Women in Iran gain full equality of legal rights

Story: 2038 C.E. ???  |  Last updated: January 13, 2026

Note: This is an imagined future story, written as if a projected milestone has occurred. It is based on current trends and evidence, not confirmed events.

Two decades after a woman stood on a utility box on Enghelab Street in Tehran and waved a white headscarf like a flag, Iran has formally abolished the legal provisions that treated women as second-class citizens under the law. A constitutional amendment ratified this year grants women in Iran full equality of legal rights, eliminating gender-based distinctions in dress codes, inheritance, testimony, and marriage law that had stood since the 1979 C.E. Islamic Revolution.

Key projections

• Women’s legal equality: The 2038 C.E. amendment removes Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code, which had imposed imprisonment and fines on women for not wearing a hijab since 1983 C.E.
• Public opinion shift: A GAMAAN survey as far back as 2020 C.E. found 72% of Iranians opposed compulsory hijab — a majority that researchers project grew steadily through the 2020s and 2030s.
• Generational turning point: The generation that came of age during the 2022 C.E. Mahsa Amini protests now holds significant positions in Iran’s reformed legislative bodies.

How the movement got here

The story of Iranian women’s legal equality does not begin in 2038 C.E. It begins on 27 December 2017 C.E., when Vida Movahed — a 31-year-old woman carrying her 19-month-old baby — stood on a utility box on Tehran’s Enghelab Street and held her white headscarf aloft on a stick.

She was arrested that day. She was released on bail a month later. And her image went viral around the world.

What followed was the Girls of Enghelab Street movement — women across Tehran and cities including Isfahan and Shiraz reenacting Movahed’s protest, posting photos, and absorbing arrests with bail amounts as high as $135,000 U.S. dollars. By 29 January 2018 C.E., at least four women had publicly repeated the act in a single day. By 1 February 2018 C.E., Iranian police had arrested 29 women for removing their hijabs in public. The movement did not stop.

The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022 C.E., after her arrest for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, transformed a persistent protest into a mass uprising. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that followed drew millions of Iranians into the streets — and drew in one of the most diverse coalitions of support the country had seen in a generation, including police defectors, military personnel, and civil society leaders.

What the data showed all along

The legal change did not arrive without a documented popular foundation. A survey conducted by GAMAAN in 2020 C.E. found that 72% of Iranians opposed compulsory hijab rules, and 58% said they did not personally believe in wearing the hijab at all. Only 15% of respondents said they believed the legal obligation should remain in force.

Even earlier, a government-run survey from 2014 C.E. — released by President Hassan Rouhani in 2018 C.E. — found that 49.8% of Iranians opposed mandatory hijab. The survey was produced by the Center for Strategic Studies, the research arm of the Iranian president’s office. The government’s own data had long pointed toward where the public stood.

These numbers helped legitimize reformers arguing inside Iran’s political institutions — a slow, contested, often dangerous process — that compulsory dress law had lost its democratic mandate. They also helped international legal scholars and human rights advocates tracking legal reform across authoritarian states frame Iran’s trajectory within a broader global shift toward women’s legal standing.

What the amendment actually does

The 2038 C.E. constitutional amendment is broader than hijab law alone. It establishes formal gender equality before the law, addressing provisions that had long disadvantaged women in areas including inheritance (where daughters historically received half a son’s share), testimony in court (where a woman’s testimony had carried less legal weight than a man’s), and marriage and divorce rights.

Article 638 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code — the provision under which women faced 10 days to two months in prison and fines for not wearing a hijab — is among the provisions formally repealed. Wearing the hijab remains a personal and religious choice, protected by the same amendment that removes its legal compulsion.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, the human rights lawyer who represented Vida Movahed in 2018 C.E. and spent years in and out of prison for her advocacy work, is among the lawyers credited with drafting the legal framework the amendment draws from. Her name appears throughout the legal record of the movement — from bail hearings for arrested protesters in 2018 C.E. to the constitutional table in 2038 C.E.

The road ahead is not smooth

The amendment’s passage through Iran’s reformed legislative process was not unanimous, and implementation will test the law’s reach. Conservative religious communities — including clerical institutions that retain significant social influence — have signaled they will contest portions of the reform through religious courts and community norms. Legal equality on paper and equality in daily life are not the same thing, and advocates working in rural provinces describe a long road ahead before the amendment’s guarantees are felt consistently across the country.

Women in Iran are marking this milestone with clear eyes. The women who first removed their headscarves on Enghelab Street in 2017 C.E. and 2018 C.E. — some of whom faced years of legal persecution — understand better than most the distance between a law changing and a culture changing. But as one of many human rights advances reshaping legal frameworks this decade, the Iranian amendment carries a particular weight. It was built, one protest at a time, by ordinary people who decided the law was wrong.

The white scarf Vida Movahed raised on a stick on Enghelab Street — Revolution Street — is now on display in Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary History. The street has the same name it always did. What has changed is what the word revolution is allowed to mean.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Iranian protests against compulsory hijab — Wikipedia

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• The Good News for Humankind archive on human rights

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