Civil unrest against the Iranian government’s mandatory hijab law, as well as human rights abuses against women and girls perpetrated by the ‘Morality Police’, has been ongoing since the 16th September: initially spreading from the capital Tehran to the rest of the country. At least 185 people have been killed as a result of the government’s intervention, including 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who was murdered by police for removing her hijab. The inextricable links between the emancipation of women and democratic political reforms has been demonstrated in these protests, with the goal of protecting civil and political rights and implementing governmental reforms having far-reaching consequences.
A video widely circulated on social media shows a woman crying over her brother’s grave, roughly chopping off her locks with scissors and throwing the ends over the body. Surrounded by grieving women, the scene is unifying as much as it is distressing. That is because the cutting of hair, a sign of beauty intended to be hidden by the Hijab in the Islamic Republic, is a powerful message of protest and defiance which has featured as a demonstration of anger in ancient Persian literature.
In this way, Iranian women are uniting across centuries in their fight for freedom and respect, as well as across continents: an outpouring of responses across the globe has seen many women share videos on social media of themselves symbolically cutting their hair to demonstrate their unity with the women of Iran.
Female anger, so often demonised, has yet to show its full force, both in Iran and in societies around the world.
For this fight is women’s. The Iranian government’s ignorance about the power of angry women will see their downfall. Most striking was the women-led protests in the classroom, with videos showing schoolgirls removing their hijabs and driving government representatives from their buildings, and female students in Tehran chanting ‘get lost’ at the Iranian president on their campus.
Female anger, so often demonised, has yet to show its full force, both in Iran and in societies around the world. Angry women, in the form of the suffragettes, the Reclaim the Night movement and the campaigns against police violence in the UK in which black women have taken centre stage, have transformed British society. Yet I wonder, following the protests by the courageous and unified women in Iran, what angry women can achieve next.
