Feminism

This Revolution Is Still Alive’: A Growing Number Of Iranian Women Defy The Hijab Law After Months Of Protests

By Golnaz Esfandiari Mohammad Zarghami ( RFE/RL ) – Assal appeared in public for months without a hijab, or Islamic head scarf, in solidarity with the antiestablishment protests that rocked Iran. Even as the demonstrations that erupted in September have waned in recent weeks following a deadly state crackdown, the Tehran resident has continued […]

Authoritarianism

Iran: Unions and Civil Rights groups demand Democracy and social Justice

The Conversation

By Simin Fadaee, University of Manchester | – Forty-four years after Iranians rose up against their hated monarch in February 1979, a group of 20 organisations engaged in long-term social and economic struggles – including labour unions, teachers, women’s groups and youth and student movements – issued an ultimatum to the government of the Islamic […]

Feminism

Women in Turkey March to mark International Women’s Day, despite state Pressure

Arzu Geybullayeva

“We are angry, we are mourning, we are in a feminist revolt.” Written byArzu Geybullayeva Istanbul march. Photo by Arzu Geybullayeva ( Globalvoices.org ) – Solidarity between women across Turkey was on full display in the annual night march held on March 8, to mark International Women’s Day, despite heavy police presence in some […]

Feminism

Walking Unveiled In Iran: Believing in the Beauty and Importance of Walks

Human Rights Watch

“I also believe in the beauty and importance of our walks” Tara Sepehri Far, Iran and Kuwait Senior Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division | ( Human Rights Watch ) – This is the story of one Iranian woman who stopped wearing a headscarf in public as an act of protest. Despite […]

Feminism

On Int’l Women’s Day, US Activists Called on U.N. to halt Denial of Basic Reproductive Rights to American Women

Michigan Advance

By: Sofia Resnick – Nearly 22 million women, girls and gender-nonconforming persons of reproductive age are now living in states where abortion has been banned or is in other ways inaccessible, a contingent of U.S. and global human rights groups noted in a letter to the U.N. | Photo by Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom […]

Authoritarianism

Will Iran’s Protest Movement Survive?

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/RL) – Antiestablishment protests have raged across Iran for months, despite a brutal state crackdown in which hundreds of demonstrators have been killed and thousands more detained. Triggered by the death of a young woman died after she was arrested by Iran’s morality police in mid-September, the ongoing nationwide protests have become the longest-running […]

Afghanistan

The Taliban’s War Against Afghan Women And Girls

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi / Abubakar Siddique | – ( RFE/RL ) – Fahima witnessed many of her rights and freedoms disappear in 2022 as the Taliban imposed sweeping restrictions on Afghan women. An aid worker in Afghanistan’s southern province of Uruzgan, Fahima was employed in one of the few fields that the militant group […]

Authoritarianism

Iran Leader Khamenei seems to Back-Pedal from Punishing Women for “Poor Veiling” after Months of Protest

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to the official Iranian press, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “August Leader” of Iran, met Wednesday with hundreds of professional women and spoke about the controversies wracking the country regarding veiling. He stressed that the veiling of women is firmly part of Islamic law and there can be no retreat […]

Authoritarianism

How Female Iranian Activists use powerful Images to Protest oppressive Policies

The Conversation

By Parichehr Kazemi, PhD Candidate, University of Oregon | – (The Conversation) – Images of unveiled Iranian women and adolescent girls standing atop police cars or flipping off the ayatollah’s picture have become signature demonstrations of dissent in the past few months of protest in Iran. Mass protests in Iran over death of Mahsa Amini […]