Iranian women win the right to vote after 56 years of struggle

Story: 1963 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 26, 1963

In January 1963 C.E., Iranian women walked into a new political era. After more than half a century of organizing, petitioning, and resisting, they secured the right to vote — a milestone earned through decades of pressure on a government that had long refused to yield.

Key findings

• Iranian women’s suffrage: Women in Iran gained the right to vote in 1963 C.E., following approximately 56 years of sustained activism dating to the Constitutional Revolution period of the early 1900s.
• White Revolution referendum: The right to vote was granted as part of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reform package, known as the White Revolution, put to a national referendum on January 26, 1963 C.E.
• Women’s political participation: The suffrage victory opened the door to women running for and winning seats in Iran’s parliament, the Majles, as well as serving in appointed government roles in subsequent decades.

Fifty-six years in the making

The struggle for Iranian women’s suffrage did not begin in the 1960s. It traces back to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 C.E., when Iranian civil society — including women’s organizations — pushed for a modern constitutional government. Women were excluded from the new constitution’s political rights, but they did not disappear from the movement.

Through the following decades, Iranian women’s groups organized, published, and advocated. They built schools, established newspapers, and created associations that kept political pressure alive. This grassroots infrastructure was the foundation on which the 1963 C.E. victory was built.

When the White Revolution referendum passed in January 1963 C.E., women’s suffrage was one of its six core provisions. It was a top-down reform in many ways — introduced by the Shah rather than won through a democratic legislature — but the pressure from below over five and a half decades had made it politically unavoidable.

What the vote meant in practice

Gaining the right to vote was not an abstraction. Within two years, women were elected to the Majles for the first time in Iranian history. Women also began serving as judges, doctors in state hospitals, and government ministers. The vote was a legal recognition that women were full participants in the nation’s civic life.

The achievement placed Iran ahead of several other countries in the region and, notably, ahead of Switzerland, which did not grant women the federal right to vote until 1971 C.E. Across the world, the mid-twentieth century was a period of rapid expansion in women’s suffrage — from global commitments through the United Nations to country-by-country legislative and constitutional changes.

Iran’s women’s movement was also part of a longer global pattern. American suffragists including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott had spent decades building the case for women’s political equality before the 19th Amendment passed in the U.S. in 1920 C.E. New Zealand had granted women the vote in 1893 C.E. Each victory was part of a slow but widening arc.

Iranian women’s organizations drew on both their own traditions and international suffragist movements. The global suffrage movement created a shared language of civic equality that crossed borders, even when specific strategies and contexts differed sharply.

Lasting impact

The 1963 C.E. vote did not resolve every question about women’s political power in Iran, but it permanently altered the baseline. Women who had been legally excluded from the political process were now, in principle, equal participants. That legal status had material consequences — for women who voted, ran for office, entered professions, and raised daughters who expected political rights as given.

The vote also demonstrated what sustained civic pressure can accomplish. The women who began organizing in the 1900s and early 1910s did not live to cast a ballot in 1963 C.E. But the institutions, networks, and arguments they built outlasted them — and ultimately changed the law.

Globally, Iran’s milestone contributed to the growing evidence that women’s political participation was not a Western cultural preference but a universal human development. By the time Iranian women voted for the first time, the United Nations had already enshrined political equality as a human right — and more countries were acting on it.

Blindspots and limits

The 1963 C.E. victory was granted within an authoritarian structure, not won through a democratic process — the Shah’s government used reform as a tool of political consolidation, and women’s rights were partly instrumentalized in that project. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, many of the political gains women had made were rolled back: women were removed from the judiciary, dress codes were mandated by law, and significant barriers to running for and holding office remain in place today, with an all-male Guardian Council holding the power to disqualify female candidates. The right to vote, while still formally intact, exists within a system that structurally limits how far that vote can reach.

Read more

For more on this story, see: U.S. Embassy Tehran — A comparison of women’s voting rights in the U.S. and Iran

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Marie-Louise Eta becomes the first female head coach in men’s top-flight European football
• Indigenous land rights: 160 million hectares recognized at COP30
• The Good News for Humankind archive on Iran

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