The life story of every woman from my land is a story of resistance.
The women of my land know that one cannot live on hope alone, but they also know that without hope life would not be worth living.
So they do not wait for hope to arrive. Every day, with admirable courage, they create from their tired and wounded souls the hope of a tomorrow free of coercion, discrimination and injustice.

In this video, #Engineer_Zeinab_Kazempour, one of the female candidates for the board of the Tehran Province Construction Engineering Organisation, removes her headscarf and throws it aside. She tells those present how women in the engineering community had been beaten outside the very same hall for not complying with compulsory hijab, and how she herself had been prevented from standing for the board because of her resistance to compulsory dress.

It is said that courage is the highest of virtues because without it no other virtue can be realised in life.
What makes morality possible in any society is not coercion and compulsion—which produce nothing but corruption, pretence and hypocrisy—but the moral courage of people such as Zeinab Kazempour.

Aydin Areta