The \u201cOne Million Signatures Campaign to Change Discriminatory Laws\u201d (Change for Equality), launched in August 2006 (Mordad 1385) through the efforts of a group of women\u2019s rights activists, is regarded as one of the most prominent, cohesive, and influential collective actions in Iran\u2019s contemporary history. By adopting an issue-oriented approach and making use of social and legal tools, this civil movement was able to challenge legal inequalities in the public sphere and compel official centers of power and decision-making to respond and reconsider. As explicitly stated in the text of the campaign\u2019s original plan, the primary objective of this civil movement went beyond collecting signatures: it was defined as creating an opportunity for public dialogue about women\u2019s rights throughout society and training one million civil activists.<\/p>\n
The campaign emerged at a time when Iranian civil society needed a new model for advocacy. Although in subsequent years the movement faced structural limitations due to intensified political pressure, widespread arrests of activists, and the developments following the 2009 elections, and consequently lost its initial operational effectiveness, the discourse it created, the model it established, and the intellectual foundation it built within society left deep and lasting achievements in Iran\u2019s civil sphere, the effects of which continue to this day.<\/p>\n
Key Strategies and Operational Innovations<\/strong><\/p>\n The campaign\u2019s progress and impact resulted from the adoption of a set of intelligent, flexible strategies adapted to the social conditions of Iranian society. The first prominent strategy was gender inclusivity and the creation of collective agency. The campaign did not remain an exclusively women\u2019s process or one confined to a women-only space; rather, by bringing women and men together, it transformed the struggle for equality into a public concern that transcended gender. Men\u2019s active participation in the movement refuted the assumption that gender equality was solely a women\u2019s concern. Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani writes in this regard: \u201cFor the first time, men of the new generation became active in the women\u2019s movement not merely out of sympathy, but as equal comrades, and the belief took shape that discriminatory laws, just as they place pressure on women, also damage human relationships and the health of society.\u201d This synergy meant that, in addition to the broader public, nearly fifty associations, unions, and non-governmental organizations also aligned themselves with the campaign\u2019s objectives in 2006, creating an unprecedented coalition.<\/p>\n The second and most important strategy was moving the struggle from enclosed spaces into the public sphere through face-to-face dialogue and practical education. Before then, women\u2019s rights activities had often been confined to seminars, private meetings, specialized magazines, and limited workshops; the campaign, however, moved beyond these elite frameworks and brought activism into streets, parks, buses, the metro, and even people\u2019s homes. One volunteer activist, describing this field-based approach, writes: \u201cPerhaps this was the most appropriate way to begin, because one of the main objectives was to reach ordinary people in the streets, public spaces, the metro, buses, and parks\u2014wherever they could be found.\u201d This face-to-face communication was accompanied by the distribution of educational booklets titled The Impact of Laws on Women\u2019s Lives<\/em>, which explained complex legal rights in simple language. The text of these booklets used a tangible analogy: \u201cLaw is like clothing; when society grows and changes, the garment of law must also change to fit society\u2019s body, rather than forcing society into a tight and outdated garment.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, adopting an issue-oriented and non-ideological approach, together with a horizontal and network-based structure, constituted the two principal pillars of the campaign\u2019s resilience against repression. Directly focusing on reforming tangible laws concerning such matters as marriage rights, divorce, inheritance, diya, the age of criminal responsibility, and child custody, while avoiding partisan or ideological controversies, enabled different currents\u2014including secular, religious, leftist, and liberal groups\u2014to find common ground for cooperation around specific legal demands. In their initial statement, activists emphasized that \u201cwomen\u2019s rights and democracy are inseparably linked, and without legal equality, genuine democracy cannot be realized.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the absence of hierarchical leadership and the creation of a multicentered network made the movement extraordinarily flexible in the face of waves of security repression, so that the arrest of one or several members did not paralyze the campaign as a whole. Describing the campaign\u2019s movement, Shirin Ebadi says: \u201cEven if we ourselves had wanted to, we could no longer have stopped the One Million Signatures Campaign, because this movement had become a living, multicentered network throughout the country.\u201d This non-hierarchical structure and geographical dispersion paved the way for the participation of inexperienced but concerned young people who had no previous history of political activism. This process led to extensive cadre-building and the training of a new generation of women activists who reproduced legal awareness throughout society.<\/p>\n Tangible Achievements, Legal Reforms, and Historical Legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n The achievements of the One Million Signatures Campaign were not limited to the realm of ideas and discourse; rather, they produced tangible effects and consequences across various legal, social, behavioral, and transnational dimensions. In the legal sphere, although the ultimate goal of collecting one million signatures was not fully achieved because of security pressures and arrests, the social pressure generated by the campaign\u2019s discourse-building compelled the government and decision-making institutions to retreat on certain issues and undertake important legal reforms:<\/p>\n \u2014 Pushing Back the 2008 (1387) Family Protection Bill:<\/strong> One of the most prominent achievements was resistance to the government\u2019s proposed bill, which sought to make the registration of temporary marriages easier and expand men\u2019s ability to practice polygamy without the first wife\u2019s permission. The campaign\u2019s sustained pressure, public awareness-raising, and allied coalitions led to widespread opposition to these discriminatory provisions, resulting in their removal from the bill or suspension.<\/p>\n \u2014 Adoption of Equal Diya in Traffic Accidents:<\/strong> Scholarly, religious, and public criticism of the unequal valuation of women\u2019s and men\u2019s lives ultimately persuaded lawmakers to require the Bodily Injury Compensation Fund to pay the difference between women\u2019s diya and men\u2019s diya in traffic accidents, up to the amount of a man\u2019s diya\u2014a law that represented an important step in changing traditional approaches toward diya.<\/p>\n \u2014 Civil Promotion of Conditions within Marriage Contracts:<\/strong> Through public education about overlooked rights, the campaign transformed the use of conditions stipulated within marriage contracts\u2014such as the right to divorce, the right to employment, the right to determine one\u2019s place of residence, and the right to leave the country\u2014from a neglected issue into a common, conscious practice and norm among a new generation, enabling women to mitigate structural inequalities at the individual level.<\/p>\n Regarding the philosophy behind these achievements, Parvin Ardalan notes: \u201cOur goal was not merely to change the law from above; we wanted to demonstrate that no law can possess legitimacy and stability without the will and consent of society. Raising public awareness also transformed the issue of legal discrimination from a personal, private, or family matter into a public and national demand.\u201d Sussan Tahmasebi says of the reach of this awareness: \u201cOur interrogators sometimes found themselves at a loss in the face of our demands, because they realized that these demands were so simple, tangible, and consistent with society\u2019s everyday needs that opposing them was impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n At the transnational level as well, the campaign for the first time created an indigenous and organized connection between activists inside Iran and Iranians abroad, bringing domestic civil demands directly into international arenas without intermediaries. Perhaps the campaign\u2019s most enduring and vital legacy, however, was laying the groundwork for and providing a nonviolent model for subsequent social movements. The campaign demonstrated how advocacy could be connected to the public sphere and how the street could be used as a space for peaceful protest. The concepts, civil courage, and network of activists that developed within the campaign and through its educational activities continued to nourish society in subsequent years. This approach established a direct intellectual and analytical line of connection with later social movements\u2014including the \u201cWoman, Life, Freedom\u201d movement\u2014a movement with deep roots in the same equality-seeking discourse-building and pioneering civil courage of the campaign.<\/p>\n Afterword<\/strong><\/p>\n Ultimately, although the One Million Signatures Campaign was prevented from continuing in its original operational form because of widespread arrests, heavy judicial sentences, the political pressures of the government of the time, and the shocks following the 2009 elections, it never reached an endpoint, nor did its discursive structure cease to function. This movement succeeded in demonstrating that the path toward lasting social change does not run through top-down directives, but through raising awareness within society. Tangible legal achievements, increased public legal understanding, cadre-building and the training of a new generation of activists, and the presentation of an indigenous model of struggle all helped ensure that the One Million Signatures Campaign would remain a turning point in contemporary history and one of the richest experiences of civil activism in the historical memory of Iranian society, paving the way for subsequent equality-seeking movements.<\/p>\n \n The \u201cOne Million Signatures Campaign to Change Discriminatory Laws\u201d (Change for Equality), launched in August 2006 (Mordad 1385) through the efforts of a group of women\u2019s rights activists, is regarded as one of the most prominent, cohesive, and influential collective actions in Iran\u2019s contemporary history. By adopting an issue-oriented approach and making use of social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":75614,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5460,5448],"tags":[50229,57251,52387,50208,52841],"class_list":["post-75616","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-women-rights","tag-civil-society","tag-peace-line-185","tag-womens-movement","tag-womens-rights","tag-womens-rights-activists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/75616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/75616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75665,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/75616\/revisions\/75665"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/author\/75542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peace-mark.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Footnotes:<\/strong><\/h6>\n
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Ahmadi Khorasani, Noushin (2009 [1388]<\/span>), The Inside Story of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality<\/em>, translated by Women\u2019s Learning Partnership (WLP).<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n
Document archives, declaration of establishment, text of the campaign\u2019s original plan, and the educational booklet The Impact of Laws on Women\u2019s Lives<\/em>, Change for Equality website, 2006\u20132009 (1385\u20131388).<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n
Ebadi, Shirin; Ardalan, Parvin; Tahmasebi, Sussan (2006\u20132009 [1385\u20131388]<\/span>). Interviews, volunteer accounts, and notes published on the Feminist School and Change for Equality websites.<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n
Review of the social context, the June 12, 2006 (22 Khordad 1385) demonstrations, and the face-to-face approach of the One Million Signatures Campaign, Exterminating Angel<\/em> online magazine, 2007.<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n
Documents concerning the Family Protection Bill and enactments related to amendments to the Compulsory Civil Liability Insurance Law (equal diya payments in traffic accidents), Statistical Center of Iran and reports of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, 2008\u20132009 (1387\u20131388).<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"