Her Revolution: Khamenei's Battle Against the She's of Iran

The fighting spirit which the women folk of Iran have shown, will someday become a folk Lore to inspire character, consistency and credence.

IRAN'S HISTORY - MESOPOTAMIA TO PERSIA AND TODAY'S CONUNDRUM

Iran’s present-day struggle over women’s rights cannot be understood without looking far beyond the modern Islamic Republic. The roots of gendered control in Iran stretch deep into history, long before contemporary political Islam, and even before the formation of Persia itself. In ancient Mesopotamia, where Iranian tribes interacted with early urban civilisations such as Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria, social life was already structured by hierarchies of power, law, and gender. 

Illustration by The Geostrata

Women in these early societies occupied contradictory positions. While some held economic roles as landholders, temple workers, or participants in trade, their bodies, sexuality, and family roles were increasingly regulated through legal and moral codes. These early patterns would later harden into systems of patriarchal governance that Iran inherited, adapted, and institutionalised.

As Iranian groups such as the Persians, Medes, and Sakai settled into Mesopotamia during the Achaemenid period, they introduced advanced systems of administration and governance. The Persian Empire is often remembered for its tolerance and efficiency, particularly its use of local customs, multilingual administration, and bureaucratic organization.

Yet this efficiency was built on rigid hierarchies. Political power was concentrated among male elites, while women’s roles became more narrowly tied to family, reproduction, and social order. Intermarriage between Iranian and Babylonian families, documented in administrative records, helped blend cultures but did little to disrupt male dominance. Instead, patriarchy became embedded within both domestic life and state structure.

Religion played a crucial role in reinforcing this order. The Median Magi and other religious authorities functioned as guardians of moral and cultural continuity. Religion was not separate from politics; it was a tool of governance. Over time, moral authority and legal authority became deeply intertwined. This fusion is significant because it established a long-standing idea that the state has the right to regulate personal behaviour, particularly that of women. What began as religious guidance gradually transformed into enforceable norms that shaped law, social conduct, and punishment.

This historical pattern did not disappear with the fall of ancient empires. Instead, it evolved. Modern Iran reflects this continuity in striking ways. Under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, women’s rights are recognised only when they conform to undefined “Islamic criteria.”

This ambiguity has allowed the state to justify widespread discrimination while maintaining a legal appearance of equality. Iran’s refusal to sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) further reflects this stance, signalling the prioritisation of ideological authority over international human rights standards. In fact, during the Iranian revolution of 1979, when the secretly recorded and tapped speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini brought down the Shah of Iran, the writing was on the wall for women. 

LEGAL LANDMINES - A TIGHT CONTROL OF THE STATE

In practice, Iranian law places women and girls at a systemic disadvantage across nearly every sphere of life. Legal inequality governs marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, employment, political participation, and freedom of movement. In criminal law, women are treated as lesser legal subjects. Their testimony may be worth half that of a man or deemed invalid altogether in certain cases. Compensation for bodily harm is unequal, reinforcing the idea that women’s lives carry less legal value. With punishments ranging from loging to stoning to death, there was state-sponsored discrimination against women of Iranian society. 

Reproductive control has become one of the most visible tools of state power. The “Youthful Population and Protection of the Family” law, passed in 2021, effectively criminalised access to abortion, contraception, sterilisation, and related information. International experts condemned the law for violating rights to health, life, equality, and freedom of expression. Rather than protecting families, the law positioned women’s bodies as instruments of demographic policy, subordinating personal autonomy to state interests.

This logic intensified further with the approval of the law “to Support the Family by Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” in 2024. The legislation strengthens compulsory hijab enforcement through heavy fines, prison sentences, and restrictions on education and employment. United Nations experts described the law as resembling gender apartheid, noting that it institutionalises control rather than morality. Clothing, in this framework, becomes a political test of obedience rather than a matter of choice or belief.

GENDER VIOLENCE - A REALITY WITH NO REPAIR

Violence against women is similarly shaped by legal neglect. Iranian law does not recognise marital rape or domestic violence as distinct crimes. Rape itself is narrowly defined under the concept of “zina without consent,” which excludes marital rape and requires extremely high standards of proof. Women who cannot meet these standards risk prosecution themselves, as all sexual activity outside marriage is criminalised. This legal structure discourages reporting and ensures silence through fear.

Marriage laws further entrench inequality. Child marriage remains legal, with girls as young as nine lunar years eligible for marriage with court approval. Once married, these girls are subject to obligations that include fulfilling their husbands’ sexual demands, with refusal potentially resulting in the loss of financial support. Official statistics reveal tens of thousands of child marriages each year, though the true numbers are likely higher due to underreporting.

Despite these realities, Iranian women continue to resist. Some progress is visible in areas such as access to family planning and declining adolescent birth rates. However, political representation remains extremely low, with women holding only a small fraction of parliamentary seats. Women also bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid domestic labour and continue to face high rates of physical and sexual violence. Persistent gaps in gender data further obscure the full scale of inequality. Reza Pehlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran, from time to time has, on the face of the regime, called for gender justice as one of his primary goals.

Iran’s current crisis around women’s rights is not sudden, nor is it accidental. It is the outcome of centuries in which governance, religion, and patriarchy became tightly bound. From ancient Mesopotamian law codes to contemporary legislation, women’s bodies have remained sites of control, discipline, and moral anxiety.

The struggle unfolding in Iran today is therefore not only against specific laws or political leaders, but against a historical structure that has long defined power through the regulation of women’s lives.

WOMEN LED, WOMEN DRIVEN - STANDING UPTO THEOCRACY

The culture of protest started and was led by women in Iran is not something new or groundbreaking; much impetus was not given to it. The ayatullah’s ascent to power saw the first protests in 1979, post the revolution. In 1979, on International Women's Day, starting from March 8th, a protest against compulsory hijab (veil) started in Tehran, going for a week, only to be crushed by pro-ayatollah forces.

Compulsory veiling had been banned in 1936, revived post-revolution, and it became common to suppress, harass and assault women from the opposite spectrum of ideas. Such was the backlash that by 1981, women who thought and left liberal ideas were admonished beyond repair. However, this one protest made it clear that change in Iranian society would now flow from the shoulders of the feminine gender. 

Every protest post that, be it the 1999 and 2003, students' protests, to protests against a dying economy in 2009-10, 2011-12, & 2016, all saw women as a silent hand looking for revival of their basic human rights. Then came a spark that ignited Persian society like never before. Until 2022-23, it was thought that protests were a commonality of Iranian society, which would fizzle away in the face of unparalleled force, might and oppression. The centre of which was the Gasht-e-Ershad (guidance patrol), Iran’s very own morality policy established in 2005, backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The so-called moral police was at the centre of targeting women for “deemed to be” immoral clothing and improper wearing of hijab, and vaguely interpreted Islamic codes. There wasn't just gender discrimination but violations of juris natura (natural justice), whereby the alleged accused was not even given a fair hearing or legal aid.

The only salutary element of this came from the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Iran and its institutionalised discrimination was purportedly seen as soft in the face of what the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its self-proclaimed caliphate was doing to women, especially those who were Shia, Yazidi and of any other non-Sunni practitioner of the faith. 

FIGHT - THE WOMEN WHO LIT THE LAMP FOR TOMORROW

And then there was light, whereupon the regime’s misogynist mask totally fell off.

Jina Mahsa Amini was picked up by the moral police for not wearing a hijab, but was brought to a hospital and shortly after passed away. Eyewitness accounts squarely blame her detainers, who had beaten her, which wasn't uncommon.

What came out was an upwelling whereby society was back on the streets. The late woman's Kurdish origins also ignited the Shia-Kurd fracture line, further intensifying the protests with reactions from the UN and Amnesty International. The outcome protests were immortalised in her name, whereby the 2024 UN Fact find committee agreed to the thoughts of the protests.

In 2023, Nargas Mohammadi became the global voice of disgruntled Iranian women, when her deemed flagrance won her the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, and the state awarded her 31 years in prison with 154 floggings and 13 arrests. And it was in the recent 2025 protests, when the image of a woman lighting a cigarette using Ayatollah's burning photograph, that appealed to the global community as the Iranian Lionesses (lion being the symbol of the Iranian Pehlavi dynasty) rose to roar back. Seasons of women protestors were seen flooding cities like Tehran, Esfahan, and Mashhad, amongst others, shaking the Ayatollah's grip on authority. 

As Iran today gets pushed to a corner, amidst its conflict with Israel and the backing of the US, civil liberties are at an all-time low. Women may be fighting to get their voices heard, but how long does a protest last in the face of persecution is a question many ponder upon. Yet, the writing on the wall is for sure, she won't back down in front of the dictatorial Shia authorities. Change, which is only a function of time, is bound to happen, and Iran and its women will be the forebearers of the same.

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BY SIDDHI KHURANA AND KAUSHAL SINGH

CENTRE FOR POLITICS AND LAW

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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