Equal Rights Is Our Minimum Demand

“We want to live, we do not want to face persecution for expressing our political opinion; as women we don’t want to walk on the street with the constant horror that we could be intimidated for showing an inch of hair.” —Narges Kalhor, a young Iranian filmmaker, October 2009 On June 12, 2005, hundreds of women gathered outside Tehran University in Tehran, Iran. These women were protesting an issue that Iranian women have battled for more than one hundred years: gender inequality. Living in a conservative Muslim culture, Iranian women are subjected to discriminatory laws that serve the male-dominated society. In public, Iranian women must not be seen with men not related to them, and they must wear clothing completing covering their body and their hair. Many laws punish women even more harshly. If a woman is caught committing adultery, she can be sentenced to death by stoning. Yet men are free to have many wives and even enter temporary marriages. In the 1900s, Iranian women began protesting unjust laws and fighting for equality. For a time, under monarchs wishing to modernize, Iran became more lenient. Women began dressing as they wished, mixing socially with men, and working outside their homes. But after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, harsh punishments for moral offenses again became law. Women in professional occupations lost their jobs, and gender separation was enforced in public places. Iranian women continue to struggle against an oppressive regime, but they refuse to stop protesting. In this powerful story, we’ll learn how Iranian women have been punished and discriminated against by their patriarchal government, but yet they maintain their pursuit of equal rights. We’ll also see what their hopes and dreams are for the future.

This series focuses on the women's rights movement in the United States, from the 18th century to the present day. Each of the books in this series provide a historical survey of women's rights during a specific time period, profiling major figures and discussing their accomplishments and their importance in American history.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, women in the United States and some other Western countries began to demand equal rights with men. Through public demonstrations, complaints to newspapers and congressmen, and other means, women eventually gained the right to vote and hold public office. This book examines how and why social change occurs and the lasting influence of the women's movement.

Often perceived as unbridgeable, the boundaries that divide humanity from itself--whether national, gender, racial, political, or imperial--are rearticulated through friendship. Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose edit a collection of essays that express the different ways women forge hospitality in deference to or defiance of the structures meant to keep them apart. Emerging out of postcolonial theory, the works discuss instances when the authors have negotiated friendship's complicated, conflicted, and contradictory terrain; offer fresh perspectives on feminists' invested, reluctant, and selective uses of the nation; reflect on how the arts contribute to conversations about feminism, dissent, resistance, and solidarity; and unpack the details of transnational dissident friendships. Contributors: Lori E. Amy, Azza Basarudin, Himika Bhattacharya, Kabita Chakma, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Laurie R. Cohen, Esha Niyogi De, Eglantina Gjermeni, Glen Hill, Alka Kurian, Meredith Madden, Angie Mejia, Chandra T. Mohanty, A. Wendy Nastasi, Nicole Nguyen, Liz Philipose, Anya Stanger, Shreerekha Subramanian, and Yuanfang Dai.

"Come out for freedom! Come out now! Power to the people! Gay power to gay people! Come out of the closet before the door is nailed shut!" —Come Out! magazine, November 14, 1969 On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. They intended to shut the bar down—part of the mayor's order to clean up illegal businesses. The cops didn't expect much trouble, especially not from the gay men and women dancing and socializing at the bar. At that time, most gay people were afraid to expose their homosexuality. They could be arrested for having sex with one another. They could lose their jobs just for being gay. By 1969 a few gay people had started to speak out. They had filed lawsuits and staged peaceful protest marches to call attention to discrimination against homosexuals. But when the police raided the Stonewall, the bar's customers decided to take a stronger stand. They hurled rocks and bricks at the police. They chanted "Gay Power." This uprising gave birth to a new liberation movement. Gay men and women organized, demonstrated for their rights, and celebrated their sexual identities. They opened gay bookstores, held gay dances, and lobbied politicians to change laws that discriminated against them. Most important, they no longer lived their lives in secret. In this riveting story, we'll explore the decades of discrimination and abuse that gay people endured in earlier eras. We’ll also learn how gay people continue to fight for equal rights and recognition.

A fresh look at Iranian popular culture and women's role within this prior to the 1979 Revolution.

On the night of November 20, 1969, ninety-two Native Americans sailed silently across the San Francisco Bay toward the island of Alcatraz. They intended to reclaim the land for Indian people and to establish a community on Alcatraz. By the time the sun rose, they had settled onto the island and made their intentions clear: a large sign read, “You Are Now on Indian Land. When the U.S. government discovered the occupation of Alcatraz, the U.S. Coast Guard blockaded the island. Yet more Native Americans found ways onto Alcatraz, coming from as far away as Canada and South America. During the nineteen-month occupation, Native Americans kept arriving, and Alcatraz became a community with a health clinic, a school, and even its own newspaper. Actors and singers visited the island, and boats dropped off donated supplies. Throughout negotiations with the government, the Native Americans refused to leave; instead, they fought to establish a permanent complex for their people. In this fascinating story of a people’s determination, we’ll explore what led Native Americans to stage an occupation of Alcatraz and how the standoff with the federal government ended. We’ll also see how this event inspired other Native American activists around the country to lead their own demonstrations and fight for American Indian rights.

For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, a groundbreaking exploration of gendered oppression—its origins, its histories, our attempts to understand it, and our efforts to combat it For centuries, societies have treated male domination as natural to the human species. But how would our understanding of gender inequality—our imagined past and contested present— look if we didn’t assume that men have always ruled over women? If we saw inequality as something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted? In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini explores the roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. She travels to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analyzes the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and traces cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, finding that: From around 7,000 years ago there are signs that a small number of powerful men were having more children than other men From 5,000 years ago, as the earliest states began to expand, gendered codes appeared in parts of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to serve the interests of powerful elites—but in slow, piecemeal ways, and always resisted In societies where women left their own families to live with their husbands, marriage customs came to be informed by the widespread practice of captive-taking and slavery, eventually shaping laws that alienated women from systems of support and denied them equal rights There was enormous variation in gender and power in many societies for thousands of years, but colonialism and empire dramatically changed ways of life across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, spreading rigidly patriarchal customs and undermining how people organized their families and work. In the 19th century and 20th centuries, philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and feminists began to actively question what patriarchy meant as part of the attempt to understand the origins of inequality. In our own time, despite the pushback against sexism, abuse, and discrimination, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. But The Patriarchs is a profoundly hopeful book—one that reveals a multiplicity to human arrangements that undercuts the old grand narratives and exposes male supremacy as no more (and no less) than an ever-shifting element in systems of control.