Check out this amazing interview over at ForbesWoman, “Iran and the Woman Question”. Roya Kakakian, an Iranian poet and author now living in the United States, talks about feminism in Iran, and the climate over there right now.  A brief excerpt:

Forbes: What was your first reaction to seeing women among the protesters in the streets of Iran?

Hakakian: The presence of women is not a surprise to me at all.

Iran has had a robust women’s movement for several decades now. But in the late 1990s, a new generation took charge; and in the early 2000s, they managed to organize and unite in ways that women had not since the revolution in 1979. It started as petition movement to collect signatures to ban stoning women to death and has spun out to become the “One Million Signatures Campaign.” So this is precisely what I expected.

Read the rest.