The Women’s Media Center Tribute to the Women’s Revolution of Iran Statements by WMC Co-Founders Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem

For Immediate Release

New York, New York—WMC Co-Founders Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem tonight delivered statements on the Women’s Revolution in Iran following a special WMC Solidarity Tribute at the organization’s Women’s Media Awards held at the Mandarin Oriental.

Jane Fonda, WMC Co-Founder:

“The Women's Media Center feels it crucial to emphasize our solidarity with the Women's Revolution in Iran. This is not only because to date more than 300 protestors have been killed and 14,000 arrested--including 63 journalists. This revolution is exploding all over Iran—the likes of which have never been seen in the entire region. It was triggered by the death on September 16th of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, three days after she was detained by the so-called ‘morality police’ for an alleged violation of the country’s harsh strictures on women’s clothing. Within days, protests burst out across the country in spontaneous grief, rage, and defiance by women burning their head scarves, cutting their hair, and chanting, ‘Women. Life. Freedom.’ The ferocity of the protests is due to evidence surfacing that Jina (her Kurdish name) was brutally beaten in custody before she collapsed and fell into a coma, and to dictates of Iran’s government, now led by ultra conservative President Ebrahim Raisi, who has intensified severe dress codes, and empowered the detested morality police to enforce them, even during widespread economic suffering. Authorities responded by cutting off Internet service and resorting to the use of deadly force. International news commentators reporting on the uprising say they have never seen anything like this in the entire Muslim world.”

Gloria Steinem, WMC Co-Founder:

“The United States imposed sanctions on senior officials from Iran’s intelligence and law enforcement branches, condemning what Secretary of State Tony Blinken called ‘Mahsa’s tragic and brutal death.’ But that is nowhere near enough. We want more action. We want more sanctions. The Women’s Media Center calls on women everywhere to move in solidarity with Iranian women, and with this Women’s Revolution, and with the men supporting these women. Use whatever social media you frequent: Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, and even Twitter, to get this story out, because it continues. We must, each of us, exert heavy pressure on our own governments world-wide to in turn stop Iran’s government from its murderous practices. Women and girls, our sisters, are trapped in their country with no voice out to the world. We can offer them that voice. Iranian women need to know that we are with them, and with the Global Women’s Movement, which won't be stopped. Here too, our bodies are ours, to bear children or not as we choose, to dress as we choose, to live as we choose.”

Robin Morgan, WMC Co-Founder:

“Despite Iran's shutdown of the Internet, videos squeak through. The government cannot muzzle or hide or erase images of students, as young as 15, marching, setting fire to statues of ayatollahs, ripping off headscarves and flinging them in bonfires--while chanting “Women. Life. Freedom." Live bullets are cutting them down. This is the first contemporary women’s revolution, one of consequence to the whole world. And even with blood reddening campuses and city streets, this movement feels different, it vibrates with an incredible pulse of joy, the taste of freedom. One video showed a young girl dancing in the street, bare-headed, hair flying, headscarf twirling--actually laughing. We need to sing the stories and names of this courage, of these extraordinary young women. Sepideh Rashno, 28, writer and artist, disappeared. Nika Shakarami, age 16, filmed burning headscarves and leading chants at a protest in Tehran, taken by security guards, while her family was told she had jumped from an abandoned building as a suicide--but her death certificate states she died of multiple injuries from blows with a hard object. Also 16, Sarina Esmailzadeh posted Vlogs on YouTube, and was beaten to death by security forces at an Alborz province protest on September 23rd. Niloofar Hamedi, the photojournalist who broke the initial story by posting a photo on social media of Mahsa Jina Amini’s parents embracing outside her hospital room, has been held in solitary confinement at the dreaded Evin Prison with its torture chambers, and is assumed dead.

This country's flirtation with theocracy should learn from Iran. You can change the gods, since it’s not about them--it’s about power and control. And it always starts with women. So we fight together the same battle, for bodily integrity, for each other, for ourselves. Mahsa. Sepideh. Nika. Sarina. Niloofar. Women. Life. Freedom.”

About the WOMEN’S MEDIA AWARDS:

The Women’s Media Awards honorees are: Andrea Mitchell, Robin Roberts, Mariana Ardila Trujillo, Loretta J. Ross, Salamishah Tillet, Loreen Arbus, and Maria Martinez.

About the WOMEN’S MEDIA CENTER (WMC):

Founded in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem, the WOMEN’S MEDIA CENTER is an inclusive feminist organization that works to make women visible and powerful in media. WMC trains women leaders to be effective in the media, does groundbreaking research and reporting on media inclusion and accuracy, and produces media style guides such as the book and website channel, Unspinning the Spin: The WOMEN’S MEDIA CENTER’s Guide to Fair and Accurate Language. We promote diverse women experts to journalists, bookers, and producers through WMC SheSource. Our publication, The Status of Women in U.S. Media Report, is now an industry standard on where women stand, and serves as a map that shows us where we need to go to achieve an inclusive, representative, and equal media and society. Our research findings have helped to prove the imbalance to the media industry itself, and the monumental importance of seeing and hearing and reading women in all our true diversity – as journalists, broadcasters, filmmakers, and authoritative sources.

For press information, contact Cristal Williams Chancellor at cristal@womensmediacenter.com