History is made by women who oppose oppression, not the regimes that impose it

Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich included a phrase in a scholarly article she wrote in 1976 that gained widespread popularity and became one of feminism’s most popular slogans: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

In the opening paragraph, she writes: “Cotton Mather called them ‘the hidden ones.’ They never preached or sat on a deacon’s bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard … Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on Earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

In other words, such women lived quiet and virtuous lives, gave no speeches, attended no colleges, cast no votes. The phrase seemingly implies that being “well-behaved” is unbecoming of a woman who wants to accomplish something worthwhile in her life. A life of resistance and rebellion is much preferred for a woman who has been constantly suppressed in a patriarchal system.

History is our best guide for the events of today. It reminds us that women have been on both sides of most revolutions. There is, therefore, no single history of women; rather there is a universal experience that created a universal sisterhood: “Your protest is our protest, and our protest is yours and theirs.”

For many people living on the other side of the world, it is hard to grasp the scale of the repression, struggle and fear women face in Iran, Afghanistan and the other places in this region. Iran has been rocked by months of protests that erupted in September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. She had been detained by country’s notorious morality police for going out in public in tight trousers and for wearing her hijab “improperly.”

Women in Iran have been fighting against the regime’s compulsory dress code for decades and are now openly defying it as an act of resistance, simply by living their lives without the hijab. While the dress code is the most visible form of the discrimination they face, however, it is only one aspect of the systemic discrimination they are subjected to.

Over the past three months, there has been a massive global outpouring of support for the people of Iran, and especially the women of the country. Worldwide, women have cut their hair in a show of solidarity with their Iranian counterparts. Even in Iran itself, the participants in the protests have included not only women but also men, from various ethnic backgrounds, who marched under the banner of women’s rights.

Across the country, crowds have shouted the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” understanding that freedom for women means freedom for all. Iranians are trying to make this slogan a reality, in their own country and all around the world.

But while they are trying to make their cause a global one and create a universal sisterhood, a neighboring regime is actively denying women their rights by banning them from education and employment.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has suspended university education for women and secondary schooling for girls. It has also imposed restrictions on access to most fields of employment for women, ordered them to cover themselves head-to-toe in public, and banned them from going to parks, gyms and public baths. High schools have been closed to girls for more than a year. Many women have lost their government jobs and are being paid a fraction of their former salaries to stay at home.

The Taliban say the restrictions are required because women have not been observing a strict Islamic dress code, including the wearing of hijabs. The UN and several countries have condemned the actions of the regime, which effectively has returned women in the country to the situation they were in during the Taliban’s first spell in charge, from 1996 to 2001, when girls were denied the right to formal education.

When it returned to power after seizing control of the country in 2021, following the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban promised the world its rule this time would be a softer one. In practice, however, the hard-line Islamists within the regime have rolled back women’s rights and freedoms in the country.

Since the Taliban takeover, women in Afghanistan have been taking part in protests and demonstrations, demanding they be granted their rights to education and employment. When women in Iran took to the streets after the death of Amini, their Afghan sisters closely monitored the protests on the other side the border, hoping for a spillover effect.

Unlike Iran, however, female-led protests have become increasingly rare in Afghanistan, particularly after the detention of core activists at the start of this year.

The blatant hypocrisy of those men who ban women in Afghanistan from receiving an education, yet send their own daughters to study in schools and universities in other countries, is clear for all to see. Meanwhile, millions of other girls in the country are denied the same right to education and forced to wear what they are told to wear, according to strict dress codes.

Repression is the lung through which regimes such as the Taliban and the leadership in Iran breathe.

In 2007, Ulrich published a book that took as its title that phrase from her 1976 article: “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.” In it, she explores exactly what it means for women to make history by examining the lives of three women from three separate eras who were seemingly very different but, as she shows, actually had a lot in common.

Similarly, we are considering women from different countries yet we can see several things they have in common. These commonalities, unfortunately, are rooted in their shared experiences of repression, fear and struggle.

These regimes that deprive Afghan women of education and suppress Iranian women should understand that their actions benefit no one. The imaginary “well-behaved” women these regimes visualize and aspire to creating are simply not real.

Centuries of experience have taught us that it is the women who resist such repressive systems that make history, not the men who impose them.

• Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East.

Twitter: @SinemCngz