Glamour Magazine's Women of 2009
June’s postelection fervor was called a women’s revolt by many, but Iranian women may have first found the courage to speak out thanks to an earlier movement: the One Million Signatures Campaign. For the past three years, members of the One Million Signatures initiative have pressed for women’s rights and have endured the constant threat of jailings and beatings as a result. This quest for equality was born on June 12, 2006, when hundreds of protesters gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir Square to peacefully demonstrate against the legal restrictions they face.
The police attacked them with pepper spray and billy clubs; by the end of the day, 70 people had been arrested. “We never imagined we’d be met with so much resistance,” recalls Sussaan Tahmasebi, a Tehran-based campaign member. “Our demands were so basic.” But the demonstrators pressed on and devised a plan: They would gather a million signatures on a petition asking parliament to grant equal rights to women. The sheer number of names would prove that equality was the will of all Iranians. Geographic and security obstacles have prevented a complete tally of the signatures, but some estimates put the total so far in the hundreds of thousands.
The police attacked them with pepper spray and billy clubs; by the end of the day, 70 people had been arrested. “We never imagined we’d be met with so much resistance,” recalls Sussaan Tahmasebi, a Tehran-based campaign member. “Our demands were so basic.” But the demonstrators pressed on and devised a plan: They would gather a million signatures on a petition asking parliament to grant equal rights to women. The sheer number of names would prove that equality was the will of all Iranians. Geographic and security obstacles have prevented a complete tally of the signatures, but some estimates put the total so far in the hundreds of thousands.