last fall, as it became clear that they would be a swing bloc in the just-elected Netanyahu government, Ultra-Orthodox parties demanded authorization of gender segregation in public. They want women to sit at the back of the buses that go through religious areas, want to segregate state educational institutions by gender, and want separate seating for women and men at government-funded entertainment events.

Tel Aviv is a largely secular-minded city in which such ideas are anathema, and often elicit real anger. The city’s inhabitants understand that the Ultra-Orthodox are not merely engaged in special pleading for permission to perform their sectarian lifestyle in the big city but are preparing the ground to impose gender segregation, as what they see as a key Jewish religious practice, on all Israelis.

As a Middle East expert, I find this dispute reminiscent of struggles over gender segregation in Muslim societies.

Turkish intellectuals fear that President Tayyip Erdogan will try to set up all-women universities. Such institutions, which exist in Saudi Arabia, don’t serve women as well as their proponents think. For instance, they often don’t have professional schools because there aren’t a sufficient mass of women students planning to go into those fields. Or, their quality will never stack up against the male institutions, consigning women to second-class status in those fields.

Didem Unal argues that because of the political alliances Erdogan made with right wing religious parties this spring in the run-up to elections, they “pressured AKP to adopt a hardliner position against ‘gender ideology,’ which they vaguely define to link different reactionary agendas against progressive gender politics. They specifically demanded the annulment of Law No. 6284 on the Protection of the Family and Combating Domestic Violence and women’s right to alimony, the closing down of LGBTI+ associations, and the introduction of an Islamist education system and built their election propaganda on these demands. Despite some female AKP actors’ objections, whom I describe as “softliners” …. senior male AKP officials implied that these demands can be met and that AKP has nothing to contradict the political agendas of these parties.”

American Muslim women also mounted a protest beginning over a decade ago against being confined to a constrained space in mosques.

Of course, other religions, such as Hinduism in India, often practice forms of gender segregation, as well. In fact, Indian women suffer from various forms of gender segregation — familial and occupational included.

So these disputes are not limited to Judaism and Islam. In the latter two, they appear to be exacerbated by secular modernism, which argues for the equality of all individuals under the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. Israel, because of the prevailing Zionist ideology, however, already rejects the equality of Israelis of Palestinian heritage. A carve-out for discriminating against Jewish women would just be one more rejection of what Netanyahu calls “leftism” by Israeli society. Such moves appeal to men who feel that modernity has detracted from their power and authority. Such insecure, fragile men who must build themselves up by subordinating women, are a key constituency for Netanyahu and his extremist parties, just as they are for Erdogan and his in Turkey.

Where such patriarchal counter-reformations are taken to an extreme, we get the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.