Are Iranian Women Modern Sufferagettes?

Women’s Suffrage Movement has come a long way globally since starting in Seneca Falls, NY circa 1886, but don’t tell that to the Iranian women who are risking life & limb by taking on their patriarchal-obsessed clerics …

As the WSJ reports: “Antigovernment protests have swept across Iran since September” when a 23-yr-old women who refused to put on a headscarf was shot in the face by security forces with anti-riot pellets and scores of others have been imprisoned for challenging the country’s strict rules on women’s dress. Concludes the paper, “their prominent role in the streets means that the staying power of the protests rests largely on women’s willingness to endure an intensifying crackdown by a government that seems determined to crush or at least outlast them.”

Yet, great causes often get ignited by a small spark. Consider this excerpt from Elizabeth Hilfrank’s National Geographic account: “The mist starts to fade as President Grover Cleveland takes the stage on Liberty Island, NY. It’s October 28, 1886 and he’s dedicating the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France representing freedom and democracy. But suddenly, women’s rights leader Lillie Devereux Blake and 200 other women sail by on a boat. They’re holding a sign that reads, ‘American women have no liberty.’” Lillie & Friends wanting the right to vote weren’t feuding with a feudal Ayatollah over some dress code. But, isn’t the real issue in Iran today similarly over women being treated as equal political partners with men?

Davd Soul