A Regime That Treats Women as Property

For decades, Iranian women have faced violence simply for showing their hair. They have been subjected to imprisonment, torture, and persecution for advocating equality. They have been handed the death penalty for daring to proclaim “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Under the Islamic Republic, women have endured physical and psychological violence as instruments of state control — compelled to cover themselves, to mute their voices, to diminish their presence in public life under a regime that regards them not as individuals, but as property.

This is not incidental. It is structural, deliberate, and sustained. The morality police patrol streets. Enforcers monitor dress. Courts issue rulings that deny women the most basic rights over their own bodies, their own futures, their own voices. The tools of repression are many — but the spirit they sought to silence has proved unbreakable.

They Never Ceased Their Fight

And yet — Iranian women have never ceased their fight. They removed their hijabs in defiance, standing alone on street corners and in public squares, holding white scarves on sticks as silent, luminous acts of resistance. They confronted the morality police — unarmed, unafraid, unbowed. They risked everything: their careers, their freedom, their lives, for the simple and irreducible right to live freely.

The 2022 uprising sparked by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini did not emerge from nowhere. It was the eruption of decades of suppressed fury and accumulated courage. Women at the forefront — cutting their hair in streets and posting it online, leading chants that shook the foundations of the regime, organizing with a clarity and ferocity that stunned the world. Young women, older women, women from every city and province, united under the most elemental of demands: the right to exist as full human beings.

We Must Stand With Our Iranian Sisters

On this International Women’s Day, solidarity is not a passive sentiment. It is an active commitment. It means speaking the truth about what Iranian women face — refusing the euphemisms, the diplomatic evasions, the false equivalences that soften the reality of a system built on the subjugation of women. It means amplifying their voices, their names, their stories, in every forum available to us.

IWD 2026 carries the United Nations theme: “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” For Iranian women, these are not abstract principles. They are the stakes of every day lived under the regime. Justice for them means accountability for their oppressors. Action means refusing to normalize, to appease, or to look away.

We must stand by our Iranian sisters and stand for truth, social justice, dignity, and freedom — today and forever. Their courage does not ask for pity. It asks for solidarity. It asks that the world bear witness, and refuse to forget.

The Kurdish Women’s Revolutionary Philosophy

The resistance of Kurdish women in Syria and Iran is grounded in the revolutionary philosophy of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” — Woman, Life, Freedom. It was a Kurdish slogan long before it became the rallying cry of an entire nation. Although these movements share deep ideological roots, their struggles manifest differently depending on the political context of each country — yet they draw from the same unbreakable source of conviction.

The “Jina” Uprising: A Kurdish Spark That Lit All of Iran

The 2022 national uprising was ignited by the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini — a young Kurdish woman from Saqqez, arrested by the morality police for an alleged dress code violation and killed in their custody. Her Kurdish name, Jina — meaning “life” — carried a particular resonance. The Kurdish slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” became the rallying cry not just of Kurds, but of all of Iran. A philosophy born from decades of Kurdish women’s resistance crossed every ethnic, linguistic, and regional boundary, uniting a nation in its demand for dignity.

Triple Oppression: An Intersectional Struggle

Kurdish women in Iran face what can only be described as a triple burden of oppression — layered, compounding, and relentless:

Forms of Resistance

Kurdish women’s resistance takes many forms — each one an act of courage in a context where every act of defiance carries mortal risk:

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  Removing the mandatory hijab — in public, on film, alone in the street. A personal act transformed into a political statement, broadcast to the world.
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  Clandestine teaching of the Kurdish language — educators like Zara Mohammadi, sentenced to prison for teaching her mother tongue to children, have become symbols of cultural resistance and the will to survive as a people.
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  Active participation in protest movements — despite brutal repression, Kurdish women have been at the forefront of street demonstrations, organizing networks, and cross-border solidarity campaigns.
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  Armed engagement — historically, many women have joined Kurdish opposition groups such as Komala or the KDPI, choosing armed struggle as a means of escaping both state oppression and local patriarchal structures, and as an assertion of full political agency.

Common Symbols of Resistance

IWD 2026: 115 Years of Collective Struggle

International Women’s Day 2026 marks its 115th anniversary — over a century of collective advocacy, setback, and hard-won progress. This year’s official campaign theme from the International Women’s Day organization is “Give to Gain,” emphasizing generosity, mentoring, and collaboration as pathways to shared progress. The United Nations theme — “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls” — underscores the urgency of equitable justice systems amid ongoing conflicts and authoritarian repression worldwide.

IWD 2026 also placed a powerful spotlight on women across Afghanistan — caged under Taliban tyranny — as well as women in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Kurdistan, and Syria, all of them driving peace, rebuilding communities, and resisting the machinery of violence at enormous personal cost. The tribune is global. The solidarity must be too.