Laws don’t work well when many people openly defy them. Prohibition in the US is a good example of that. In Iran, it took massive protests against the hijab laws to dismantle the morality police. But what may cement this new tolerance of women showing their hair in public is the simple, casual defiance by many women in their day to day lives:
[S]ince the death last year of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of the country’s morality police, women and girls have been at the center of a nationwide uprising, demanding an end not only to hijab requirements but to the Islamic Republic itself.
Women are suddenly flaunting their hair: left long and flowing in the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at schools and on university campuses, according to interviews with women in Iran as well as photographs and videos online. While these acts of defiance are rarer in more conservative areas, they are increasingly being seen in towns and cities.
“I have not worn a scarf for months — I don’t even carry it with me any more,” said Kimia, 23, a graduate student in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, in western Iran, who, like other women interviewed for this article, asked that her surname not be used for fear of retribution.
Kimia said that many female students at her college did not cover their hair even in classrooms in the presence of male professors. “Whether the government likes to admit it or not,” she said, “the era of the forced hijab is over.”
Iran’s hijab law mandates that women and girls over 9 cover their hair, and that they hide the curves of their bodies under long, loose robes.
Many women still adhere to the rule in public, some by choice and others from fear. Videos of the traditional bazaar in downtown Tehran, Iran’s capital, for example, show most women covering their hair.
But videos of parks, cafes, restaurants and malls — places popular with younger women — show more of them uncovered. Many prominent women, including celebrities and athletes, have removed their hijab in Iran and while representing the county abroad.
The state has long promoted the hijab law as a symbol of its success in establishing the Islamic Republic, but enforcement has varied, depending on which political faction was in power.
After the election in 2021 of Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner, as president, the rules have been increasingly enforced, and with a strictness and brutality that have enraged Iranian women, many of whom were fined, beaten or arrested by the morality police after they were said to be in violation.
But anger over the law boiled over in September, when the young woman, Ms. Amini, 22, died in the custody of the morality police, and as the street protests that broke out across Iran quickly morphed into broader calls for an end to being ruled by the country’s clerics.
The protests have largely fizzled amid a violent crackdown by the authorities that has included mass arrests, death sentences and the executions of four young protesters.
But many acts of civil disobedience continue daily, including chanting “death to the dictator” from rooftops, writing graffiti on walls and tearing down and setting ablaze government banners.
And women have been going out in public without their hijabs.
Officials said in December they had disbanded the morality police, and they have not been seen on the streets since. For the moment, the authorities are only occasionally enforcing the hijab rules, according to women and activists in Iran.
The authorities recently shut down two pharmacies, one in Tehran and another in the northern city of Amol, after female employees were reported for not wearing a hijab. And in the religious city of Qum, they reprimanded the manager of a bank for catering to clients without hijabs. The judiciary has also opened a case against Ms. Kazempour, the engineer, according to Iranian news reports.
Officials say they are reviewing the enforcement rules and plan to announce updated measures. One conservative lawmaker has said that alternative enforcement methods are being considered, like warning women by text message, denying them civic services or blocking their bank accounts.
“Head scarves will be back on women’s heads,” the lawmaker, Hossein Jalali, was reported as saying in December on Iranian media.
But the defiance remains too widespread to contain and too pervasive to reverse, women’s rights activists say.
“The core and heart of this movement is really the revolutionary act of these women turning their head scarves into the most effective and most powerful weapon against religious dictatorship and deep layers of misogyny and patriarchy,” said Fatemeh Shams, a women’s rights activist and an assistant professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
The women who have stopped covering their hair say that they are determined to do as they wish, but that they are in favor of a “voluntary hijab.” They also say that they respect the rights of women who choose wear scarves.
Leila, 51, who lives in Tehran, said she and her teenage daughter had been dressing in public as they did in private and when they traveled abroad — in dresses, skirts, skinny jeans and tight sweaters.
“I recently had to travel and struggled over whether I should wear the hijab at the airport because there are a lot of security agents, but decided against it,” Leila said in a telephone interview. She was stunned to see the majority of the women at the airport that day had also ditched their hijabs. “We all got through security and passport control with our hair uncovered, and they said nothing. Our power is in numbers.”
Hathis, 25, who reviews books and movies online, posted a photograph of herself on Instagram in December sitting, hair uncovered, with a friend at an outdoor cafe in Tehran. “Is this what it feels like to feel the cool fall breeze blow through your hair? And for 25 years I was denied this?”
I can’t imagine this. It’s fine if someone wants to wear a scarf or even a burka. But to force women to wear them is medieval. It’s inspiring to see them taking this issue into their own hands and simply saying, “no.”
Will it last? I have no idea. But this is the sort of widespread defiance that can make it very difficult for even authoritarian governments to contain. I fervently hope these women succeed. It’s inspiring.