Why Women Burned Headscarves in Iran: Protest, History and Choice

Why the headscarf became a protest symbol

Women burned headscarves during Iran’s September 2022 protests to reject compulsory veiling and the authorities’ control over their appearance. The demonstrations followed the death of Jina Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the morality police. The burning cloth made that refusal visible, alongside other forms of protest.

In a report published on 20 September, Associated Press journalist Joseph Krauss described women waving their headscarves, two women throwing theirs into a bonfire and another cutting her hair. These were different gestures within the same unfolding unrest. The report traced demonstrations from Amini’s funeral in Saqqez into other cities. Associated Press, Joseph Krauss, 20 September 2022.

Earlier challenges to compulsory veiling

Photographs of the 1979 demonstrations

The history reaches back well before social media. Photographer Hengameh Golestan documented women demonstrating in Tehran on 8 March 1979 against compulsory veiling. The Showroom’s account of her work identifies nurses, students, artists and mothers among those she photographed. Women from different parts of working and domestic life were entering the streets together.

In September 2015, the London gallery presented these photographs in Witness 1979, developed with Golestan and researcher Azadeh Fatehrad. Large prints appeared inside and outside the building, while visitors could handle archival material. Workshops and public discussions accompanied the exhibition.

The gallery explained that Golestan had been unable to show the images in Tehran. Their later presentation preserved an earlier moment of opposition and placed it before another audience. The programme was designed to involve local girls’ and women’s groups in discussion about gender, protest and representation. The Showroom, Witness 1979 exhibition account.

Organising through the One Million Signatures campaign

Campaigning also took forms less immediately visible than a street demonstration. In her 2023 account of Iranian women’s organising, Human Rights Watch researcher Tara Sepehri Far described the One Million Signatures campaign, launched in 2006. It brought secular women and women with religious commitments into work on discriminatory laws.

Its concerns included marriage, inheritance, child custody and the age of criminal responsibility. Compulsory hijab was not its central demand. That matters to the chronology: later opposition to enforced dress emerged within a longer history of women organising around several kinds of unequal treatment.

Sepehri Far explained that the campaign did not achieve all its aims, but helped develop networks and experienced organisers. Repression after 2009 pushed some activists into exile and changed the conditions for collective work. Amani’s separate article on hijab and activism follows other campaign forms and the choices behind their public messages. Human Rights Watch, Tara Sepehri Far, 26 June 2023.

Vida Movahed’s public protests

On 27 December 2017, Vida Movahed removed her headscarf in protest against compulsory covering. Human Rights Watch identifies her as the woman whose action began the Girls of Revolution Street movement. Its account describes women removing their headscarves while standing on electric utility boxes during December 2017 and January 2018.

The same organisation documented another protest by Movahed in October 2018, when she appeared without her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Square carrying balloons. Her lawyer reported in April 2019 that she had received a one-year prison sentence that March.

According to that account, the conviction concerned the October protest and a charge of encouraging corruption and prostitution. Human Rights Watch called for the women’s release and for their convictions to be overturned. Its report connects brief public gestures with arrests and prosecutions that continued beyond the moment recorded in an image. Human Rights Watch, 18 April 2019.

Pressure on the women’s lawyer

The risks extended to people who represented women challenging compulsory veiling. Nasrin Sotoudeh’s legal work included defending such protesters. Amnesty International’s March 2019 statement about her conviction situated that work alongside her wider defence of human rights and opposition to the death penalty.

The organisation recorded her arrest at home in June 2018 and condemned the new conviction. It described charges tied to peaceful activities, including appearing publicly without a headscarf, and called for her immediate release.

Sotoudeh’s case adds another part of the protest’s history. An individual act over clothing could require legal representation; that representation itself could bring pressure on the defender. Amnesty’s intervention concerned both the women’s peaceful actions and the ability of a lawyer to defend them. Amnesty International, 11 March 2019.

Flowers and the freedom to choose

In a video that circulated on International Women’s Day in 2019, Yasaman Aryani and her mother, Monireh Arabshahi, distributed flowers on the Tehran metro without wearing headscarves. Amnesty International’s account described an encounter with women who were covered, accompanied by a hope that they could one day walk together with each choosing her own clothing.

That exchange gives the question of choice a concrete form. The women’s message allowed for different decisions about covering. Their shared public space was the train carriage, and a flower carried the message between people rather than demanding an identical appearance from everyone.

Amnesty recorded Aryani’s arrest on 10 April and Arabshahi’s arrest the following day, after she asked about her daughter at the detention centre. The organisation called for their release. The sequence joins an ordinary journey, a peaceful gesture and the subsequent intervention of the authorities, showing why the freedom to choose was consequential in everyday places. Amnesty International, 18 April 2019.

Saba Kordafshari and coerced appearances

In July 2019, Amnesty International reported a pattern of pressure on detained women to appear in video confessions. Its investigation identified at least six cases since April. The organisation described isolation, threats against relatives and demands that women retract their opposition to compulsory veiling.

One case concerned Saba Kordafshari, arrested in June. Drawing on her mother’s account, Amnesty described pressure to speak before a camera and threats to arrest her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi, if she did not cooperate. Ahmadi was then arrested in July. During another period that month, the authorities concealed Kordafshari’s whereabouts from her family.

The report concerns control over a woman’s public voice as well as her clothing. An appearance on television could carry words extracted under pressure, while her relatives also faced consequences. Amnesty called for the women’s release and opposed the production and broadcasting of these coerced accounts. Amnesty International, 15 July 2019.

A confrontation on a bus

Before Amini’s death, Sepideh Rashno’s case had already drawn attention to enforcement in public transport. In July and August 2022, Human Rights Activists News Agency reported on a confrontation between Rashno and a woman challenging her dress on a bus, followed by her arrest and a coerced television appearance.

The agency’s July account included information from a source about limited telephone contact and the opening of a legal case. Its later report said she had been denied access to a lawyer. Those details extend the account beyond the circulating bus video into the conditions following detention.

HRANA’s reporting presented the television appearance as coerced. It should therefore not be treated as an uncomplicated statement of Rashno’s own views. The case places a dispute over compulsory covering within an ordinary shared journey and its subsequent public retelling. HRANA, 27 July and 5 August 2022.

September 2022 and its consequences

What the investigation found about Amini’s death

The UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission examined Jina Mahsa Amini’s death. Its 2024 report established that the morality police arrested her near Tehran’s Shahid Haqqani metro station on 13 September 2022 over allegedly improper hijab and took her to the Vozara detention facility.

The report reconstructed her collapse after arrival and transfer to hospital. She died on 16 September and was buried in Saqqez the next day. The mission assessed medical information alongside witness accounts and other evidence. Applying its reasonable-grounds standard, it concluded that physical violence in state custody had caused her death and held the state responsible for an unlawful death.

These were findings of an international investigation, rather than a criminal court verdict. They supply a later evidential account beyond the conflicting claims circulating in the first days of the protests. The report also examined the authorities’ failure to investigate effectively and pressure placed on Amini’s family. UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, A/HRC/55/67, 2024.

Schoolgirls entered the protests

Schoolgirls became visible participants in the protests. In an October 2022 dispatch, Human Rights Watch’s Bill Van Esveld described videos of girls chanting, waving head coverings and burning them, both at school and in the street. The article also identified a recording of schoolgirls singing Baraye without their mandatory coverings.

He described girls marching in Saqqez and a group in Karaj crowding a man, apparently an official, out of a school gate. Another reported recording showed girls removing their coverings while protesting a visiting speaker. These were collective acts in places where adults ordinarily exercised authority over pupils.

The dispatch called on the authorities to protect children, prevent intimidation in schools and release those detained for peaceful protest. It also described adults joining the girls and boys burning headscarves. The reported scenes placed younger pupils alongside other participants, with school gates, classrooms and streets becoming settings for collective demands about freedom and equality. Human Rights Watch, Bill Van Esveld, 12 October 2022.

Children and families faced the crackdown

A separate Amnesty International investigation documented children killed during the September 2022 crackdown. Its 13 October account identified 23 child victims from the period between 20 and 30 September. The record included girls and boys, and the organisation stressed that identified cases were not a complete death toll.

The report also described pressure on relatives to accept official accounts of how children had died. It named Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, both sixteen, among the girls whose families faced intimidation. Amnesty attributed their deaths to violence by security forces and challenged the authorities’ alternative narratives.

The geographical and personal range matters. The investigation included Baluchi children and two young people of Afghan nationality; it did not describe every victim as a girl burning a headscarf. Its findings concerned a broader crackdown on protesters and bystanders. Behind a widely shared image of defiance were families seeking truthful accounts of what had happened to their children. Amnesty International, 13 October 2022.

Protest voices and their circulation

Restrictions on communication

Images of the protests circulated while access to communication services was being restricted. OONI’s report of 25 September 2022 used network measurements collected during the protest period to identify new blocks. It recorded restrictions affecting WhatsApp and Instagram from 21 September, followed by app stores the next day.

The researchers also identified blocking of Skype and LinkedIn from 23 September and presented evidence of serious mobile-network outages. Different restrictions affected messaging, publishing images, obtaining applications and connecting through mobile services. Those channels formed part of the environment in which people tried to communicate about the protests.

The report explained how its measurements were collected and warned that individual anomalies can have causes other than blocking. Its findings therefore concern the tested networks and services, rather than proving that every person in Iran was wholly offline. The technical evidence adds a specific account of interrupted communication to the visible history of street protests. OONI, Basso, Xynou, Filastò and Meng, 25 September 2022.

A contested protest post

One dispute concerned a protest image already inside a social platform. In July 2022, a Facebook user posted a cartoon opposing Iran’s government and compulsory veiling. Meta removed it under its rules on violence and restricted the account. An automated process then closed the user’s appeal without review.

In January 2023, the Oversight Board overturned that removal. Its published explanation said the Persian slogan should be understood, in its particular political and linguistic context, as opposition to the Supreme Leader rather than a credible threat. After the Board selected the case, Meta had restored the post through a newsworthiness exception; the Board concluded that no such exception was necessary.

The case concerned the interpretation of a specific protest message, rather than a universal permission for threatening language. The Board also recommended better handling of appeals and contextual guidance for reviewers. Its decision shows a second obstacle to circulation alongside network restrictions: the treatment of protest expression by the platform carrying it. Oversight Board, 9 January 2023.

Public appearances and international solidarity

Elnaz Rekabi and an uncertain interpretation

Sport provided another highly visible appearance. Elnaz Rekabi competed without a headscarf at the Asian climbing championships in Seoul on 16 October 2022, finishing fourth. ABC News reported the competition and concern for her safety.

The same report preserved an important qualification. A statement posted on an Instagram account in Rekabi’s name said the problem with her covering had been unintentional, following an unexpected call to climb. ABC had not obtained a direct response from her to its earlier request for comment. The International Federation of Sport Climbing said it had made contact and emphasised her safety, athletes’ choices and freedom of expression.

That combination does not establish a deliberate protest by Rekabi. It records an uncovered sporting appearance, a subsequent explanation and concern from the sport’s governing body. Keeping those elements together respects the difference between what an audience may see in an image and what can be established about the athlete’s intention. ABC News, Malekian and Winsor, 18 October 2022.

Nazanin Boniadi’s appeal for accountability

At a UN Security Council Arria-formula meeting on 2 November 2022, actor and advocate Nazanin Boniadi described women removing, waving and burning headscarves, alongside hair cutting and school protests. Her remarks placed those acts within demands extending beyond dress to expression, assembly and political participation.

She argued that compulsory covering had become a visible expression of women’s subordination. She also challenged the suggestion that coercive enforcement should be insulated from criticism by calling it a cultural matter. These were Boniadi’s arguments to the meeting, rather than a resolution adopted by the Security Council.

Her proposed response centred on accountability. She called for an independent international mechanism to document abuses and support justice, while insisting that Iran’s future should be shaped by its own people. It gave an international audience an advocate’s account of why the burning scarf signified a much wider demand for self-determination. Nazanin Boniadi, remarks published by Impact Iran, 2 November 2022.

Baraye received international recognition

Music carried another expression of the protests beyond their immediate setting. At the 2023 Grammys, Shervin Hajipour’s Baraye received the Recording Academy’s first Best Song for Social Change recognition. Jill Biden announced the honour on 5 February.

The Academy described Baraye’s connection with the protests that followed Amini’s death and noted that Hajipour had been jailed and later released. It placed the recognition within a programme intended to celebrate songs addressing social concerns and encouraging understanding. More than 110,000 submissions had been made in support of Baraye for that inaugural award.

This was a Special Merit Award, a distinction in the Academy’s own account of the honour. It recognised a song associated with the movement. The event gave a named musician and his work a prominent international platform. Alongside the street images and spoken appeals, it records how a cultural work became part of the public recognition surrounding the protests. Recording Academy, 5 February 2023.

Reporting, recognition and continuing pressure

UNESCO honoured three women’s reporting

UNESCO’s 2023 Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize recognised Niloofar Hamedi, Elaheh Mohammadi and Narges Mohammadi. Its May announcement identified different kinds of work behind the award. Hamedi had reported on Amini’s death; Elaheh Mohammadi had covered her funeral and wrote about social issues and gender equality.

Narges Mohammadi’s work included reporting from prison and interviewing other imprisoned women. UNESCO connected those interviews with her book White Torture. The three laureates were therefore being recognised for distinct reporting practices, rather than a single shared assignment.

The announcement also foregrounded the threats facing women journalists and the importance of truth and accountability. By naming the reporters and describing their work, it placed the production of public knowledge alongside the demonstrations themselves. UNESCO, 2 May 2023.

Narges Mohammadi’s work from prison

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2023 Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi for work against the oppression of women and in support of human rights and freedom. Its statement connected that recognition with the wider Woman, Life, Freedom protests, while describing her own longer work.

The committee traced her involvement with the Defenders of Human Rights Center and her campaigns concerning prisoners and the death penalty. It also described her response when news of the 2022 protests reached Evin prison: she supported the demonstrators and organised solidarity among fellow prisoners.

According to the committee’s account, restrictions on her calls and visits followed, yet she continued to communicate beyond the prison. That account broadens the places in which resistance occurred. A woman did not need to be visible in a street photograph to participate in the movement. Organising, writing and maintaining contact could connect imprisonment with the demands being expressed outside. Norwegian Nobel Committee, 2023 Peace Prize statement.

The journalists’ convictions

International recognition did not end the pressure on the journalists. On 22 October 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the convictions of Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi and renewed its call for their release. Its statement identified Hamedi with Shargh and Mohammadi with Ham-Mihan.

CPJ placed the convictions after their reporting on Amini’s death and prolonged detention. It described national-security and propaganda accusations and reported that appeals remained available at that stage. The organisation treated the cases as an attempt to criminalise journalism, rather than evidence that reporting on the death was itself wrongdoing.

The statement also situated their cases within its wider monitoring of journalists detained after the protests. The sequence from reporting to detention and conviction shows why the work honoured abroad remained consequential for the women who had carried it out. Committee to Protect Journalists, 22 October 2023.

A prize received through representatives

The European Parliament’s 2023 Sakharov Prize honoured Jina Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The ceremony took place in Strasbourg on 12 December, but Amini’s family could not attend. Parliament reported that her parents and brother had been stopped at Tehran airport and their passports confiscated.

The recipients were represented by the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, and women’s rights defenders Afsoon Najafi and Mersedeh Shahinkar. Nikbakht read a message from Amini’s mother, Mozhgan Eftekhari.

The form of the ceremony is part of its significance. Recognition travelled internationally while the family’s own travel was obstructed. The European Parliament’s account records both the public honour and the absence at its centre, with representatives carrying the family’s words into the room. European Parliament, 12 December 2023.

Artistic responses to the protests

Hair, photographs and a burning white scarf

The Victoria and Albert Museum’s account of the 2024 exhibition Acts of Resistance described Hoda Afshar’s response through collected protest photographs and her series In Turn. The latter concerned women supporting one another through the intimate action of plaiting hair.

The same curatorial account described Sheida Soleimani’s Mahsa, a 2022 work from her Ghostwriter series. Its collage combined material associated with Amini, including copies of brain scans and an image of her hand, with a burning white headscarf added by the artist. It had appeared in the Eyes on Iran exhibition outside the UN in New York.

These descriptions concern constructed artworks, rather than documentary proof that every element occurred together. Afshar’s hair-plaiting subject and Soleimani’s added burning scarf offered different ways to address solidarity, mourning and resistance. The museum’s account preserves their makers and contexts, showing how the protest’s visual language was reworked through particular artistic decisions. Victoria and Albert Museum, Acts of Resistance in Iran.

A slogan translated into neon

Taravat Talepasand gave the movement’s name another material form. Her neon sculpture Woman, Life, Freedom presents the phrase in English and Farsi. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts records its first display there in her 2023 solo exhibition and its later presentation as public art in the lobby.

The institution’s 2024–2025 account identifies the work with support for women’s rights in Iran. A phrase heard in protest was thus placed in an arts venue in San Francisco, retaining its two languages and its named Iranian-American maker. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2024–2025.

Consequences beyond the street demonstrations

Cars, journeys and daily enforcement

Amnesty International’s March 2024 investigation followed consequences in ordinary journeys. Based on interviews and records including threatening text messages, it described the impoundment of vehicles linked to women appearing without headscarves. The effects reached trips to work, school runs and medical appointments.

Women described being stopped, chased or left stranded after their cars were taken. Retrieving a vehicle could involve long queues, payments and written undertakings about compulsory covering. Some cases were referred to prosecutors. These were accounts gathered for a particular investigation, rather than a promise that enforcement followed one uniform procedure.

The study drew on testimony gathered from 46 people in February 2024 and examined messages sent to women and men. Its emphasis on transport shows how a decision about dress could affect mobility and other members of a household. The protest’s consequences were not confined to the site of a demonstration or the moment when a headscarf was removed. Amnesty International, 6 March 2024.

Families and commemorations in later findings

In a March 2025 briefing, members of the UN Fact-Finding Mission described findings from their continuing investigation. Expert Shaheen Sardar Ali identified pressure on victims and families through summons, detention and prosecution, including interference with commemorations of those who had died.

The briefing described violence intensifying around the protest anniversaries in 2023 and 2024. It also addressed restrictions on people acting in solidarity, including lawyers, teachers, trade unionists and journalists. Some had been compelled to leave Iran. Ali discussed the closure of social-media accounts and confiscation of SIM cards as further means of repression.

These later findings add a time dimension to the history. The consequences could continue through efforts to remember a death, support a family or retain a public voice long after the original street demonstrations. They were the mission’s dated investigative findings, not a court judgment or a claim that every affected person experienced the same treatment. UN Geneva, Iran Fact-Finding Mission briefing, 14 March 2025.

Keeping choice at the centre

UN Women’s September 2022 statement placed bodily autonomy and the choice of dress alongside the right to protest without reprisals. It called for accountability, due process and an independent investigation into Amini’s death.

Framing the demand as choice leaves room for women to make different decisions about covering. The question is who decides and whether a woman faces threats for her decision. Individual religious convictions and personal ways of dress should not be inferred from a single symbol of the protests. That distinction matters when reading the images and the women’s accounts.

For a separate account of clothing itself, Amani’s article on Iranian women’s dress and regional traditions explores garments, textiles and contemporary designers. UN Women, 28 September 2022.