For Women of the Arab Spring, Iranian Women Provide a Warning and a Model, Winter 2013

In the mass movements that swept the Arab world, there were no specific demands for improving women’s status or gender equality under the law. However, the women who came out into the streets were hoping for and expecting an expansion, not a contraction, of their rights. They should learn and take heed   from the   experience of women in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which showed  that the most progressive laws can be set aside and ignored by lawmakers who do not believe that women’s rights are human rights.