Happy March 8th, Women’s Day!
March 8, International Women’s Day, commemorates women’s struggles to achieve their rights against injustice, inequality, exploitation, and slavery, which have been going on for more than 150 years. The peak of these struggles dates back to 1857, when women workers in a New York textile factory demonstrated to reduce working hours and protest their low wages. The struggle of working women in New York became a basis for future women’s struggles around the world. Iranian freedom-seeking women, as part of the women fighters in the world, also began a struggle to free themselves from the shackles of feudal traditions and laws and religious reaction, especially from the constitutional era onwards, both openly and secretly. Women fighters in Iran, along with men in leftist and communist organizations, especially guerrilla ones, took up arms and fought to overthrow tyranny and reactionary and gender-discriminatory traditions, and played an important role in shaping the 1957 Revolution. But it wasn’t long before the ruling religious reaction led by Khomeini took back what the freedom-loving and militant women of Iran had achieved and systematically imposed gender apartheid on women and Iranian society, along with the suppression of the revolution. On March 7, 1957, after female employees, nurses, and female students were denied entry to their workplaces because they were not wearing the hijab, they began marching and protesting, and female activists joined them. The women’s struggle against the tyranny and reactionary and religious traditions of the regressive regime of the Islamic Republic continued in various forms. They embarked on a battle that raged beneath the skin of society and continued generation after generation until, finally, the murder of Jina (Mahsa) brought to the surface the struggles of the people, especially women, that were raging beneath the skin of society. From within that emerged the revolutionary movement of women living in freedom, a movement in which the cry for freedom of women and men echoed in the streets, and women challenged tyranny and the ruling reactionary and religious traditions by removing their veils and burning them.
The Iranian Political Prisoners’ Association (in exile), while commemorating International Women’s Day, honors the memory of the brave and young women who lost their lives for the sake of the hijab and in the fight against tyranny and reactionary traditions, including the Yaldas, Hadiyats, Mahsas, Sarinas, Nikas, Armitas, Ghazalehs, Hananehs, Hanas, Asraas, Pardisas, Maedas, etc.
Iranian Political Prisoners Association (in exile)
March 7, 2024 is equal to Esfand 17, 1402