Iranian Women Recognized as ‘Heroes of the Year’ by Time Magazine

The iranian women received this wednesday a special mention as “heroes of the year” by Time magazinewho applauds his move “fight for freedom” with a report illustrated by three women portrayed from behind, supporting each other, and portraits of young people who challenge the system.

The article that follows, signed by the Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Movaeni, describes the evolution of the struggle of Iranian women through acts of disobedience to protests that began five years ago, led by the so-called generation Z.

At the center of the most recent protests is the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, arrested by the Moral Police for violating the dress code and which has sparked “the most sustained uprising in the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic”.

Movaeni points out that the young women who currently leading the movement for women already showed their “combative character” before Amini’s death, since they have gotten “effectively abolish the mandatory hijab” and led to a modest modernization of the dress code in Iran.

In that sense, she wonders why her generation did not take the initiative to challenge the mandatory hijab as a way to reject “the errors of the system”, which has led to the present “feminist revolt”, and instead focused on ” unwinnable battles” over legal discrimination.

“The movement they lead is educated, liberal, secular, born of higher expectations and desperate for a normality: college and travel abroad, decent jobs, rule of law, access to the Apple Store, a significant role in politics, the freedom to say and wear what they want“, summarizes.

“They are quite different from those that came before them; sometimes they seem more like a transnational Generation Z than Iranian: they are vegan, they de-Islamize their names, they don’t want children,” he adds.

The author also points out that the young women have lived under US sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy, and that one of the reasons that have allowed their movement to go so far is that the government “recognizes the validity of the complaint”, since the old revolutionary elites know that the system “has lost its way.”

It is estimated that some 400 protesters have been killed by security forces in Iran and the judicial authorities seek to toughen the punishment for some of the detainees, whose age, the author points out, is as young as 15, which shows the broad social reach of the movement.

Time’s space for Iranian women includes an interview with activist Roya Piraei, whose mother was shot to death by security forces protesting the death of Amini last September, and in which the actress involved in humanitarian causes Angelina Jolie is the interviewer . (YO)