Women and the Struggle Against the Regime: Iran and Afghanistan

How are Iranian women challenging the regime? Photojournalist Forough Alaei, winner of the 2019 World Press Photo Award, tells their story in her work. “This project is a story of Iranian role models,” says the author. She travelled around her home country documenting the lives of local women rebelling against the ayatollahs’ regime. Her heroines are representatives of a generation that only got to know the free world thanks to access to the internet. Many of Alaei’s heroines found an outlet for their frustrations in sports: there are award-winning sports climbers, hockey players, kickboxers, and wrestlers in Alysh, belt wrestling, one of the oldest sports in the world. There are also women who, among the first in Iran, became professional car mechanics, stunt women, and motocross riders.

In Afghanistan, women oppressed by the Taliban and disappointed by the lack of support from the West are creating support networks to unite and fight for their rights. The members of the Purple Saturdays Movement organise peaceful protests every week against the massive restrictions on women’s freedoms in Afghanistan and try to raise awareness of civil rights and democracy in society. They also call on human rights activists, intellectuals, and dissidents to form coalitions and organise a more effective resistance to the Taliban. The women secretly homeschool girls because they are no longer allowed to go to school after the sixth grade. They also organise help for single mothers and needy families and take care of orphans.