Ali Shariati Mazinani, a prominent sociologist and Iranian revolutionary who specialised in the sociology of religion, once said, “Religion should wake people up, not put them to sleep.” The revolution culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty on February 11, 1979.

Although students, workers, leftists, businesspeople and women all took part in the movement, owing to the narrow leadership of religious groups, the revolution failed to bring about the broad social transformation many had hoped for.

Religious factions led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sought to establish a state based on Islamic principles. They paid little attention to economic justice demanded by workers and small traders, the freedoms sought by women, or the good governance demanded by students and youth. Soon after the revolution, on May 5, 1979, they formed a paramilitary force known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On April 1, 1979, a referendum abolished the secular monarchy and declared Iran an Islamic republic. Shirin Ebadi, who had served as the first woman president of Bench 24 of the Tehran City Court in 1975, experienced a major setback following the revolution. All female judges across Iran were demoted as the Islamic law did not permit women to serve as judges. Despite her qualifications and experience, Ebadi’s talents were disregarded by the state.

As repression intensified ahead of the 2009 presidential election, Ebadi was in Spain and was unable to return to Iran.

Ebadi recalled the bitter experience, how the female judges were demoted and instructed to work as clerks in the very courts they had once headed. After protesting, they were transferred to the Department of Justice as legal experts. Ebadi soon resigned. Her resignation was accepted immediately. Later, while receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, she recalled that the Bar Association had been shut down after the revolution and that her application to practise law had initially been rejected.

Iran underwent profound upheaval after the revolution. On October 24, 1979, constitutional experts drafted a new constitution declaring sovereignty to rest with “God” while also providing for elected institutions such as the presidency and parliament. This hybrid system combining religious authority with limited democratic mechanisms was unprecedented. Many liberals and intellectuals doubted it would result in good governance.

Although liberals favoured engagement with the international community, many Iranians viewed religious leadership as a safeguard against foreign domination during the Cold War. In a referendum held on December 2 and 3, 1979, boycotted by opposition groups, nearly 99 percent of voters approved the new constitution.

The secular path initiated by Iran’s 1906 constitution was effectively closed. Ayatollah Khomeini became Supreme Leader and appointed hardliners to the 12-member Guardian Council. A nominal presidency was retained largely to maintain international legitimacy. In 1980, Khomeini launched a “Cultural Revolution” aimed at eliminating dissent.

Universities were shut for nearly three years, books were banned, academics prosecuted and student protests violently suppressed. After Khomeini’s death in June, 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assumed the role of Supreme Leader, a position he has held for more than three decades—underscoring how the 1979 revolution replaced one authoritarian system with another.

Shirin Ebadi was born on January 22, 1947, in the western Iranian city of Hamadan. Her family moved to Tehran when she was one year old. Her father, Mohammad Ali Ebadi, was a notary public and professor of commercial law. Ebadi has described her upbringing as liberal and recalls a warm relationship between her parents.

In her autobiography Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, she writes of her mother’s unrealised dream of studying medicine and the struggle she made. She writes, “My mother never wore the hijab. Her family was not narrow-minded enough to permit their daughters to wrap their heads. However, she was a witness to the modernisation journey and the ban on the hijab that Reza Shah initiated in 1936. It was not easy to centralise a country filled with villages and peasants overnight through railways and laws.

Reza knew this task would be impossible without the country’s women. Therefore, he liberated women by banning the hijab, which was a symbol of the bonds of tradition. Reza was the first Iranian ruler to curtail the influence of the clerics and their political agenda over women's bodies. He was not the last.”

She recalls her father’s calm temperament and restraint, “My father was calm by nature, controlled his anger without fail, and could never be provoked into raising his voice. When upset or irritated, he paced the house with his hands behind him or methodically rolled a cigar, extracting tobacco from a silver case carefully, using the time to still his mind and raising his head only when he was fully composed.”

As a child, Ebadi experienced firsthand the contrasting styles of Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Reza Shah.

She expresses no sympathy for Mohammad Reza Shah, who came to power after Britain and the Soviet Union forced Reza Shah’s abdication in 1941. In 1953, with the backing of Britain’s MI6 and the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Shah overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after the latter nationalised the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Mossadegh was later imprisoned and confined to his village of Ahmadabad.

Ebadi recalls the 1953 coup as a defining childhood moment in her memoir Iran Awakens. Mossadegh, she writes, was widely regarded as a nationalist hero capable of guiding Iran’s ancient civilisation.

After earning a law degree from the University of Tehran in 1968, Ebadi became a judge the following year and later pursued doctoral studies under Professor Mahmoud Shehabi Khorasani from the University of Tehran. In 1975, she was appointed head of the Tehran court. She was married to Javad Tabassolian and had two daughters, Negar and Nargess.

Following the revolution, Ebadi left the judiciary and later opened a private law practice specialising in human rights. She defended victims of political repression, including Parvaneh and Dariush Forouhar, Zahra Bani Yaghoub, members of the Baha’i community, and students killed during protests.

In 2003, she represented the family of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died in custody after being tortured in Tehran’s Evin Prison. That same year, Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She used part of the prize money to establish the Centre for Human Rights Defenders.

Ebadi played a key role in launching the “One Million Signatures Campaign” in 2006 to challenge discriminatory laws against women. In 2008, Iranian authorities raided the centre, confiscated its assets and briefly detained her family members.

After travelling to Spain in 2009, Ebadi chose not to return to Iran due to intensifying repression. From exile, she has continued to support protests against disputed elections, economic hardship, fuel price hikes and compulsory hijab laws, particularly those sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Amini, was a 22-year-old Iranian woman whose death in police custody on September 16, 2022, ignited nationwide protests in Iran.

She has authored 13 books, including Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope (2006), Until We Are Free: My fight for Human Rights in Iran (2016) and The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny (2008)and more than 70 articles on human rights and continues to train activists worldwide. Ebadi has argued that corruption and authoritarianism lie at the heart of Iran’s crises, noting the dramatic collapse of the national currency as evidence of systemic failure.

Iran’s Reverse Path

Iran has not signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Women face severe legal restrictions, including compulsory hijab laws, barriers to employment, political participation and judicial roles, and a lack of protection from domestic and sexual violence.

Iran ranks 143rd out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap Report. Women hold only 14 of the 290 parliamentary seats, and child marriage remains legal, with thousands of girls married each year.