Mahnaz Afkhami

Activism

Afkhami's activism has focused primarily on:

Leadership and political participation

At 17, Afkhami joined a trade union and successfully challenged a breach of her rights as a worker when an employer laid her off temporarily then rehired her to avoid paying for the vacation she had earned. She credits this incident with giving her the belief that organizing could bring about social change.

In 1975, Afkhami was asked to join the cabinet of the Iranian government and became Minister of Women's Affairs. The post had not existed in Iran before and the only other person holding such a position was Françoise Giroud in France.

In 2001, Afkhami published Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women to encourage women to be leaders in their families, communities, and countries. It has been translated into 20 languages. In 2010, she published Leading to Action: A Political Participation Handbook for Women. The manuals have been used for training around the world, reaching thousands.

Afkhami and her sister Farah Abrahimi were featured in the PBS series Destination America in 2005. At the time Afkhami became Minister of Women's Affairs, her sister was a leader in the students' movement demanding the overthrow of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Gender equality

In 1969, two years after returning to Iran as a professor of literature and Chair of the Department of English at the National University of Iran, Afkhami was drawn into Iran's women's movement and founded the Association of University Women. In 1970, she became the secretary general of the Women's Organization of Iran (WOI). She remained there for ten years, during which time she worked for Iranian women's rights.

While Afkhami was Minister of Women's Affairs, Iran's legislation granted women equal rights as regards divorce; raised the minimum age of marriage; supported women's employment with maternity leave and childcare provision; and built upon the family laws of 1967.

Afkhami has served as a member of Iran's High Council of Family Planning and Welfare and on the boards of trustees of Kerman University and Farah University for Women. She has written that "[w]omen’s empowerment is a process, a holistic approach that involves raising consciousness, building skills and reforming unjust laws that limit women’s education, their employment, their participation in decision making and, above all, their opportunities for economic independence."

Exile and involvement in the international women's movement

When Iran's Islamic Revolution began in 1979, Afkhami was at the United Nations in New York negotiating the establishment of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW). She was charged in absentia with "Corruption on Earth and warring with God." She has never returned to Iran, living instead in exile, although she has said she would like to return to help rebuild Iran if its political system changed.

She contributed the piece "A future in the past, the prerevolutionary women's movement" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.

In 1994, she published Women in Exile, a collection of portraits of activist women in political exile.

Afkhami then joined the international women's rights movement, saying: "The conditions women have in common outrank and outvalue those that set them apart." She became an advisor to Human Rights Watch and the Vice-President and Executive Director of [The Sisterhood is Global?]. Since then, she has written Towards Global Feminism.

Afkhami has served on a number of boards and committees of international organizations including the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy (1999-2010), the International League for Human Rights (2000-2006), the Global Fund for Women (1998-2007), Gender At Work (2003-2008), Women Leaders Intercultural Forum (2010) and Global Women’s Action Network for Children (2006-2009)., Global Fund for Women (1998-2007), International Museum of Women (2000-2014), Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative (2002-2010), and Women's Human Rights Net (2000-2004).

She currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, the Board of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Culture, Islam and universality of rights

Afkhami believes that religion and feminism are not incompatible ("Women ought not to be forced to choose between freedom and God"). Nonetheless, culture and religion can be problematic in terms of women's human rights: "We must pose the question: why is it that the denial of the most rudimentary rights to civil treatment for women is always based on some fundamental point of culture? Is this culture real, or is it a fetish that is used to maintain some economic, social, or simply psychological privilege?"

She has taken a stand against cultural relativism and Islamic exceptionalism, stating clearly that human rights are universal and must supersede religious frameworks: "At the center of [the] conflict is the dilemma of Muslim women’s human rights – whether Muslim women have rights because they are human beings, or whether they have rights because they are Muslim women."

Iranian Women's Movement

Looking back on the changes which occurred in Iran just before the revolution, Afkhami said: “It seems to me that our main mistake was not that we did not do other things which we should have done. Our main mistake was that we created conditions in which the contradictions related to modernity, progress, equality, and human rights, especially women’s rights, increased and the reaction to our work put perhaps too much pressure on the country’s social fabric.” She has publicly supported the Iranian One Million Signatures campaign to end discriminatory laws against women by promoting a book written by Iranian activist Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani. She believes that the movement is a new phase within a century-long cause.

Afkhami’s life and work in the women’s movement in Iran, breaking with tradition, and living in exile are the topics of the 2012 Voice of America Persian biopic.

Speaking Engagements (selected)

Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Election 2016 and the Global Women's Movement, Chicago, IL (November 1, 2016) (Moderated by Fay Hartog-Levin with Catherine Bertini and Ellen Chesler.)

Roosevelt Institute, Women and Girls Rising Conference, New York, NY (September 11, 2014) (Moderated by LaShawn R. Jefferson with Farida Shaheed and Jocelyn Olcott)

Creative Alternatives of New York, "CANY Seminar Series: Leading to Change: Eliminating Violence Against Women", New York, NY (November 1, 2013)

Women Deliver Conference 2013, Presidential Session: Ending Violence Against Women, Kualalumpur, Malaysia (May 29, 2013) (Moderated by Shereen El Feki with Gary Barker, Lakshmi Puri, Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau)

Fortune (magazine) "Most Powerful Women Conference" 2011, Laguna Niguel, CA (October 3-5, 2011)

Biography

Mahnaz Afkhami was born in Kerman, Iran in 1941, the eldest of three children. Her early childhood was spent in Kerman, Iran in a complex that housed a large extended family of Sheikhi Shi'ite Muslims. When she was 11, her mother divorced her father and they moved to the United States. She later attended the University of San Francisco and the University of Colorado in Boulder.

In 1967, Mahnaz returned to Iran as a professor of literature at the National University of Iran. She worked there until 1978. Since then, she has lived in the United States, residing in Maryland with her husband, Gholam Reza Afkhami. They have a son and two grandchildren.

Chronological overview

Organizations Founded or Co-Founded

Honors