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English
Iran
| Activities |
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| - One Million Signatures Campaign - Family Law Reform - eCourse - Institute and Training of Trainers - Curriculum development in Persian |
Activities in Iran
Curriculum Development:
WLP has worked in partnership with Iranian activists and scholars to develop a Persian edition of the Leading to Choices training manual and of Leading to Choices: A Multimedia Curriculum for Leadership Learning, which consists of three videos and interactive guides on participatory facilitation, effective communication, and strategic advocacy.
Learning Institutes and Training of Trainers:
In 2005, WLP convened a National Learning Institute for Women's Leadership and Training of Trainers with a group of Iranian activists, NGO leaders, and academics to enable participants to develop skills in participatory leadership and to strengthen women's networks in Iran. Participants plan to hold workshops on violence against women and other important challenges facing women in Iran in follow-up from the training.
eCourses for Women's Leadership:
In 2004-5, WLP developed a prototype Persian interactive online distance learning course (eCourse) to develop women's participatory leadership skills. One short test eCourse and one full ten-week eCourse were held with 18 women participants from Afghanistan and Iran. eCourses are designed to provide training opportunities for women whose ability to attend workshops in person may be constrained by security considerations or socio-cultural factors.
| Women's Status at a Glance |
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Country OverviewGovernment type: Theocratic republic Education and HealthAdult literacy rate Political ParticipationYear women received right to |
Stories and Reports
Islamic Republic of Iran: Penal Code Excerpts Relating to Women
Source: Afkhami, Mahnaz and Erika Friedl, eds. In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994.
( categories:
Iran | National Law )
Mahsa Jazini, Campain Member in Isfahan Arrested
February 8, 2010
| SUPPORT IRANIAN WOMEN |
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Sign the petition and help them reach their goal of one million signatures to end discriminatory laws against women.
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Change for Equality: Mahsa Jazini, an activist with the One Million Signatures Campaign in Isfahan, a journalist and a student activist who had been banned from continuing her education, was arrested in Isfahan at 1:30am on February 6, 2010, at her home.
Women are Driving Iran Toward Democracy
by Mahnaz Afkhami, former Minister of Women in Iran before 1979 and president of Women's Learning Partnership
The images from Iran in the last two weeks have stunned the world: hundreds of thousands of women and men marching peacefully, first in support of reformist candidates and later protesting the government's version of the results. Women played a prominent role at every level in this movement; in fact what unfolded in Iran would not have been possible without them. It is their quiet and thoughtful community organization, constituency building, message development, and pioneering use of the internet in recent years that accounts for the scope of the protest in Iran. Their grassroots mobilization has showed that more lies at the heart of democratization than burning tires and shouting slogans, and that a democracy requires more than ballot boxes and purple-inked fingers. And that accomplishment will prove consequential not only for Iran's future but also for the future of the whole Middle East.
As a student of the women's movement in my native land for nearly four decades and an intimate observer of their recent struggles, I can say with confidence that women's leading role in these events has been no accident. Iranian women began fighting for their rights over a century ago, at the time of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, and have not stopped since. In the 1930s and 40s they formed their first effective associations. In the 1960s they struggled and succeeded in getting the right to vote and be elected and once in parliament they were able to replace archaic family laws with new progressive ones. In 1979, they joined the nation's drive for political freedom, but this time they did not get what they had fought for. The revolution swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power and in less than a month after his triumph, before there was a constitution or a government, the ayatollah annulled the new family law and decreed obligatory veiling and gender apartheid.
Reform and Regression in Iran: Advocating for Change of Family Laws before and after the Revolution
Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani of the Feminist School Interviews Mahnaz Afkhami
Family laws in Muslim-majority societies determine most crucial rights for women, and often serve as a barometer for women's overall social status. Across Muslim-majority societies women are advocating for reform of these laws to accommodate their changed family and social roles, and to reflect their heightened awareness of their individual rights.
( categories:
Iran | Family Law Reform Campaign in Muslim-majority Countries )
A Special Report: Movement Building in Iran
On July 26, 2006, Ashraf Kalhori, a 37 year old mother of four, learned that her sentence of death by stoning was about to be carried out. Until that point, the punishment of stoning, which had officially been under a moratorium since 2002, had remained a taboo topic in Iranian public discourse. Ms. Kalhori’s case, however, mobilized a group of lawyers and transnational women’s activists who were concerned that this unmentionable punishment was in fact becoming more commonplace. From this seed, the “Stop Stoning Forever” campaign, and ultimately the work of Women’s Field (Meydaan), a trailblazing website and network of women’s rights activists in Iran, took root.
( categories:
Iran | Issue 21 (Fall 2008) )
The Politics of Participation: Women and Transformative Leadership
Presented by Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) in cooperation with the Dialogue Project of the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
( categories:
Iran | Kyrgyzstan | Malaysia | Mauritania | Nicaragua | Nigeria | Pakistan | Palestine | 2008 Events | Events )
Zanan, Iran’s Leading Women’s Magazine, Shut Down by Government
February 8, 2008
In a significant setback for the women’s movement in Iran, the Press Supervisory Board of Iran backed by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, revoked the license of Zanan, the country’s most prominent and important women’s magazine. Zanan, which means “women” in Persian, is a monthly magazine dedicated to the reporting and analysis of women’s issues, problems, and achievements.
( categories:
Iran | Human Rights Alerts )
Persian Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb Published
In November, WLP published the Persian edition of the Guide to Equality in the Family in the Maghreb for use by Iranian women’s rights activists in the "One Million Signatures" campaign for equal legal rights and family law reform. The campaign, launched in August 2006, aims to collect one million signatures and spread grassroots awareness of discriminatory laws such as those related to marriage, divorce, and child custody.
The arguments for family law reform presented in the Guide will help provide support to the legal reform efforts of the One Million Signatures campaign. The Guide is a unique advocacy tool developed by Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, a coalition of women’s organizations from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, that presents the current state of the family law in the Maghreb, and proposes religious, human rights, sociological, and legal arguments for reform, well-supported by relevant data.
~The book is available for order ($24.95) or free download.~
( categories:
Iran | Issue 18 (Winter 2007) )
Support Iranian Women on their National Day of Solidarity
June 2, 2008
Iranian women's rights activists are calling for international support in observance of the June 12, 2006 demonstrations. Two years ago on this day, activists organized a peaceful protest demanding the revision of discriminatory laws against women in Iran. Seventy people were arrested during the gathering and continue to this day to be summoned, charged, arrested and sentenced for peaceful activism. June 12th has since been chosen by Iranian women’s rights activists as their national day of solidarity to object harmful actions which attempt to silence Iranian women.
| SUPPORT IRANIAN WOMEN |
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Sign the "One Million Signatures" campaign petition calling for an end to discriminatory laws against women such as men's uncontested right to divorce, polygamy, and child custody.
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Please read the following "Statement in Support of Iranian Women" and send your personal or organizational support for the women’s rights activists who are fighting for their basic human rights against all odds. Please send emails to wlp@learningpartnership.org and hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org. For more information about the campaign efforts, please read below or visit the One Million Signatures website.
Iran: One Million Signatures to End Discrimination
by Abigail Somma
July 23, 2007
www.voices-unabridged.org
These days, when most people talk about Iran, the focus is on its nuclear program. But for a group of determined Iranian women, there’s a more pressing issue at hand. Since June 2006, human rights activists have been campaigning tirelessly for something that continues to elude Iranian women: equal rights.
The One Million Signatures Campaign or Change for Equality, started as a grassroots movement to collect a million signatures demanding the Iranian government change laws that discriminate against women.
