#WomanLifeFreedom: How Digital Technologies Enable Transnational Solidarity for Iran’s Feminist Uprising
An unprecedented feminist uprising in Iran has been ongoing since September 16th, 2022. This movement was born from accumulated fury and rage against unjust conditions of oppression for Iranian women. So far, new possibilities for fostering transnational solidarity through digital technologies have significantly helped the progression and continuation of this uprising.
The uprising started after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, was arrested by the so-called “morality police.” According to the morality police, she was arrested because—even though she was wearing her hijab—she did not have on “appropriate attire.” Mahsa Jina Amini died in police custody on September 16th, 2022. Since the revolution of 1979, women and minority groups in Iran have suffered from misogyny and unjust legal conditions. The accumulated anger of over 40 years of repression erupted in the uprising that followed Amini’s death. Women began taking off their mandatory headscarves, waving them in the air, and burning them. They cut their hair as a symbol of rage and fury rooted in Persian poetry. The slogan “zan, zendegi, azadi” (in Persian) or “woman, life, freedom” has become the socio-political slogan of this uprising.
Social media and some mainstream news outlets provide a glimpse of the uprising to the rest of the world. It is a glimpse only, however, because the Iranian government does not want the public to know that this uprising is happening. The government has disrupted the internet and blocked access to popular digital platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Signal. Professional journalists in Iran, like Niloofar Hamedi, whose news reporting sparked the protests, have been detained or imprisoned. The combination of digital technologies such as virtual private networks for bypassing internet censorship and social media platforms such as Instagram or instant messaging services such as Signal has allowed ordinary people in Iran to become reporters on the ground by sharing live images and footage of their reality, resistance, and solidarity while risking arrest and death.
The demands of the protesters now go beyond the abolition of the mandatory hijab. The feminist uprising, which now encompasses inclusive voices across generations and is supported by multiple internationally renowned Iranian filmmakers and athletes, wants more: the end of injustice and oppression, and the end of the status quo! Challenging the status quo does not come cheap. Hundreds of people, including children, have already been detained, imprisoned, or killed across Iran—from Kurdistan to Sistan-Baluchistan—during the crackdown on protestors just because they publicly shared their hope and demanded to live with freedom, self-determination, and justice.
The mandatory hijab is perhaps the most visible symbol of the unjust conditions of being a woman in Iran. It is one of the government’s tools to oppress women. But it is not the only form of oppression Iranian women face. The collective consciousness of Iran still struggles with the devastating repercussions of the Iranian revolution, when people of all walks of life—including ethnic minority groups, clergy, landowners, and religious and non-religious intellectuals—revolted against the Pahlavi dynasty, the constitutional monarchy governing Iran from 1925 to 1979. Three reasons underpinned the 1979 revolution: (i) lack of political freedom under a one-political party state; (ii) rapid Westernization programs that disappointed those respecting the traditional values of Iran; and (iii) deeply unequal distribution of economic and social resources across different socio-economic classes. Diverse voices unified by these reasons cried out for equality, freedom, and justice.
The result of the 1979 revolution was a new form of governance—the “Islamic Republic of Iran.” Ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini, for many the leader of the 1979 revolution, assumed power in the form of a supreme leader. The question of what it could mean to govern according to both Islamic and Republican ideals had not yet been answered, and responses are sketchy, vague, and ambiguous even today. As it stands, the consequences of the 1979 revolution have been devastating for women; for example, the supreme leaders have made a woman’s testimony in Iranian court worth only half as much as a man’s, and a married woman cannot leave the country without her husband’s permission.
Iranian women—and some men—have since 1979 resisted the unjust conditions of their existence in multiple ways, both within and beyond the borders of Iran. The current uprising builds upon decades of activism and a long history of resistance. Women’s demands for justice and freedom have been loudly proclaimed in the works of Iranian artists such as Marjaneh Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, the unprecedented legal efforts of Shirin Ebadi and Nasrin Sotoudeh for human and women’s rights, and the activism of Sepideh Gholian, to name just a few of many examples.
What women are and are not supposed to wear has been an integral part of Iranian politics for nearly a century. A bitter pill to swallow for the generation that grew up in post-revolution Iran is that at the time of the 1979 revolution, women could freely choose what they wore. This is perhaps hard to believe in light of the current uprising, but the concept of mandatory hijab in contemporary Iran became a socio-legal construct only after the 1979 revolution. Indeed, in the early 20th century, women were told that they could not wear Islamic veils. The founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, issued an official decree (known as kashfe hijab) in 1936 that banned all Islamic veils (including the headscarf and chador) and some traditional forms of male clothing. At that time, many Iranian women from the educated elite participated in movements which resulted in this ban. However, by the time of the Islamic revolution, women no longer lived under a mandatory dress code of any kind. Our moms, our aunts, and our grandmothers could choose what to wear.
After the Islamic revolution, women held a protest against mandatory hijab on March 8, 1979. Even the clergy who assumed political power could not agree on whether hijab should be mandatory or not. But eventually, the voices against mandatory hijab were silenced. In June 1981, two years after the revolution, a compulsory hijab policy in the public sector was enacted, forcing all women working in the public sector to choose between putting on hijab or losing their jobs. My mother, like many other women of her generation, lived through the transition from the Pahlavi monarchy to wearing the mandatory hijab just to be able to continue working in the public sector. The enforcement of this policy continued in universities, schools, and the private sector. In 1983 in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, the first codified law of mandatory hijab was established under Iran’s Islamic penal code.
Digital technology has enabled powerful new forms of collective solidarity to connect Iranians and non-Iranians beyond borders in this current feminist uprising. While we must strive for meaningful solidarity rather than mere empty words or gestures, effective transnational collective solidarity, fostered by the support of awareness-raising celebrities as well as cultural and political campaigns on social media, has resulted in global recognition as large-scale protests in support of the uprising have happened and continue to happen around the world. Such inclusive and transnational solidarity reinforces the idea that justice without freedom for women and minority groups is impossible on the national or global stages and the fight for the preservation of basic human rights is a shared transnational goal.
Digital technologies have helped to make visible to both Iranians and the rest of the world what their political leaders want to keep hidden. Fueled by acts of political solidarity, digital technologies have also helped the world to see Iranian society beyond a myopic focus on nuclear research programs. As a philosopher and ethicist of digital technologies, I am wary of the risks and challenges of digital technologies. But I cannot stop being grateful to the unprecedented role of technology-powered solidarities by hacktivist groups such as Anonymous, who have launched DDoS attacks against government websites and disrupted state TV News with anti-government messages. The impact of technologies such as Tor browser, Snowflake proxy server, and VPNs to thwart internet censorship is beyond words. Freedom is transparency and digital rights activists are furthering this ideal more than any other actor so far. Despite the serious ethical and social concerns that social media platforms and the dark web raise, they have filled a deep lacuna of action for basic human rights in the fragmented socio-political global world. Zeynep Tufekci explains how social media has changed social movements. As social media continues to shape social uprisings, we should explore how digital technologies can introduce new forms of solidarity and what kinds of digital-technology-enabled solidarity are worth pursuing. Digital platforms provide a powerful means for the silenced and marginalized. It is time for big tech and democratic governments to facilitate systematic efforts for free and safe internet access to Iranians inside Iran who are charting the path for a free and just future.
Part of what sustains this feminist uprising is the hope fueled by transnational collective solidarity. Born as a woman in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, my family raised me on principles of hope. My father was fired from his job as an economics lecturer at Sharif University of Technology during the cultural revolution. Despite multiple opportunities to emigrate, he decided to stay in Iran and work outside of academia because of his hope for building a better future. Hope fuels the ongoing uprising. And the transnational solidarity facilitated by digital technologies might fuel new theories of hope.
Cover image by Roshi Rouzbehani
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or the Associate Editor Alida Liberman.
Atoosa Kasirzadeh
Atoosa Kasirzadeh is a tenure-track assistant professor in the philosophy department and the Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science and technology from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal. She works on philosophy and ethics of emerging technologies (in particular artificial intelligence), philosophy of science, and increasingly their intersection with political philosophy and philosophy of language.
