Early in my tenure as Secretary General at the Women’s Organization of Iran (WOI),[efn_note] The WOI was founded in 1966 by a 5,000-member assembly of Iranian women from diverse backgrounds and regions, gathered through consultation, brainstorming, and negotiation. Its mission was “to raise the cultural, social and economic knowledge of the women of Iran and…
Tag: One Million Signatures
Iran's New Crackdown on Women
In July, 2017, the Daily Beast covered the uptick in violence against prominent women’s rights activists in Iran. “Mahnaz Afkhami, who served as minister of state for women’s affairs under the pre-revolutionary government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and now runs the Women’s Learning Project in Bethesda, Maryland, says that in recent months, the Iranian…
EPOCA Interview: Mahnaz Afkhami on How the Struggle for More Rights in Iran Has Yielded Gains
In an interview with Brazilian magazine, EPOCA, Mahnaz Afkhami speaks about Ghoncheh Ghavami in Tehran, who was arrested for trying to watch a volleyball game as a woman. The interview addresses Afkhami’s prominent role as a women’s rights activist living in exile. “In the episode of the game of volleyball, Afkhami believes the incessant media…
Iranian Women Campaign To End Discriminatory Laws Against Them
VOA News interviews Mahnaz Afkhami on Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign, which seeks to change discriminatory laws against women. “Afkhami says the activists and their followers are extremely resilient, courageous, and inventive. ‘The reason the world heard so much about what was happening in Iran during the election is because of the sophisticated use of…
Obama, Ahmadinejad, and the Women of Iran
This month, for the first time in 30 years, formal negotiations between the United States and Iran took place in a relatively positive atmosphere. As President Obama had promised during his campaign, dialogue took the place of diatribe. This is an important development. Why now and why during the term of the holocaust-denying, US-bashing President…
Women are Driving Iran Toward Democracy
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…
Women Inspiring Women
Mahnaz Afkhami is interviewed by Forbes, where she speaks about women’s rights in Iran and across the Islamic world. The interview covers myriad topics including Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign, the push to reform family laws, and activism in Iran. “It is impossible to impose an archaic form of government on an aware and connected…