Whisper it, but there’s a revolution happening in Iran. The Islamic Republic and the Ayatollah may both still be in place, but right now, away from the world’s attention, Iranian women are quietly rebelling.
On the streets of the nation’s major cities, where the regime murdered hundreds of protesters and imprisoned more than 20,000 Iranians in 2022, many girls and women are now walking without hijabs. You can see it for yourself in videos on social media: They are doing what almost anywhere else in the world is the most normal thing imaginable but in Iran is something revolutionary.
What makes this all the more surprising is that as recently as April 2024, the United Nations was warning that there was a “violent crackdown” on women and girls with mass arrests and harassment of anyone not adhering to the draconian laws. But now, something has changed. The once-menacing white vans of the morality police make far less frequent appearances. Some women are even doubling down on dissent: Swapping their headscarves for helmets, they ride motorcycles—a right and a pleasure long denied to Iranian women. What was once unthinkable has become ordinary in ways that no one could have predicted.
