What Are Iranian Women's Rights Movements?

On the other hand, in Egypt, women were active since the Egyptian nationalist uprisings against the British between 1919 and 1922. All women whether lower, middle, or upper class joined veiled while confrontations of British soldiers occurred. Soon after the Egyptian Feminist Union formed in 1924. Their ideology was based on the idea that few male politicians were willing to represent and fight for women’s demands. Over the course of 20 years, there was little improvements in access to education, greater education of health issues affective women, and minor legal changes with regards to minimum age of marriage. However, the Egyptian Feminist Union successes in making women’s demands a matter of public debate, and countering the image of women …show more content…
The campaign aimed to collect one million signatures in support of granting women equal legal status with men (Salime 2011). Iranian women’s rights activists were fighting gender segregation through the “One Million Signatures” campaign, which aimed to collect one million signatures to demand an end to discriminatory laws against women. The reasoning behind these demands was that only men had the sole right to divorce and except in special cases, and would take the custody of the children. The campaign is a persistence of Iranian women’s century-long struggle for gender equality. This campaign involved activists and commonplace women, the peaceful and non-violent approach to legal reform, and on stressing the importance of each woman’s agency and choice. Although this campaign did not complete its goal, they did have other important achievements. First, this campaign managed to create a discourse on women’s rights at the highest levels of government and in the public. Though there were many arrests during the campaign, which generated fear among the public in regards to joining the campaign’s efforts, many acknowledged that the demands of this campaign were just. Also, minor changes in the laws did occur, such as changes in inheritance law, changes in regulations requiring equal compensation to both men and women by insurance companies in cases of accidents and limited reform of nationality laws, allowing women to pass on their nationality to their children. These changes were as much a response to the truths of Iranian society, as the efforts of the Campaign. Politicians could no longer shun these realities. Politicians realized that pressure was building up at the grassroots level. Women’s involvement within this campaign reiterated the importance of the issues middle eastern women face on a day to day