A Tribute to Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate

All Iranians experience the bitter and brutal rule of the Islamic Republic and are to some degree, in one way or another, affected by its devastating impacts. Since 1978, when the so-called Islamic Revolution successfully derailed the democratic uprising of the people by taking advantage of their religious faith and usurping the much longed for findings of their efforts, many Iranians have had to voluntarily or involuntarily quit Iran and live in exile in Western Europe or the United States and Canada. According to some estimates the number of Iranians living in the United States alone was well over 1,560,000 in the year 1996 (Wikipedia.org).

But women and children have had to bear the brunt of this Orwellian, reactionary, and medieval rule much more harshly than other members of the society. Trapped in the quagmire of their socioeconomic status, their class, and their gender, women have been the prime victims of a corrupt regime that claims that it draws its mandate from the will of God – Allah as they refer to Him!

Many Iranian women have been executed by hanging, shooting, or stoning since the Islamic Republic assumed the reigns of political power in 1978. An example of the savagery with which the Islamic Republic subjugates women in Iran was the public hanging on August 15, 2004 of Atefeh Sahaleh Rajabi, a 16-year-old girl whose only charge was an out-of-wedlock relationship with a young man of about her own age. Her hanging came despite the repeated pleas of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other international human rights monitoring groups.

As the late Iranian poet, Ahmad Shamloo, says in a poem reflecting the practice of Revolutionary Guards in stopping cars at checkpoints late nights to make sure their occupants have not been drinking any alcoholic beverages,

“They smell your mouth, my love,
Lest you may have said ‘I love you!’
Love has to be hidden deep in the closet at home.”

In the face of increasing unemployment - as high as 15% by some estimates – many women and young girls fall prey to the prostitution imposed on them by the poverty that has been the direct result of the economic policies and political isolationism of the Islamic Republic (Amuzegar). Ironically, they are then shamelessly held accountable for trying to feed themselves and their children by the same regime that has induced their misery and suffering.

Conformity to the laws of Islamic Sharia is demanded from Iranian citizens in every aspect of their public and private lives. This includes such details as facial hair and long sleeve shirts for men, headscarves and hejab – Islamic covering – for women, type of music listened to by people, the contents of the books that they read, as well as much more important issues like sexuality and sexual partners. Homosexuality is punished by death. As a rule all Iranians know that if the title of a newspaper reports that a certain man has been hanged or executed by shooting after having been found guilty of sodomy, another execution will soon follow, that of his sexual partner.

With schools segregated by gender, some believe that the rate of homosexual relationships has increased in the past 27 years since the Islamic revolution, though, due to the illegality of such relationships and the stigma that is associated with them, no statistical data have been collected, and therefore there is only subjective speculation as to the verity of this matter.

It is against this dire and bleak backdrop that Shirin Ebadi became the first Iranian woman – the first Iranian for that matter and the first woman in the Middle East - to be awarded the Nobel Prize for peace 10, 2003. And when she appeared at a press conference in Paris not wearing a headscarf, she deliberately pushed against the conformity walls of the Islamic Republic setting an example for all the Iranian women and girls who long to be able to withstand the chains of restraints that the regime has fettered them with (Esfandiari 57).

Over the past century, patriarchy has had to give up many of its long-held strongholds throughout the world, and though it has been very unyielding in the Islamic world, it has lost a lot of ground even among the Muslim populations of these countries. Fundamentalism appears to have been the desperate response of Muslim patriarchy to the ever-tightening noose of egalitarianism around its convulsive neck, one last effort to hold on to its domination.

Fundamentalism is misogynous in nature. “A parliamentarian in Iran is on the record as saying, ‘Women must accept the reality of men dominating them, and the world must recognize that men are superior’” (Chitsaz and Samsami). Ironically the Iranian fundamentalists, who so belligerently oppose any notion of equality with women and do not fall short of making every effort to pass laws that will further subjugate them, greatly owe their success in the revolution of 1978 to the vast participation of women (Moghadam 458). Women activists like Shirin Ebadi, who had been in and out of prison for her support of democracy during the Shah, actively took part in the efforts that culminated in the toppling of the Pahlavi Dynasty only to find out that their efforts were being used to their detriment.

Shirin Ebadi, however, did not despair. She knew well that the very women that made the defeat the Shah’s tyranny possible by their participation in all the million-person demonstrations can someday win a victory against the male domination of the Islamic republic too.

Born in 1947, Shirin Ebadi became the first Iranian female to preside over a court as a judge paving the way for many women that followed. Later when the Islamic Republic declared that women could not hold the position of a judge – an attempt to perpetuate male domination – she worked as a university professor, a writer, and a defense attorney. Her publications became torchlight in the hands of the activists who sought to use the very laws of the Islamic Republic, however antiquated, to fight for the rights of women and children across the country.

Shirin Ebadi chose to undermine the Islamic patriarchy by exploiting the very laws of the patriarchal system. She educated herself in the Sharia taking advantage of the more progressive aspect of Islam to fight its reactionary side. After all Islam is the same religion whose preaching terminated the practice of infanticide among Arab Muslims; it is the religion that taught people to free their slaves and treat them with respect; it is the religion that held that all men – yes men – are equal in the eyes of Allah regardless of the color of their skin; the very same religion that cultivated the grounds for the flourishing of literature and science in the Islamic lands when Europe was burning in the ignorance of the dark ages and any voice of ration was shut down by the inquisition courts of the Catholic Christianity. Yes, however patriarchal, Islam does have a more moderate reading too, which accounts for the vast differences in the state of human rights and women in the Islamic countries.Ebadi’s books and writing shed light on the ongoing spousal abuse in Iran and set clear ways for women to fight their abusive spouses in Islamic courts that do not hesitate to interpret everything in favor of the husband. She found ways around the patrilineal inheritance laws of Islam that assign the share of a girl from the deceased parent’s wealth at half that of a male child.

Her international recognition and her affiliation with human rights organizations put her in a position where she could act as defense attorney for many a political prisoner when no one else dared walk into a so-called revolutionary court to defend a detainee whose charges had been trumped up to include “conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic Republic,” a charge that can be punished with the death penalty if proven.

Interestingly, just as the Second World War provided the American women with an opportunity to acquire paid employment on a vast basis, the eight-year war with Iraq and the engagement of the male population in the war through mandatory draft cleared the way for many Iranian women to get absorbed in the job market. According to Valentine M. Moghadam this was a factor that “undermined the [Islamic Republic’s] policies on women” and “created some employment opportunities for educated women in the public sector and particularly in health, education, and (t0 a lesser extent) public administration.”

Despite the Islamic revolution and the enforcement of Islamic laws, which drastically reduce women’s chances and their upward mobility, the long period of modernization during the Shah’s regime resulted in the education of girls and women on a large scale. This made their involvement in paid employment possible. And although the Islamic Republic has been hard at work to throw women out of labor force, Iranian women, under the guidance of female activists like Shirin Ebadi, have been able to guarantee their continued presence in the job market by steadfastly adhering to opportunities of furthering their education. For the first time, in recent years, the number of female students in institutes of higher education has topped that of male students.

Recent family planning policies in the face of the rising population, increasing poverty, and towering foreign debt have made it possible for Iranian women to have easier access to contraception thereby empowering them to remain more reliably in their employments. By defining labor laws that directly and indirectly affect women and their families, Shirin Ebadi has been able to educate women regarding their rights in the labor market.

When Shirin Ebadi was declared by the Nobel Foundation as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Iranians in Iran and around the world welcomed the decision with extreme joy and pride. Iranian women in particular embraced Ebadi’s Nobel Prize as a victory for the feminist movement in Iran and the Middle East. Shirin Ebadi’s contributions to women’s and children’s welfare in Iran and around the world have inspired many a woman who might have otherwise found it rather daring to engage in any sort of empowering activity in the face of the fundamentalist misogyny.

“In all her roles, she seeks to interpret Islam in a way that is harmonious and co-exists with the so-called notions of Western thought, such as human rights, democracy, freedom of speech and religious freedom” (Manish Verma). Despite all her deeds, this reading of Islam by Shirin Ebadi has put her at odds with those activists that think of the Islamic Republic as an incorrigible political system that should be replaced with a secular and democratic regime. many of Ebadi’s critics, including the writer of this paper, are of the opinion that Dr. Ebadi is too accepting of the Islamic Republic, and in effect contributing to the lengthening of its power.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Shirin Ebadi’s political stance, there is no doubt that her publications and actions have greatly helped to ease the pain and suffering of many women and children in Iran. Every Iranian, men and women alike, will always be proud to be associated with Dr. Ebadi as an Iranian.


Works cited:

Amuzegar, Jahangir. “Iran’s Unemployment Crisis.” Middle East Economic Survey 41. 2004.

Esphandiari, Helen. “the Woman Question.” The Wilson Quarterly 28.2 2004: 56-63. Spokane Falls Community College Library, Spokane, WA. 25 Feb. 2006


Chitsaz, Sarvnaz and Soosan Samsami. “Iranian Women and Girls: Victims of Exploitation and Violence.” Coalition Against Trafficking Women. 1999:

Moghadam, Valentine M. “A Tale of Two Countries: State, Society, and Gender Politics in Iran and Afghanistan.” The Muslim World. 2004. Spokane Falls Community College Library, Spokane, WA. 25 Feb. 2006

Verma, Manisha. “What Is the Significance of Shirin Ebadi Winning the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2003?” Association for Women’s Rights in Development. 2005: