She was Iran’s women’s minister before the 1979 revolution. Now she’s watching protests in exile | CBC Radio

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The ongoing anti-regime protests in Iran are a source of both joy and fear, says the country’s former minister of women’s affairs.

“This is the first time in the history of our feminist movement globally that women are causing and bringing about a revolution. So it’s a point of pride,” said Mahnaz Afkhami, who held the ministry from 1975 to 1978.

She went into exile after the 1979 revolution, which established the Islamic Republic’s grip on the country.

“But at the same time, [I feel] the fear because so many of them are being attacked so savagely. We just fear for their safety,” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway.

‘I’m just full of hope and full of good wishes for my dear countrywomen in Iran and across the world.”

Protests erupted in cities across Iran following the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman died after being detained by the Islamic Republic’s morality police, allegedly for wearing the hijab incorrectly.

WATCH | Deadly violence at Iranian prison fuels more calls for action

Deadly violence at Iranian prison fuels more calls for action

Iran says four prisoners were killed and 61 injured following violence and a fire within a Tehran prison that’s known for housing political prisoners. Activists say human rights abuses need urgent attention, as a wave of anti-regime protests continues despite crackdowns.

Afkhami now works as a women’s rights activist based in the U.S., and this month published the book The Other Side of Silence: A Memoir of Exile, Iran and the Global Women’s Movement.

She said the protests are about more than simply the veil.

“It’s about subjugation, it’s about authoritarianism, it’s about pressure,” she said.

The regime has previously faced mass protests, most recently in the 2009 Green Movement, but Afkhami thinks these protests are different.

“Everybody from young children all the way to the older people to now the factories and and also the bazaar and the oil production — everybody is getting involved,” she said.

Despite a violent crackdown by security forces, country-wide protests have now entered their fifth week. The unrest has captured global attention despite disruptions to internet access within the country. Iranian officials have blamed the unrest on both foreign opponents to the regime, and the Kurdish minority in Iran.

Iran before the revolution

Born in 1941, Afkhami said the Iran she grew up in still held traditional values that limited women’s freedom, but that changed over the years. Her grandmother was able to start a tailoring business and secure her own economic independence; her mother, Ferdows Naficy, was one of the first Iranian women to attend the University of Tehran. 

“It was both still a feudal kind of a setting with low education for women in my very early childhood. But at the same time, it was one in which women could go against the customary traditions and do something unusual,” she said.

Afkhami became involved in the fight for women’s rights in the late 1960s, and became the secretary general of the non-profit Women’s Organization of Iran in 1970. She travelled the country, hearing from women about their experience and what they needed to secure greater independence.

None of what’s happened is is decided by women. They’ve been out of this story. So let’s hear them. Let’s see what they’re saying– Mahnaz Afkhami

She brought those experiences to her appointment as Minister of Women’s Affairs in 1975, the first cabinet post of its kind in Iran. France was the only other country in the world to have a minister dedicated to women’s issues in the whole world.

The novelty of the position had its advantages, because “nobody else basically had any idea what a minister of women’s affairs was, and what was it supposed to do,” she said.

Afkhami and her staff would suggest ideas for policy, based on the changes they and other women wanted to see. Very often, the rest of the government “went along with it,” she said.

“We were able to get a lot of things done simply because there was a freedom in defining what this role was.”

Rights lost after 1979

Before 1979, women in Iran had been gaining access to more rights and freedoms, spurred by political action and education, as well as hope and positivity, said Afkhami.

“Women at that time, right before the revolution, had all the necessity for working and for employment opportunities,” she said.

“They had up to seven months’ maternity leave. They had childcare on the premises of the workplace.… We had the best family laws in the Middle East, North Africa.”

Life for women in Iran now is “not even comparable,” she said, with those rights disappearing with the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

She thinks the regime is ultimately “afraid of women more than anything.”

“They understand and they are absolutely correct that the basic unit of society is the family,” she said.

A woman’s role in the family, including the rights she enjoys or the restrictions imposed on her, are reflected “in education, in business, in government, in economics, in everything,” she said. 

“Religious fanatics are, more than anybody, aware that if you shake up that structure — the architecture of human relations in the family — it’s going to spread out through the society and change everything,” she said.

But Afkhami thinks tackling the world’s problems, from international conflict to the climate crisis, would benefit from women’s perspective.

“None of what’s happened is is decided by women. They’ve been out of this story. So let’s hear them. Let’s see what they’re saying.”