What Does 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Mean in a Country Where Women Keep Dying?
“Woman, Life, Freedom” was never just a chant. It was a cry for survival—three words that rose from the bloodied streets of Iranian cities after the killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by Iran’s morality police in 2022. Her death in custody ignited a global firestorm of solidarity, inspiring one of the most visible protest movements in the country since the Islamic Revolution in Iran. But while the slogan lives on, many of the women behind it no longer do.
Since 2022, dozens of women—some named, many anonymous—have died resisting Iran’s gender apartheid. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader phenomenon best understood through one word: femicide.
What Is Femicide—and Why Does It Apply to Iran?
Femicide isn’t limited to domestic abuse or “honor killings.” It includes any systemic killing of women because they are women. That means state executions for peaceful protest, disappearances after arrests, deaths in prison, and policies that criminalize existence. In Iran, femicide is increasingly carried out not only by individuals but by institutions—through surveillance, intimidation, and laws designed to punish dissent with lethal consequences.
Iran’s penal code allows fathers and brothers to murder daughters and sisters with reduced sentences. Protesters like Nika Shakarami and Hadis Najafi were found dead under suspicious circumstances following police action. New digital surveillance laws now turn unveiled women into legal targets. Combined, these patterns expose a chilling reality: femicide in Iran is being normalized—through state power, cultural impunity, and silence.
Why This Article Matters Now
Three years after Mahsa Amini’s death, Iran is not safer for women. In fact, it is more dangerous. The state has adapted, evolving its tools of repression from morality patrols to AI surveillance, from improvised violence to codified punishment.
Yet the Woman, Life, Freedom movement remains, even as its figures fall. Their deaths demand that we redefine resistance—not as survival alone, but as the act of remembering, naming, and fighting back against the systems that erase women.
In Iran, femicide has become a state strategy. ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ is no longer just a rallying cry—it’s a eulogy and a call to arms.
Mahsa Amini and the Catalyst of National Grief
Why Was Mahsa Amini’s Death a Turning Point in Iran’s War on Women?
On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez, died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being arrested in Tehran for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”
Just three days earlier, she had been pulled from the street, thrown into a van, and taken to a detention facility. By the time her family saw her again, she was comatose. According to medical sources and eyewitness accounts, Mahsa had suffered severe head injuries—evidence that directly contradicted the Iranian authorities’ claim that she had died of a heart attack.
Her death was not a tragic anomaly. It was the inevitable result of a state system that enforces compulsory veiling laws with violence, impunity, and zero accountability. In the eyes of many Iranians—and the world—Mahsa Amini was a victim of state femicide.
“She Didn’t Just Die — She Was Killed Because She Was a Woman.”
This phrase became a central truth echoed on walls, banners, and in the streets across Iran. Mahsa wasn’t the first woman to die under the weight of the regime’s gender-based violence, but she became a symbol—a name that cut through fear and censorship.
Her death launched a nationwide uprising that quickly took on a broader form. Young women burned their hijabs in public squares. Schoolgirls took down portraits of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Men and women, Kurds and Persians, old and young, flooded the streets shouting “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” — “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
For the first time in decades, a protest movement born from a woman’s death became a direct challenge to the Islamic Republic’s patriarchal foundation.
Mahsa Amini’s name became synonymous with a larger truth: that being a woman in Iran, especially a defiant one, can be fatal.
Her killing marked the start of a new era—one in which femicide was no longer hidden in family homes or ignored in courtrooms, but exposed on the global stage as an act of state violence.
Mahsa Amini’s death was not just a tragedy — it was a turning point that forced the world to confront the gendered violence embedded in Iran’s political system.
Femicide as State Policy: When the Law Kills
How Does the Hijab Law in Iran Enable State Violence Against Women?
In 2024, the Iranian parliament escalated its war on women with the ratification of the Hijab and Chastity Law, formalizing what had already become daily practice: criminalizing not only how women dress, but who they are.
Under this law, unveiled women can be fined, imprisoned, banned from work and education, denied banking access, and monitored digitally by facial recognition software installed in public spaces.
This isn’t about modesty. It’s about obedience. And the price of disobedience can be fatal.
According to Amnesty International, the new legislation “entrenches violence and discrimination” against women and girls.
What was once enforced sporadically by morality police is now institutionalized into code, giving security forces full legal authority to hunt, arrest, and prosecute women for visible identity markers—like showing hair, dancing in public, or posting unveiled selfies on Instagram.
This is legal femicide in action: a death sentence disguised as law.
What Happens When Women Refuse to Comply?
In May 2025, Elahe Hosseinnezhad, a 19-year-old university student in Ahvaz, was arrested for “repeated public unveiling.” Days later, her family was notified of her death in detention. Authorities claimed she committed suicide. But independent activists and journalists reported signs of physical assault and trauma, consistent with state custody deaths seen in earlier years.
Her story echoes that of Nika Shakarami, 16, who disappeared after joining protests in 2022. Her bruised body was found ten days later. Officials claimed she fell from a building—yet her nose was broken, her skull crushed, her identity concealed until the family forced a public funeral.
And then there’s Hadis Najafi, 22, who became a viral symbol after tying her hair back and marching into a protest. She was shot six times by security forces. Sarina Esmailzadeh, a teenage blogger, was reportedly beaten to death in custody. The government denied all wrongdoing. But the pattern is undeniable.
Why Is This Still Called Femicide?
Because femicide doesn’t require a gun or a knife, it’s death delivered through policy, through intentional negligence, through systems that target women for simply existing outside state-sanctioned gender roles. When laws are written to punish womanhood itself—when prisons become tombs and police act without restraint—the state becomes a perpetrator of femicide.
And it is not just the dead who suffer. Survivors carry lifelong trauma, surveillance records, social bans, and public shaming—tools meant to erase the political identity of women before they can become a threat.
Iran’s hijab laws don’t just regulate behavior—they institutionalize gender-based violence, turning identity into a crime and making death a legal outcome of resistance.
The Hidden Epidemic: Honor Killings and Cultural Femicide
What Are Honor Killings—And Why Are They Still Legal in Iran?
Honor killings are the deliberate murder of women by male relatives, often justified by claims of family “dishonor” due to behavior deemed shameful—like choosing a partner, refusing a marriage, or being seen with a man.
While globally condemned, Iran’s legal system provides disturbing leniency to such crimes when committed by fathers or male guardians.
Under Article 301 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, a father who kills his daughter is typically spared the death penalty. Instead, he may receive a short prison sentence—or none at all.
The message is clear: in the eyes of the law, a woman’s life is worth less than her family’s “honor.”
“Private Violence, Public Permission”
This legal void doesn’t just enable femicide. It codifies it. When the state fails to prosecute gendered murders, or worse—writes laws that shield the murderers—it becomes complicit in cultural femicide.
Which Cases Have Shocked the Public—But Changed Nothing?
In 2020, Romina Ashrafi, a 14-year-old girl from Talesh, was beheaded by her father with a sickle while she slept. Her crime? Running away with a man her family disapproved of. Despite the gruesome nature of the act, her father was sentenced to just nine years in prison, with no criminal responsibility under qesas (retributive justice), because of his status as her guardian.
In 2022, Mona Heydari, 17, attempted to flee an abusive marriage. Days later, photos circulated online of her husband smiling while holding her severed head in the street. He received a reduced sentence. The public outrage was met with silence from the state—no legal reforms, no systemic changes, no national reckoning.
How Does Cultural Femicide Intersect with State Violence?
Honor killings aren’t isolated from state repression—they’re mirrored by it. When the state criminalizes women for dancing, speaking, or choosing how to dress, it validates the patriarchal logic that justifies family control and violence.
Women in Iran live under dual authority: the authority of the regime and the authority of their male kin—both of which punish defiance.
Even women who survive often face coercive reconciliation, house arrest, or are handed back to abusers by the courts. Shelters are scarce. Legal aid is limited. And without systemic protection, the cycle of violence continues.
In Iran, honor killings are not only tolerated—they are enabled by law and culture. The state’s failure to protect women from family violence is a silent form of femicide, one that thrives behind closed doors and beneath official silence.
Femicide by Technology: Surveillance and Digital Targeting
How Does Iran Use Technology to Enforce Gender Control—and Enable Violence?
In Iran today, the veil is no longer policed just by human eyes—it’s watched by algorithms. Since 2023, the regime has expanded its use of facial recognition software, tapping into public surveillance networks to identify women who appear without a hijab in cars, on the street, or even in social media posts. These systems, reportedly trained using biometric data from national ID databases, have made non-compliance instantly punishable, often without due process.
Women found violating the Hijab and Chastity Law are sent fines, face loss of driving privileges, job bans, or receive summons for interrogation—all triggered by AI.
In parallel, the regime has launched apps like Nazer (The Observer), which encourage citizens to report unveiled women in public spaces. This crowdsourced surveillance model doesn’t just enforce obedience—it weaponizes society itself. It turns women into walking violations, surrounded by potential informants.
Surveillance in Iran is not neutral. It’s a tool designed to break resistance—and to justify state violence.
When Surveillance Leads to Femicide
The consequences of this digital crackdown go far beyond fines. Arrested women often disappear into detention centers, with no legal transparency or medical access. Some are returned beaten. Others are not returned at all. Facial recognition doesn’t just identify—it labels, categorizes, and targets. And in the Iranian system, being targeted can be fatal.
This was the case with women like Hadis Najafi, who was tracked and filmed before being shot by security forces during a protest. Or Elahe Hosseinnezhad, who was repeatedly flagged for hijab violations before she died in custody.
These are not glitches in the system—they are outcomes. Technology, in this context, is not a passive observer. It is an active participant in repression, a digital weapon in the regime’s war against women.
Iran’s surveillance network transforms identity into evidence and visibility into vulnerability. In this system, a woman’s face can be her death sentence.
The Silence After the Storm: What Happened After the Protests?
Where Did the Women of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Go?
In the aftermath of the 2022–2023 uprisings, many of the women who once led Iran’s streets now sit in silence—or exile. Hundreds were arrested.
Some, like journalists Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, were imprisoned for covering Mahsa Amini’s death. Others, like prominent activist Sepideh Gholian, have faced repeated detentions and harsh sentences.
The regime responded not only with force but with erasure—systematically detaining, silencing, or eliminating the women who gave the movement a voice.
In 2024 and 2025, executions have increased, targeting not only political activists but Kurdish women, student leaders, and cultural figures under the guise of “national security” or “moral corruption.”
The Iranian protest arrests of women were not just legal actions—they were ideological attacks, attempts to crush the symbolic power of feminine dissent.
Femicide in Iran doesn’t always take a body. Sometimes, it takes a name, a voice, a memory—and buries it.
What Does Silence Look Like in a Surveillance State?
Today, most Iranian women know that a simple act—posting a video without hijab, speaking to foreign media, attending a protest—can result in harassment, family pressure, blacklisting, or arrest. With digital repression and facial recognition now integrated into daily life, the cost of resistance has become unbearable for many.
The regime has scrubbed online content, restricted reporting, and flooded platforms with pro-state narratives. Inside Iran, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement has been nearly forced underground.
Who Keeps the Flame Alive?
But outside Iran’s borders, exiled Iranian women and men like Nick Berg have become its guardians. Through underground networks, diaspora campaigns, and digital activism, they ensure that names like Mahsa Amini, Nika Shakarami, and Romina Ashrafi are not forgotten.
Online activists archive protest videos, publish testimonies, and expose legal abuses. Diaspora-led organizations translate court documents, fund defense attorneys, and circulate banned images. Every repost, every hashtag, every pixel becomes a form of defiance.
Iran’s regime has turned silence into a strategy—but exile and memory are forms of resistance. Femicide is not just about death—it’s about erasure. And what’s erased must be rewritten, spoken, and remembered.
Woman, Life, Freedom: A Global Response to Femicide
How Has the World Responded to Iran’s War on Women?
As the Iranian regime intensified its campaign of repression, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement crossed borders, evolving from a national cry into a global campaign against femicide.
For many around the world—especially feminists, human rights defenders, and the Iranian diaspora—the phrase is no longer just a slogan. It’s a framework for naming violence, preserving memory, and demanding accountability.
Following the 2022 protests, global outrage mobilized quickly. UN officials, Amnesty International, and human rights NGOs have repeatedly condemned Iran’s treatment of women, framing it as part of a systemic pattern of state-sponsored gender persecution.
In reports and briefings, these organizations now explicitly use the term “gender apartheid” and call for international mechanisms to investigate Iran’s crimes.
“Not One More.”
Say Their Names.”
“End State Femicide.”
“Not One More,” “Say Their Names,” and “End State Femicide” have become rallying cries—echoing across social platforms, murals, and protests from Los Angeles to Berlin.
How Is Art and Memory Being Used as Resistance?
Public spaces have become canvases of defiance. In Paris, murals of Mahsa Amini tower over streets. In Berlin, digital billboards flash the faces of the disappeared.
Exiled Iranian artists and writers are producing poetry, documentaries, novels, and performance art dedicated to the names of the fallen—a deliberate refusal to let silence win.
Diaspora-led initiatives and international organizations have mobilized global solidarity for Iranian women. For instance, the Nobel Women’s Initiative gathered over 124 Nobel laureates in a public open letter condemning state violence and calling for justice in Iran—published on the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death. These efforts transform grief into advocacy—and memory into political leverage.
Yet global solidarity can be dangerously selective. While Western protests denounce Israel and shout “Free Palestine” or “genocide in Gaza,” few recognize that Iran—the primary sponsor of Hamas—is the same regime executing Iranian women, arresting teenage girls, and enforcing hijab laws with facial recognition AI.
The Islamic Republic uses its support for Hamas not as a humanitarian gesture, but as a geopolitical weapon—and a distraction from its domestic war on women.
Why Does Naming Matter?
Naming is an act of resistance. In a regime that seeks to disappear women—physically, legally, and digitally—remembering becomes revolutionary. Each name spoken aloud, printed on a wall, or hashtagged on a platform defies erasure.
The Woman, Life, Freedom global movement is not only keeping Iran’s victims visible—it is rewriting the narrative of power. Where the regime imposes silence, the world replies with names, stories, and unrelenting memory.
Conclusion: Naming the War on Women
Is This Violence Against Women in Iran Just Tragic—Or Intentional?
It is not random. It is not accidental. What is happening to women in Iran is systemic femicide—enabled by law, enforced by tradition, and sustained by silence. From courtroom immunity for fathers who kill their daughters, to surveillance systems that track unveiled women, to prison cells that become execution chambers—every layer of the state participates in the machinery of erasure.
That silence is too often mirrored abroad. Many who stand against oppression in Gaza remain silent on Iran’s own crimes—or worse, empower them by legitimizing a regime that funds militant groups like Hamas while brutalizing its own people. To chant for liberation without understanding who you are amplifying is to accidentally strengthen the very powers that crush women’s voices at home.
This is a war not only on the bodies of women but on their agency, their memory, and their voice.
And yet, in the face of such brutality, Iranian women have not vanished. They resist in exile, in whispers, in underground networks and global campaigns. They resist by being remembered.
Why Must We Keep Saying Their Names?
Because each name disrupts the regime’s goal: invisibility.
Mahsa Amini.
Nika Shakarami.
Hadis Najafi.
Romina Ashrafi.
Elahe Hosseinnezhad.
To say their names is to refuse silence. To tell their stories is to fight the normalization of their deaths.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” is not an ideal. It is a demand—for survival, for dignity, for justice. And in Iran, it has become a necessity.
This is not just Iran’s fight. It is the global fight against a world where women are still punished—for existing, for resisting, for refusing to disappear.
