Throughout history, women in Iran have played numerous roles, and contributed in many ways, to Iranian society. Historically, tradition maintained that women be confined to their homes to manage the household and raise children. During the Pahlavi era, there was a drastic social change towards women's desegregation such as ban of the veil, right to vote, right to education, equal salaries for men and women, and the right to hold public office. Women were active participants in the Islamic Revolution. Iran's constitution, adopted after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, proclaims equality for men and women under Article 20, while mandating legal code adhering to Sharia law. Article 21 of the constitution as well as a few parliament-passed laws give women rights such as being allowed to drive, hold public office, and attend university but not wearing a veil in public can be punished by law; and when in public, all hair and skin except the face and hands must be covered. However, this is often not enforced; notably in recent years, Iranian women have started a number of groups to rebel against the government's oppressive policies and reclaim their independence and rights.
History
Ancient Iran
Archaeological excavations at Shahr-e Sukhteh ("Burnt City"), a prehistoric settlement in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of southeastern Iran, have revealed that women in the region during the 4th to 3rd millennium BC possessed high status. Of the seals discovered in graves there, 90% were in possession of women, who made up over 60% of the population. The distribution of these seals – instruments of trade and government which represented economic and administrative control – revealed these women to have been a powerful group in their prehistoric society.
The early Achaemenid-era Persepolis fortification and treasury tablets refers to women in three different terms: mutu, irti and duksis. The first refers to ordinary (non-royal) women; the second to unmarried members of the royal family; and the last duksis to married women of royalty. Such differentiated terminology shows the significance of marital status and of a woman's relationship to the king. The tablets also reveal that women of the royal household traveled extensively and often personally administered their own estates. The queen consort and her ladies-in-waiting are known to have played polo against the emperor and his courtiers. The only limits on the extent of the authority exercised by the king's mother were set by the monarch himself.
In the tablets, "non-royals and the ordinary workers are mentioned by their rank in the specific workgroup or workshops they were employed. The rations they received are based on skill and the level of responsibility they assumed in the workplace. The professions are divided by gender and listed according to the amount of ration. Records indicate that some professions were undertaken by both sexes while others were restricted to either male or female workers. There are male and female supervisors at the mixed workshops as evident by the higher rations they have received with little difference in the number of rations between the two sexes. There are also occasions where women listed in the same category as men received fewer rations and vice versa. Female managers have different titles presumably reflecting their level of skill and rank. The highest-ranking female workers in the texts are called arashshara (great chief). They appear repeatedly in the texts, were employed at different locations, and managed large groups of women, children, and sometimes men working in their units. They usually receive high rations of wine and grains exceeding all the other workers in the unit including the males." Pregnant women also received higher rations than others. Women with newborn children also received extra rations for one month.
A few experts say that it was Cyrus the Great who, twelve centuries before Islam, established the custom of covering women to protect their chastity. According to their theory, the veil passed from the Achaemenids to the Hellenistic Seleucids. They, in turn, handed it to the Byzantines, from whom the Arab conquerors turned it into the hijab, transmitting it over the vast reaches of the Muslim world.
The Sassanid princess Purandokht, daughter of Khosrau II, ruled the Persian empire for almost two years before resigning. During the Sassanian dynasty, many of the Iranian soldiers who were captured by Romans were women who were fighting along with the men.
Persian women are depicted in many masterpieces of Persian miniatures. These are often used as sources to "trace through the sequence of women's fashion from earlier periods".