Iran Feminist Uprising Anniversary, Gender Doulas in the U.S., Afghan Women Meet in Albania, Canada Must Protect Indigenous Women & Girls, UK Women Art & Activism

On 16 September 2022, Mahsa Jina Amini’s death in police custody—who had taken her in because she was not wearing a “proper hijab”—sparked an uprising in Iran that still has the Islamic regime on guard.

The widespread women-led protests dubbed ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ were against the mandatory hijab but also united around issues concerning wider societal issues and Iran’s different ethnic groups.

We are not just talking about political rights; we are talking about a lack of life. Normal life, dignity. You cannot think, you cannot laugh, you cannot dance, you cannot marry who you want. -Asieh Amine, an Iranian activist and former journalist

The Iranian regime brutally suppressed the marches and targeted activists inside the country. Iran now has a new president but many activists do not believe he wants or is able to support the uprising’s demands.

The Woman, Life, Freedom protests were about more than the mandatory hijab, writes Sophia Akram. “Rather, that became the focal point for wider oppressive policies and the economic situation. The treatment of minority groups, as well as their power to protest, was also magnified during the 2022 uprising.”

Marked by unprecedented unity across gender, ethnic, and social lines – reflecting a growing resistance to government tactics of division – the global Iranian diaspora further amplified the movement.

Shler Bapiri, a 36-year-old Kurdish human rights activist says the role of the Kurds, especially, was at the forefront of the struggle.

The Islamic regime of Iran today has always feared the Kurds and their movement and considered them a threat to its power…Unfortunately, this is why the Islamic Republic used the heaviest weapons against civilians in the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement, before and after it. They are afraid of the Kurds and their struggle. -Shler Bapiri

Shne Hedati, 64, fled Iran due to political persecution and is now living in Sweden. She adds that “Kurdish women have been at the forefront of resisting oppression, not only against the Iranian regime but also in the struggle for gender equality”. 

Other ethnic groups’ heightened long-standing grievances and mobilisation during the 2022 protests also included Baluchistan’s plight.

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From left to right: Max Mowitz, Willbliss Kim, and Rainbow Winneke

Gender doulas in the United States are helping people navigate gender transitions and the landscape of available resources at a time of increasing anti-trans legislation. It’s a small but growing field without official credentialing that is exempt from many anti-trans laws.

In Iowa, where a law bans gender-affirming care, Max Mowitz, program director for LGBTQ+ advocacy organization One Iowa, a board member of the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund, and a volunteer with queer community closet Common Love DSM, is able to continue offering life-saving, gender-affirming work legally because the law applies only to licensed health care professionals providing medical care like HRT and puberty blockers.

Like birth and death doulas, gender doulas help usher clients through a medical system and society that can feel overwhelming to traverse alone and without guidance. About half of Mowitz’s clients — who are mostly based in Iowa — are brand new to their gender discovery journey, and the other half have been out to themselves for a while but are seeking support on something specific like physical transition questions.

In the community of people that are really just starting out, so often they are just grasping for safety…My number one goal with those folks is to try to find an environment where they’re going to be safe, even if that’s just in our meetings or even if that’s helping them develop some coping skills if they can’t be out. Then with a lot of other folks, I’m helping them navigate a system that has gotten more and more hostile to accessing care. -Max Mowitz

Rainbow Winnike, a gender doula based in Long Beach, California, says the word “doula” is used for professionals who help with life transitions of all kinds such as birth, death, pregnancy, and gender transition.

What I like about ‘gender doula’ is it almost feels like that death and rebirth cycle of people releasing old selves and old ways of being and rebirthing into their newest, butterfly transformation. There’s something energetically about the term ‘doula’ that feels helpful for a gender transition. -Rainbow Winnike

While doctors and therapists support parts of transition in specific ways, a gender doula works outside of systems to navigate gender-related plans like who will help you recover from surgery and if you want to start hormone therapy at all. A key piece of a gender doula’s work is to provide support on a peer-to-peer level from another trans person.

Being trans is natural and goes back to ancient times where it was accepted, celebrated, sometimes venerated. Treating gender-affirming transitions as an important time to incubate and celebrate, much like postpartum time, honors our divinity and our connection to ourselves and each other. -Willbliss Kim, gender doula services in Phoenix, Arizona

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From left to right: Seema Ghani, a former minister under Hamid Karzai, now a women’s rights activist; Golchehehrah Yaftali, head of the Afghanistan Women’s Aid Foundation in the Netherlands and singer Elaha Soroor. Composite: Jutta Benzenberg/The Guardian

A conference for Afghan women in the Albanian capital aims to create a way forward for how women want the international community to react to the Taliban’s assault on their rights – and fight the erasure of their voices.

Fawzia Koofi, the former Afghan MP now living in exile in the UK, has worked for more than two years to bring over 130 Afghan women together for the All Afghan Women summit in Tirana. For most of the that time, Koofi and her co-organisers at Women for Afghanistan struggled to find the summit a home, with successive governments refusing to play host.

It was really important to us to try to find a Muslim-majority country close to Afghanistan to host this summit and it was very disappointing that so many refused to do so…If women’s voices are not heard, then their rights will not be respected. There is strength in numbers and we are here to find unity and speak with one voice.”Fawzia Koofi

Turkey and the UAE were among governments who either refused to host the summit or simply did not respond to Koofi’s request.

The summit is an attempt to allow Afghan women to get their voices back into international conversations about the future of their homeland and the fight for women’s rights.

Most of the women at the Albania summit are living in exile in countries across the world and have come from Germany, Canada, the UK or US to attend.

Others have travelled from inside Afghanistan; a dangerous and complicated journey with no guarantee of a safe return to their families.

In our country we now live like prisoners. Our daughters are suffering the most as they do not remember the last time the Taliban were here. This is why we have taken the risk to come. -a woman who had come from Afghanistan, a journey that took her nearly two days

Canada must protect indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, Amnesty International has said in a new activism guide.

Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ currently face the highest rates of femicide in Canada. They make up 16 per cent of all femicide victims, 11 per cent of all missing women and are six times more likely to go missing or be murdered than non-Indigenous women and girls. -Amnesty International

In 2019, the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People comprehensively highlighted the unique risks faced by Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIAA+ people empowered by anti-Indigenous racism, sexual and gender-based violence and structural discrimination through colonial structures including residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the Indian Act, mass incarceration, police brutality, transportation and social service inequities.

Lack of affordable and safe transportation services have significantly increased Indigenous women and girls’ exposure to violence, exploitation and structural discrimination, the human rights organisationo said. Transportation inequities are a leading cause of the high number of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls along the Highway 16, infamously known as the ‘Highway of Tears’.

Not enough is being done to address violence against Indigenous women and girls in the context of intensive and large-scale development of oil, gas and other resources across Canada. A 2023 research report with the Wet’suwet’en Nation observes the link between large-scale resource extraction projects and associated labor camps with increased rates of violence against Indigenous women and girls. Indigenous women and 2SLGBTQQIA+ defenders also face mass and targeted surveillance, criminalization, sexual and gender-based violence on the frontlines of land and water defense. -Amnesty International

Amnesty International criticized the Canadian federal government for taking two years after the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ (MMIWG2S+) final report to release the 2021 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People National Action Plan: Ending Violence Against Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People. A time-bound implementation strategy is yet to be introduced, the organisation said.

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Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 explores two decades of women’s art as activism, protest and fury. In the early 1970s, women in the UK were second-class citizens who had few rights. A woman could not buy or own a property without a male guarantor. There was no equal pay, no maternity rights nor any kind of protections against sex discrimination.

There were no domestic violence shelters, no rape crisis centres and no childcare. And if they were ethnic minority or working class, women suffered even greater inequalities. Unsurprisingly in this climate, women artists – either contemporary or historical – were rarely seen in art galleries and cultural institutions.

The touring Tate Britain exhibition, now at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, takes as its starting point the 1970 National Women’s Liberation Conference. This was an initiative designed to bring together feminist activists with the intention of developing a shared political outlook.

Featuring more than 100 artists, the show examines the social and political backdrop to the art that women were making in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Women in Revolt!, the private is political, everyday life is political, and the art of women’s struggle is political. Whether you want to reflect on art and politics, the history of women’s protest, the construction of gendered roles, or women’s fight for democratic rights and freedoms, it is a thought-provoking exhibition that simultaneously reveals how far women have come, and how little things have changed for many. -Julie Howden

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.  

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