A growing number of women in Iran are choosing to appear in public without headscarves, signaling what many observers see as a bold act of resistance against strict Islamic dress codes.
During a recent visit to Tehran, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel witnessed this significant cultural shift firsthand.
Speaking on The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim, a podcast, Engel underscored the deep-rooted sensitivity of gender-related issues in Iran.
“Women’s issues are one of the most sensitive issues and one of the issues that’s really at the cultural and political heart of the regime,” he said.
Under Iranian law, which follows Sharia principles, women are required to cover their hair and wear loose-fitting clothing in public.
Despite the continued presence of signs in cafes, restaurants, and hotels enforcing the Islamic dress code, Engel noted a rising wave of defiance. “Women are now ‘brazenly’ ignoring those directives.”
“You walk down the street and I would say just by observation, maybe 30-40% of women are not wearing headscarves anymore,” Engel reported. He added that many still carry scarves around their necks “in case there’s an issue,” so they can “quickly just pull it over their hair,” he observed.
What’s especially striking, Engel said, is how openly this behavior is taking place. “They’re walking by the police stations, they’re walking by government ministries. I’ve seen people walking with the women with their hair out, walking right past groups of what you would consider the morality police, and they don’t say anything,” he explained. “They have stopped enforcing it on a daily basis and that is a significant change.”
However, Engel cautioned that this shift may not signal a permanent easing of enforcement. “I don’t think they have given up. I’m not sure that this is the end of the road,” he said.
This change in public behavior follows the widespread protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2023, after she was detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating dress codes.
Although the protests were met with a “brutal” government crackdown, Engel believes they have had a lasting impact. “The government, at least right now, has decided it doesn’t want to fight that fight and it is not picking that fight. And people here are hoping that that is the start of significant changes,” he said.
Still, he warned that the shift could be temporary or strategic. “It could be that the government has other priorities right now and therefore has put this one on the back burner, but it is happening and it’s obvious and people are talking about it.”
Illustrating this new defiance, Engel described a recent interview with a woman who chose to go on camera without a headscarf, her long hair visible past her shoulders. “That would have been unthinkable.”
Even in north Tehran years ago, people may not have been wearing them, or they were barely wearing them, but if we interviewed them on camera, they would quickly wrap themselves up so they wouldn’t get in trouble, even if they found it personally annoying,” Engel explained. “Now she said ‘let’s do it’ and didn’t care.
That’s a sense of confidence that I’ve never seen in this country.”
Yalda Hakim, Sky News’s lead world news presenter and co-host of the podcast, emphasized the extraordinary courage behind these choices. “We can’t overstate how brave it is because it was a death sentence before for these women. It was unthinkable for them not to have their headscarves on,” she said.
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