March 12, 2011 - Supporters of the One Million Signatures Campaign in California organized a four hour long afternoon program in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (March 8th).

The California branch of this Iran-based campaign for women's rights and gender equality is active mainly in southern California, where there is a large and diverse Iranian population. As a result, the afternoon's programming took place at one of the region's leading universities, the University of California, Irvine (Orange County, to the south of Los Angeles). The emphasis of the commemoration this year was on solidarity between women's movements in Iran and in neighboring countries, a theme inspired by the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and also by ongoing struggles for basic freedoms of rights in a number of countries across the Arab world, including Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen.

The day's events were divided into six sections. After a short speech of welcome from one of the Campaign's local activists, Ms. Sudabeh Farokhnia, four invited speakers reflected on women's movements in various parts of the region, points of similarity and difference, and the challenges facing women worldwide.

To see the speaker's vidoes of the event, please click here

Dr. Faiza Shereen, born in Egypt, director of the International Center at California State University, Pomona, distinguished scholar of comparative literature, playwright, poet, mother and grandmother, talked about Egypt with particular emphasis on the way in which women's struggles are misrepresented in the United States, with a continuing recourse to Orientalist tropes and clichés. She pointed out that many popular and media conceptions prevailing in the United States of women in majority Muslim countries were distorted by a severe anti-Islamic bias, or by feelings of superiority, whereas in fact various forms of discrimination and violence against women persist in the United States, and that from women's perspective, there is "no such thing as a developed country". At the end of her presentation she showed a short video clip made by a female Egyptian video jockey offering an innovative and passionate look at women's struggles in Egypt and elsewhere.

By Sussan Tahmassebi

I had tried to connect with Bahareh before her arrest. I had sent her several emails to set up a time when we could do an interview. I was doing interviews with members of the One Million Signatures Campaign, to try to document their involvement in the effort. Bahareh was an important figure in our Campaign, who had not only played a critical role in connecting students interested in becoming involved in promoting women’s rights with the Campaign, but was critical in organizing female students to address gender disparities in the university setting. She was instrumental in an effort to set up the Women’s Commission of the Office to Foster Unity (one of the major national student organizations) and had played an important role in bridging the student and women’s movements.

But activists were under pressure during those days and such meetings were difficult to arrange. In the aftermath of the disputed presidential elections, political and social activists had been arrested, often at random with no understandable logic. Some were arrested for doing interviews, others for speaking out or writing in objection to developments in the country, some for objecting to human rights violations generally or more specifically the arrest of their colleagues and some for participating in and organizing protests. But most were arrested based on a perceived threat, as a way to intimidate others, a means to quiet popular protest, or simply for having been identified by security forces as a political, social, human rights, women’s rights or student rights activist in the past.