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The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was an unmitigated disaster for the women of Iran. That fact is well known. What is less well-known and what Manda Zand Ervin brings to light in her remarkable book, is the long history of struggle against clerical domination in which the women of Iran have been engaged for centuries..
Rooted in the proud history of ancient Persia where once Mother-Gods were worshipped, the Ladies' Secret Society, founded in the early decades of the 20th Century, was at once the inheritor of this proud history and the progenitor of the women of today who are enduring 25-year prison sentences for the defiant, yet innocent, act of removing their hijabs in public.
Ervin tells the stories and records the accomplishments of generations of individual women activists who have risked everything to educate their daughters even when held in thrall to the harem system of the Qajar era.
These women refused to be victims. They fought like lionesses for every scrap of freedom gained from the time of the Arab conquest to the era of the Shah, only to see all their hard-won rights destroyed with the coming of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution.
Yet, despite the extreme cruelty of the clergy and the imminent danger they face, the women of Iran are undeterred. Ervin pays loving tribute to them all as she relates the stories of their remarkable achievements in the face of overwhelming oppression.
Thanks to Manda Zand Ervin and her extraordinary book, we know their names and we will not forget their courageous lives.
About the author
During the Iranian Islamic revolution, Manda witnessed the execution of many innocent people, including her high school principal who was murdered because she was a woman and the Secretary of Education. She bore witness as her homeland pushed backward to crude 7th century Arabian standards. And she witnessed the effect.
Having been educated in the United States, in 1979, she was the managing director of department of statistics and international affairs at the Customs Administration in Iran. She came to United States as a political refugee in 1980, became a citizen three years later, and began her fight for human rights in Iran. She is the founder and president of the Alliance of Iranian Women, a group which has deep connections within the Iranian diaspora and within Iran.
Ms. Ervin is frequently consulted by Members of Congress and has testified in Congressional briefings, the Helsinki Commission, and the United Nations. In February of 2008, Ervin was appointed as the United States' Delegate to the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women. Ervin was the featured speaker at the G8 Summit on Violence against Women in 2009. She received the EMET Speaker of the Truth award in 2012.
Ervin has been published by the Hudson Institute, American Thinker, Washington Times and many others. She frequently speaks on human rights and Middle East history.
