Barnard got a little more glamorous on Wednesday evening.
“Glamour” magazine teamed up with Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies Wednesday night to present the publication’s 2009 “Women of the Year” awards. The honors went to the Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign, represented by members Hoda Aminian and Azadeh Faramarziha.
The campaign’s goal is “to gather a million signatures on a petition asking Iran’s parliament to grant equal rights to women,” according to a Barnard press release.
While at the event, Barnard President Debora Spar observed that the campaign’s goals coincide with those of the college.
“Barnard is a place that dedicates itself to women who aspire to greatness,” she said. “We have two women with us this evening who capture all of this and, in their lives, have already done so much to further the causes of women.”
As part of her new role as Athena Center director, Kathryn Kolbert said the event fell within her goals for the center’s future ventures. “We hope to bring to Barnard a host of women activists, leaders in all of their fields, to reflect on what it means to undertake change,” she told the audience.
Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign formed in 2006 after Iranian police attacked a feminist rally. Representatives say that the campaign has been active since its start in almost 20 cities in several countries, and counts nearly a thousand activists among its ranks. The group is calling for legal reforms, including an end to polygamy and temporary marriage, the right for women to pass on nationality to their children, and equal gender inheritance rights.
With the aid of a Farsi translator, Faramarziha and Aminian described their involvement in the campaign as intensely personal. They said they became involved to help themselves and their other Iranian women improve their lives. “Campaigning is the most important chance ... in Iran for women [to] do something to change their situation,” said Faramarziha.
“When you see the things that happen to you and other people in your country, you have to do something. There is no other way. And the campaign is, for me, the only [way to] change,” she added.
Because of a restriction on public space, activists took to the streets where they personally sought out individuals to help promote their cause. Faramarziha used her education in theater to write street plays that reenacted discriminatory practices against women and identified what legal rights women have and lack. The public performances so captivated public imagination that, in one instance, the police tried to break up a play they mistook for a real argument.
By asking for signatures through cities, suburbs, and villages, the activists have included both men and women in their efforts. “We speak to the people, women, men, and say that we want this. ‘If you think that these rules must be changed, please sign the petition and read our book,’” recalled Aminian. She said that public reactions toward the idea of changing the law have largely been positive, though somewhat mixed. “Some of them encourage us. Some of them think we are crazy,” Faramarziha said.
Their activism is not without its danger. To date, around 50 members of the group have been arrested, including in Tehran. “It’s our city, but we can’t actually go through it and talk to the people easily,” Faramarziha remarked.
The women made clear that their end goal was a legal, not religious, reformation in the Iranian Parliament under any regime. That aim was made more difficult by riots after the contentious Iranian elections this past June.
“We are talking about law and law is something based on modern science … not religion. We are working on laws, not on Sharia [a type of Muslim law],” Faramarziha reminded the audience.
Aminian added that the planned presentation of signatures to the Iranian law-making body is just the beginning of the struggle. “It’s not finished with government … or Parliament,” she said. “[The] goal of [the] campaign must be continued [for] years and years.”
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