Iranian women petition for legal equality

The easiest place to find evidence of the campaign at the moment is online. The One Million Signatures Campaign began with a demonstration in 2006 in which dozens of women were arrested. Currently a woman is worth half as much as a man in terms of legal compensation. The best known supporter of the campaign is Iran’s Nobel Peace Winner. She says, the Iranian women are against these laws and that this government is doing injustice in the name of Islam and many high ranking clerics have said the same thing. The goal is to deliver one million signatures to Iran’s Parliament and the UN, but it doesn’t look like an easy task. About 50 of the campaign’s volunteers, most young women, have been arrested for getting signatures. One woman who was arrested was charged with spreading anti-government propaganda, a serious matter in Iran. She refused to pay the $20,000 bond but spending time in prison proved a revelation. In prison that woman met another woman who didn’t want to leave because she felt safer in prison than at home. She decided these were the women the campaign was designed to help, and then felt more determined to continue on. What’s dangerous is that the charges are always associated to endangering national security and vague security crimes. This woman thinks it’s the cost of advocating change. This woman says the campaign is about rights, not politics, and that’s most important.