t was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, …..”  The opening lines (paraphrased) from Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities, kind of summed up the situation for women in two hotspots of the world -- Iran and Afghanistan this past year. Women were the talking point in international forums across the world.

Many important events including the war in Ukraine took place in 2022. But for me the story was Iran. I feel strongly about Iran because that was one of the last countries I visited before the 2020 lockdown. I was there in October 2019 with a group of women journalists from India. Iran turned out to be different from the image I carried from news reports. I expected to find a country in shambles with people struggling to somehow cope with over four decades of American sanctions. 

We had read about high inflation and how the country’s economy was ruined after the Iran-Iraq war and the sanctions that followed. Images of angry Iranians stomping and shouting 'death to America!' were in my mind, from pictures at the time of the US embassy siege. Every anti-American demonstration in the country had similar photos of protesters shouting anti-American slogans.

We were told before leaving that we should be careful to cover our arms and legs and to make sure our hair was covered. I knew that since the 1979 Iranian revolution, women were in hijab and expected to be shrouded in black chadors, seen but not heard. I presumed shop shelves to be empty much like towards the end of the Soviet-era in Russia. I stepped off the flight with these preconceived ideas.

Everyone was on the mobile either chatting, listening to songs or playing games. The older generation wore black chadors and followed. Women were everywhere in the workforce. Doctors, judges, professors, engineers and plenty of them work in government offices. In research and scientific institutions and laboratories, women were working side by side with men. And there were plenty of women drivers across all major cities like Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan. Tourist sites like Persepolis have women tour guides. The media has plenty of women and many of the newscasters in Iranian television are women.

Instead of a sullen angry people, there were smiling teenagers all around, singing, laughing and generally filling restaurants and pavement cafés. Young lovers held hands openly. There was no sign then of the moral police. At a café near the mosque in Isfahan, two large groups of young ladies around 30 to 35 of them were listening with rapt attention to a band. When the vocalist belted out some obviously popular numbers, the young girls went wild. Clapping, singing and whistling loudly. Most of them wore scarves again with hair clearly visible. Some got up to dance but there were no boys around. Perhaps Isfahan is a little more conservative than Tehran.

In another traditional tea house in Isfahan, a stunningly beautiful woman sat alone while enjoying a sheesha. She was dressed in silk, and not a hair peeped out of her scarf which was tightly bound; her bright red lipstick completed the picture. She seemed perfectly at ease being photographed by us. Unfortunately, she spoke not a word of English. 

The year 2019 was one of optimism for women in Iran. In September, a month before we landed, the government allowed women to watch a football match at a stadium in Tehran. This was the first time since the revolution that women were admitted inside a soccer stadium to watch a World Cup qualifier between Iran and Cambodia. More than 3,000 women packed the stadium to cheer for the home team. Many believed this was a tentative first step and but felt much more had to be done.