Iranian women’s defiant art of resistance

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Iranian women's voices

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History, particularly modern Iranian history, is punctuated by extraordinary acts of women who have pushed against the rigid boundaries of patriarchy. Each defiant act, however small, has been a blow to the deeply entrenched masculinist order. Among these trailblazers is the poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad (1934–1967), who fearlessly wove the corporeal and emotional agency of women into her verse and whose life was an embodiment of rebellion and revolution. Her poem ‘Ey Marz-e Por Gohar’ (‘O, You Frontier of Gems’ as my colleague Shara Atashi translates it), transcends the personal and enters the audacious realm of satire and public dissent.

Forough strips away the veneer of a masculine, tradition-laden literary culture, turning the ‘terrifying voice of law’ into the farcical ‘clatter of a rattle’. This subversion of the masculine voice, combined with an unapologetic assertion of women’s bodily and emotional agency, foretells the ongoing fight of Iranian women today, who challenge patriarchy both through personal autonomy and public defiance. Forough’s work critiques the sanctification of constructs like tradition and honour when used to justify oppression, a critique that resonates deeply in contemporary struggles.

Her themes, then, are not confined to her own time but resonate with wider struggles for freedom and equality, cementing her reputation as a powerful voice globally and across generations. ‘O, You Frontier of Gems’ is not only a timeless critique of authoritarianism and patriarchy, but also a mirror reflecting the resilience, creativity and defiance of Iranian women, who, in rejecting the restrictive laws and practices of the Islamic Republic, have rendered its oppressive tools null and void.

This rejection manifests in startlingly creative ways. In Iran, women’s opposition to tyranny often takes the form of a performance – a raw and powerful expression of agency. Consider the recent viral story of a woman who, following a confrontation in an airport over the mandatory hijab, boldly seized a cleric’s turban, unravelled its fabric and wrapped it around her own head like a scarf. The act was theatrical, symbolic and transformative, challenging not just the cleric’s authority but the symbols of masculine dominance encoded in law and religion. Not merely a question of bodily autonomy or personal agency, these performances are meticulously crafted to target the very symbols that underpin and enforce male-dominated structures of power. They represent a reclamation of space – both physical and metaphorical.

One of the most poignant examples of this creative defiance is the story of Parastoo Ahmadi, a young artist and singer determined not to forgo her right ‘to sing for the people I love’ and ‘the land I adore’. Knowing that under the laws of the Islamic Republic solo public singing by women is forbidden, she took an unorthodox approach. Ahmadi staged an imaginary concert with only musicians within the walls of a traditional caravanserai. Wearing a strapless dress and live-streaming on YouTube, she performed without the state-mandated veil, pausing after each song to smile and thank her imagined spectators for their applause. For many viewers, it echoed the message of Shirin Neshat’s Turbulence (1998), a video art installation that dramatized an astonishing vocal performance by an Iranian woman to an empty theatre, and which won the 1999 Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Like Neshat’s exploration of silence and sound, of male and female spaces, Ahmadi’s performance blurred the lines between art and protest, private and public. It was a rebellion within rebellion, a profound reclamation of the agency that Iranian women have been denied, using new virtual media.

Such acts go beyond protest. They are a convergence of defiance and creativity, innovation and resilience. From dancing in public squares, like the teenage ‘Ekbatan girls’ in Tehran as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, to reclaiming other forms of performance to make their demonstrations, Iranian women are carving new spaces for themselves. These acts are marked by three recurring motifs: reclaiming public spaces denied to them; asserting their personal autonomy in the right to choose their attire; and performing forbidden arts such as dance and music in defiance of prohibition.

Compulsory hijab, often described as the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the Islamic regime, can be compared – as a symbol of division, oppression and illegitimacy – to the Berlin Wall. While not often invoked in such terms, the analogy fits: both represent a system rooted in exclusion, capture and oppression. Yet history reminds us that even the most fortified walls crumble under the weight of collective defiance.

The unravelling of this symbol can be traced to women like Vida Movahed, whose act of standing on a utility box with her white scarf hoisted on a stick inaugurated the Girls of Revolution Street protest within the Iranian Democracy Movement. Others followed, such as Sepideh Rashno, who resisted a public shaming by a hijab-clad woman attempting to enforce regime policies. Rashno’s defiance went further when, after her arrest and with evident bruising from her coerced confession, she refused to admit wrongdoing in the course of a state television interview. Her resistance, reminiscent of that of Rosa Parks who famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, catalysed a larger movement against injustice. Both acts speak to individual courage in the face of deeply ingrained systemic oppression.

Then there is Sepideh Qoliyan, a political activist who entered the courtroom wearing the mandatory hijab, and in a swift and unexpected moment, removed both her scarf and chemise – standing in a bare-shoulder top and defying the authority of the judicial system at its core. Alongside her are the many actresses who have risked careers and legal safety by removing their hijabs in solidarity, and the ordinary women, particularly teenagers, who continue to resist the daily pressures to conform through seemingly mundane acts of rebellion.

The radicalisation of Iranian women’s actions, increasingly bold and unprecedented, reflects two key dynamics: the pressure of suppression building towards inevitable explosion; and the widespread reach of consciousness-raising campaigns, particularly those catalysed by the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. This transformative radicalisation is vividly illustrated in the November 2024 incident at Tehran’s Science and Research Branch of the Islamic Azad University. Confronted by university officials for her so-called ‘inappropriate hijab’, a young female doctoral student, Ahoo Daryaei, protested by stripping off down to her underwear and walking defiantly through the campus grounds. The security forces, flustered and bewildered, were caught scrambling to consult their superiors; a stark testament to their unpreparedness in confronting such radical defiance.

An act of bodily rebellion, spontaneous and unplanned, Daryaei’s action embodies a simultaneous protest and performance art – a raw, visceral outpouring of anger and assertion of agency against oppression. It echoes the widespread creative resistance of Iranian women, through dance, music and other symbolic acts, as they continuously reclaim agency over their bodies and narratives. The boldness not only challenges the regime’s symbols of control, but also reflects the transformative shift of consciousness among Iranian women, whose growing awareness and unrelenting defiance have begun to reshape the landscape of resistance itself. These women are not merely fighting for individual freedoms – they are together challenging an entire ideology.

The future of Iranian women is both complex and promising, shaped by a legacy of defiance and a relentless push for change. As history has shown, every act of resistance, no matter how small, chips away at the oppressive walls of patriarchy. Today, Iranian women stand at a crossroads, a pivotal moment. Their fight is no longer confined to whispers in private spaces – it is public, creative and unyielding. From unveiling in defiance of compulsory hijab to reclaiming public spaces through dance, music and art, their actions resonate far beyond Iran’s borders. The younger generation, particularly among women, is keenly aware of the state’s suffocating grip. They recognise that the nation itself has been imprisoned by the Islamic State’s authoritarian rule. Knocking on the prison doors, they’ve learned, elicits no response from the jailers. Their solution? A collective uprising to break down the door.

© Sana Nassari

Sana Nassari

Sana Nassari is a British-Iranian poet, writer, translator and art historian.