The plight of women in Iran has not always been so dire. Between the years from 1925 to 1979, Iranian women benefited greatly from the government’s policies. They had education available, the right to vote, and the right to run in the parliament. However following the Iranian revolution in 1979, when under the new regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s new government gave priority to Islamic tradition, favoring male dominance. Women were suddenly stripped of their rights and benefits, and treated as unequals compared to men. Laura Sector from the New York Times writes in her book review of A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, by Shirin Ebadi, “One day in 1980, the country’s new Islamic penal code- adopted overnight and without discussion-appeared in the newspaper. A woman’s life was to be worth half a man’s in the eyes of the law. Criminal penalties and relations between the sexes were to be set back 1400 years…” (Sector, A Dissenting Voice). Shirin Ebadi was of course one of the women who struggled with this loss of rights, considering she was a judge, and women were no longer allowed to have government positions.
The plight of women in Iran has not always been so dire. Between the years from 1925 to 1979, Iranian women benefited greatly from the government’s policies. They had education available, the right to vote, and the right to run in the parliament. However following the Iranian revolution in 1979, when under the new regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s new government gave priority to Islamic tradition, favoring male dominance. Women were suddenly stripped of their rights and benefits, and treated as unequals compared to men. Laura Sector from the New York Times writes in her book review of A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, by Shirin Ebadi, “One day in 1980, the country’s new Islamic penal code- adopted overnight and without discussion-appeared in the newspaper. A woman’s life was to be worth half a man’s in the eyes of the law. Criminal penalties and relations between the sexes were to be set back 1400 years…” (Sector, A Dissenting Voice). Shirin Ebadi was of course one of the women who struggled with this loss of rights, considering she was a judge, and women were no longer allowed to have government positions.