Women will change our country

If Iran changes, it will be thanks to the country’s women, says Hossein Bastani on the Iranian exiles website Rooz. Sick of being treated as second-class citizens, Iranian women are quietly mobilising against the fundamentalist regime, and the daily discrimination they suffer. This is no fringe movement: female activists recently gathered a million signatures to protest against a tax and family law system that is heavily biased in favour of men. Under Iran’s divorce laws children are automatically awarded to the father, which forces many women to stay in abusive marriages. For the authorities, the protest presents a problem: they can control a few political activists, but they can hardly imprison the entire female population. The conservatives are starting to realise that their most deadly opponents are not in the streets or universities, but in their own homes.