Women of Iran: TIME Heroes of the Year 2022

Dec 7, 2022 | Younger women are now in the streets. The movement they’re leading is educated, liberal, secular, raised on higher expectations, and desperate for normality: college and foreign travel, decent jobs, rule of law, access to the Apple Store, a meaningful role in politics, the freedom to say and wear whatever. They are quite unlike those who came before them; sometimes they feel more like transnational Gen Z than Iranians: they are vegans, they de-Islamicize their names, they don’t want children. I’ve often wondered what has made them so rebellious, because their ferocious character was evident well before 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini, arrested at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code, died after being held in their custody on Sept. 16, setting off the most sustained uprising in the 43-year history of the Islamic Republic. The average age of arrested protesters is notably low—Iranian officials estimate as young as 15. I can only conclude that when a generation’s aspirations for freedom appear tantalizingly within reach, the more humiliating the remaining restrictions seem, and the less daunting the final stretch of resistance feels.