Women in Iran

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed doubts about new legislation imposing tougher penalties on women who flout mandatory hijab regulations.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women in Iran have been required to cover their hair in public.

A woman flashes a thumbs-up as she takes part in a protest gathering called by the "Woman Life Freedom Collective" (Femme Vie Liberte) and the Association Phenix in support of the Iranian student, believed to be named Ahou Daryaei, arrested after stripping to her underwear in Tehran, by the Pantheon monument near the Sorbonne University in Paris on Nov. 5, 2025.

The young Iranian woman, who publicly stripped down to her underwear as a form of protest while walking on the grounds of an Iranian university, does not pose a security issue but is described as a “disturbed individual” receiving treatment, according to a government spokesperson.

There are many points along Vasso Papandreou‘s political course at which someone can stand.

Iranian officials insisted for decades that the law requiring women to cover their hair and dress modestly was sacrosanct and not even worth discussion. They dismissed the struggle by women who challenged the law as a symptom of Western meddling.

"My dream is to witness an Iran liberated from the grip of the Islamic regime," the Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad tells Kathimerini in an interview. The Iranian women's rights activist is living in exile in the USA, under the protection of the FBI. She spoke to us by phone about what it means to be a woman under Iran's theocratic regime.

Iran's government is sending women for counseling in an effort to enforce regulations requiring them to cover their hair. Healthcare organizations have warned that the country's judiciary is appropriating mental medicine for its own ends, but others have cited the action as evidence that the government is unable to uphold hijab rules, France 24 reported.

Be My Voice, a documentary about Iranian women's fight against the forced wearing of the hijab, has won the Amnesty International Slovenia Human Rights Film Award as the 25th Festival of Documentary Film in Ljubljana.

Short movies nominated for an Oscar often don't get wide public attention. But when one is about an Iranian girl seeking freedom from male domination by taking off her veil, interest is sure to spike.

Iranian police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse a protest rally in the country's west following the funeral ceremony for a young woman who died while in police custody in Tehran earlier this week, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.