As Iran returns to the headlines amid renewed regional tensions, attention has again turned to its turbulent modern history. This week we offer a retrospective piece reflecting on a less frequently discussed aspect of its history: the expansion of women’s rights before the Revolution and why those gains became entangled in the political upheaval that followed.
In photographs from the mid-twentieth century, viewers immediately notice how different the country appears in contrast with today. By the mid-twentieth century, Iran – known internationally as Persia until 1935 – had spent decades attempting to recast itself as a modern nation-state. That process accelerated under the final Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (r. 1941-1979), who envisioned the nation as a technologically advanced, Western-aligned monarchy. Tehran in the 1960s and 70s projected a different image: universities expanding, oil wealth rising, and women increasingly visible in universities, journalism, medicine, and government service – a contrast that still surprises those who primarily associate the country with strict religious conservatism.
Rights before the revolution
Iranian women had begun organizing politically long before the reforms of the 1960s. During the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), women founded associations, published newspapers, and raised funds for constitutionalist forces, laying the foundations of an early Iranian feminist movement. And efforts at modernization had also intervened directly in clothing. In 1936, the previous leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, banned veils in public spaces, a move intended to symbolize national transformation but one that many religious families considered coercive.
Nevertheless, the period carried a sense of cautious but unmistakable expansion. Reforms tied to the White Revolution – a state-led modernization project, named for its intended bloodless transformation – extended suffrage to women in 1963 and introduced legal changes that reshaped the law. With the right to vote, women were also able to hold public office. The Family Protection Laws of 1967 and 1975 limited polygamy, raised the legal age of marriage, and gave women greater rights in divorce and child custody. Women entered universities in growing numbers and began appearing more frequently in professional settings. By the late 1970s, they served in parliament, on local councils, and in the civil service in numbers that would have been unthinkable decades earlier.
For parts of the urban middle class, life reflected many of these changes. Women became increasingly present in Tehran and Shiraz – as students, journalists, and professionals – and public dress became largely a matter of personal choice. Iranian magazines featured actresses, engineers, and parliamentarians alike. For many urban women, perhaps the question was no longer whether they could participate in civic life, but how rapidly those opportunities might expand.
However, throughout a socially diverse country, these changes were never evenly distributed. The image of a cosmopolitan Tehran often obscured the largely rural and socially conservative populace. For millions of Iranians outside major cities, the state’s campaigns appeared distinct from everyday realities. In many provinces, traditional family structures and economic hardships meant that the reforms of the late 1960s hardly reached average Iranians. Modernization was visible in state policy and in the urban media but less transformative in everyday life, and social attitudes sometimes changed more slowly than the laws themselves.
Limits of modernity
Yet state reforms were never as stable, or as widely accepted, as they sometimes appeared. Beneath this fresh image lay authoritarianism, political repression, and widening inequality. The Shah’s security apparatus – particularly the intelligence service SAVAK, created with CIA aid – monitored dissent and suppressed political opposition; while critics argued that the monarchy concentrated wealth among elites and marginalized rural and religious communities. Although the state promoted change, meaningful political participation remained tightly controlled. Opposition parties were restricted, and criticism of the Shah carried real risk. For many clerics, merchants, and students, rapid Westernization appeared less like progress than cultural erosion imposed from above. This growing discontent, combining political repression, economic inequality, and resentment toward broader state reforms, would fuel a revolutionary upheaval just years later.
Revolution and reversal
These tensions erupted during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Within months, the monarchy collapsed, the Shah fled to Egypt, and exiled Shi’a leader Ruhollah Khomeini returned. He soon became the first Supreme Leader (rahbar) of the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. Religious authority was now woven directly into governance. The new system reshaped the legal and social framework that had emerged during the previous decades. Women were also visible participants in the revolutionary movement itself, protesting against the monarchy en masse – often with differing visions, from secular activists seeking political liberalization to religious supporters who viewed the revolution as a crucial rejection of imposed Westernization.
Eventually, many of the social freedoms of the previous era were reversed: compulsory veiling laws were introduced (which immediately women heavily protested), family law was restructured around religious jurisprudence, and several legal reforms affecting women – including the Family Protection Laws – were swiftly rolled back. With political dissent again dangerous, policies once framed as modern were recast by the revolutionaries as moral correction.
Long shadow of revolution
The decades that followed proved turbulent. Iran faced the devastating Iran-Iraq War, economic sanctions, and periodic waves of protest – several of which again placed women’s rights at the center of public debate, most notably the nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody in 2022. Each of these moments offers a reminder that the status of women in Iran has often mirrored broader political currents. When the country pushed toward secular state-led transformation, some opportunities expanded; when it moved toward ideological consolidation, restrictions tightened.
At the same time, the post-revolutionary period also produced a more complicated reality than a simple reversal. While legal and social restrictions tightened, the Islamic Republic did invest heavily in education and public health. Later reformist periods, particularly under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), saw renewed debates over civil society, legal reform, and women’s participation in public life, often driven by female journalists, lawyers, and academics pushing for change from within the system. Female literacy also rose sharply and women have outnumbered men in Iranian universities since the early 2000s. The revolution thus produced a paradox: a political system that restricted women’s freedoms while educating one of the most highly educated female populations in the region.
Reflection of the past
Looking back, Iran’s modern history is not simply a tale of decline or repression, but of abrupt political redirection. The images of uncovered university students in the 1960s and of women defiantly protesting decades later belong to the same national timeline. Both reflect competing visions for the country’s future. For readers revisiting these details amid today’s renewed attention, the lesson is less nostalgia for a lost era than a reminder of how quickly a nation’s social trajectory can shift when power, identity, and ideology intersect.
The underlying conflict between state-supported modernization and competing visions of cultural authority has continued to shape Iran’s political landscape long after the original headlines faded. Debates over women’s rights have repeatedly resurfaced whenever the country confronts deeper questions about identity, authority, and modernity. History suggests that women’s status has repeatedly been a measure of the country’s wider political direction – and a common issue over which competing visions of Iran’s future collide. Whether future reforms will emerge from protest, war, or political upheaval, the shape freedom will ultimately take in Iran remains uncertain. But whatever path the country next takes, Iranian women will irrefutably remain central to that story.
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