Iran’s long-repressed women emerge as warriors

For years, women’s defiance in Iran came in carefully planned flashes of hair under their head scarves, brightly painted fingernails and trendy clothing that could be glimpsed under cloaks.

But these small acts of rebellion against the theocratic government have been eclipsed in the wake of the disputed June 12 presidential elections. In their place came images of Iranian women marching alongside men, of their scuffles with militiamen, of the sobering footage of a young woman named Neda, blood pouring from her mouth and nose minutes after her fatal shooting.

In a part of the Muslim world where women are often repressed, these images have catapulted Iran’s female demonstrators to the forefront of the country’s opposition movement. It is a role that will likely present President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hardline government with even greater challenges.

“Iranian women are very powerful and they want their freedom,” said one woman in Tehran who did not want to be named, fearing government retribution. “They’re really, really repressed, and they need to talk about it.”

Among Iran’s 35 million women, many fear that a second term for a man who was first elected in 2005 in part on a platform of restoring “Islamic values” will only prove to be worse than the first.

“The root of the current unrest is the people’s dissatisfaction and frustration at their plight going back before the election,” said Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. “Because women are the most dissatisfied people in society, that is why their presence is more prominent.”