{"id":19507,"date":"2023-02-15T09:30:27","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T08:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.egotimes.com\/?p=19507"},"modified":"2023-02-23T19:38:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T18:38:03","slug":"women-life-freedom-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egotimes.com\/en\/women-life-freedom-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Women, Life, Freedom: The Unsettling Power of The Iranian Women-led Politics of Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A massive wave of demonstrations, following the death of Masha (Zhina) Amini, has spread across Iran since September 2022. Notwithstanding the regime\u2019s brutal repression, the mainly women-led protest unexpectedly still persists in the country, and is echoed by large swathes of the Iranian society. The lasting mobilisation shows how women can act as the de facto<\/em> leaders of the nation\u2019s anti-government movement.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"women\"<\/p>\n

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The Facts<\/strong><\/h3>\n

On Sept. 16, Mahsa (Zhina) Amini<\/strong>, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in Tehran while in the custody of Iran\u2019s morality police and a massive wave of demonstrations has spread across the country since that monent. Because\u00a0they started with anger over the enforcement of the hijab, they represent the hardest menace the theocratic regime has faced since the 1979 revolution.<\/strong> These mainly women-led protests, which could persist for long time, would have been previously unthinkable in Iran, one of the world\u2019s worst ranked countries for gender equality, for decades been ruled under the iron fist of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. While Iranian women have a long history of political activism and mobilisation in the country, they rarely feature at the centre of those movements. Today, Iranian women are not only at the forefront of the ongoing protests, but they are also behind its central demand, that is, the collapse of the regime.<\/strong> For Iran, the centrality of women in the ongoing protests was not a matter of design so much as a consequence of circumstance. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, women\u2019s rights in the country have been continuously jeopardized especially, but not solely, through the imposition of strict dress code rules, including compulsory hijabs for women in public. While the Islamic Republic has witnessed larger demonstrations such as the Green Movement of 2009, in which millions of protesters denounced state-sponsored vote rigging, it has never been traversed by a movement as seemingly widespread or as demographically diverse as this one.<\/strong> The ongoing protests have spread to as many as 138 cities, including areas once considered regime strongholds. And while the protests continue to center on the rights and demands of women, their calls for change are being echoed by larger swathes of the Iranian society, including university students, workers\u2019 unions, and ethnic minority groups. Although there are other grievances at play such as harsh social restrictions, a collapsing economy, and widespread repression, the protesters\u2019 opposition to the regime is shared. On February 5, Iranian pop singer and songwriter Shervin Hajipour<\/strong>, won the inaugural best song for social change special merit award for Baraye<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>which is ‘For’\u00a0<\/strong>in English. It begins with: \u201cFor dancing in the streets<\/em><\/strong>,\u201d \u201cfor the fear we feel when we kiss<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d The lyrics list reasons young Iranians have posted on Twitter for why they had protested against Iran’s ruling theocracy and \u201cBaraye\u201d has been depicted as a powerful and poetic call for freedom and women\u2019s rights that continues to resonate across the world.<\/p>\n