25 photos show what Iran looked like before the 1979 revolution turned the nation into an Islamic republic
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Iranian women – before and after the Islamic Revolution
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought seismic changes to Iran, not least for women. One area that has come under scrutiny is the way women dress and wear their hair – the old Shah, in the 1930s, banned the veil and ordered police to forcibly remove headscarves. But in the early 1980s, the new Islamic authorities imposed a mandatory dress code that required all women to wear the hijab.
Here are some images showing what life was like for Iranian women before the institution of clerical rule, and how it has changed since.
Before the revolution
Studying at Tehran University in 1977: While many women were already in higher education at the time of the revolution, the subsequent years saw a marked increase in the number attending university. This was in part because the authorities managed to convince conservative families living in rural areas to allow their daughters to study away from home.
“They tried to stop women from attending university, but there was such a backlash they had to allow them to return,” says Baroness Haleh Afshar, a professor of women’s studies at the University of York who grew up in Iran in the 1960s.
“Some educated people left Iran, and the authorities realised in order to run the country they needed to educate both men and women.”
25 photos show what Iran looked like before the 1979 revolution turned the nation into an Islamic republic
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- From 1941 to 1979, Iran was ruled by King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah.
- On February 11, 1979, the Islamic Revolution swept the country.
- The government was replaced with an Islamic republic, which continues to this day.
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In the decades before the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the Shah, whose dictatorship repressed dissent and restricted political freedoms.
But he also pushed the country to adopt Western-oriented secular modernization, allowing some degree of cultural freedom.
Under the Shah’s rule, Iran’s economy and educational opportunities expanded. Britain and the US counted Iran as their major ally in the Middle East, and the Shah forcefully industrialized large segments of the country.
But the Shah’s increasingly authoritarian measures and his eventual dismissal of multiparty rule set the stage for the infamous revolution.
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