In 1979, Iran erupted in revolution, and millions celebrated what they thought would be a new era of freedom. But almost overnight, that hope turned into fear for women. Under Ayatollah Khomeini, strict Islamic laws were enforced in public, and punishment became a spectacle.
The streets became a place of control, and a generation of Iranian women learned that rebellion could come at a terrifying cost. Before the revolution, women in Iran had legal rights that were rare in the region at the time. They could vote and run for office. Women worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and civil servants. Some served in Parliament and held senior government roles.
The Family Protection Law gave women the right to ask for divorce and limited men’s ability to take multiple wives. It also raised the legal age of marriage for girls to 18. These laws were not perfect, but they gave women a sense that their lives and choices mattered under the law. But as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first supreme leader of Iran, returned from exile on February 1, 1979, after more than 14 years abroad, he moved quickly to undo many of those changes. Within months, he lowered the minimum legal marriage age for girls from 18 to just nine years old.
He removed women from judgeships and barred them from holding high political office. The new system did not see women as equals in public life. The revolution that had promised justice and dignity was already taking power away from half the population. Just days after consolidating control, Khomeini made a decision that would shape daily life for decades. On March 7, 1979, he announced a new rule about women’s appearance.
He declared that all women working in government offices must wear the Islamic hijab. He framed uncovered hair as immoral and described it as a form of: “Nakedness.”
This was not presented as advice or a suggestion. It was a command from the highest authority in the country. The impact was immediate. Government buildings began enforcing the rule right away. Women who showed up to work without a head covering were told to leave. For many Iranians, this announcement came as a shock. Until that moment, Khomeini had not openly stated that hijab would be compulsory. Many women believed religious dress would remain a personal choice. Overnight, that belief was gone.
The next day, March 8, 1979, thousands of women took to the streets of Tehran and Qom. The timing mattered. It was International Women’s Day, and the protest became a direct response to the hijab decree. Women from different backgrounds joined in. Some were students, others were professionals, and many were mothers. Some were religious, others secular. What united them was the belief that the revolution was being taken away from them.
They marched openly without hijab, knowing exactly what they were defying. They carried banners and shouted slogans. This was not a small or quiet protest. Supporters of Khomeini quickly moved to confront the demonstrators. Pro-Khomeini militiamen and revolutionary guards surrounded the crowds. They shouted threats and tried to intimidate the women into leaving. At several points, they fired warning shots into the air to scare people away. Despite this, the protests did not stop. The women returned again and again, holding their ground for six straight days, from March 8 to March 14, 1979. This became the first major public protest against the new Islamic Republic.
The scale of the resistance caught the authorities off guard. For a brief moment, it appeared the pressure had worked. Khomeini’s deputies announced that the hijab rule would be temporarily suspended. The government tried to calm the situation and avoid further unrest. To many women, it felt like a victory. It looked as though the state had listened.
But this pause was strategic, not a change of heart. Once the protests faded and public attention moved on, the hardliners inside the regime began reorganizing. By mid-1980, enforcement returned with more force and far less tolerance. This time, the focus was not debate or persuasion. It was punishment.
Revolutionary courts and Islamic committees were set up across the country to enforce moral behavior. These groups operated with enormous power and very little oversight. Their job was to punish anyone accused of breaking Islamic codes, and women were often the first targets. In cities and towns across Iran, judges began issuing harsh corporal punishments for behavior that had not been crimes just months earlier.
Being seen with a man outside marriage, attending a mixed gathering, drinking alcohol, or showing too much hair could now lead to arrest and punishment. One of the earliest documented cases came just eleven days after Khomeini’s hijab decree. On March 19, 1979, the Iranian newspaper Kayhan reported a case from the northern city of Rudsar, near the Caspian Sea.
A married woman with three children had run away with another man. Revolutionary officers arrested them and brought them before a judge. The court sentenced the woman to 50 lashes and the man to 100 lashes for having what the judge called an: “Illegitimate relationship.”
The punishment was carried out publicly, on a street in Rudsar. People gathered and watched as a mother of three was whipped in front of them. Another report from Kayhan that same month showed this was not an isolated incident. On March 8, 1979, while women were protesting the hijab decree in Tehran, a public flogging took place in Esfahan. Three people, two men and one woman, were accused of having an affair with a woman labeled: “Corrupt.”
Ayatollah Khademi, a revolutionary judge, ordered that all three receive 100 lashes each. They were flogged in the street, in public view. After the beating, they were forced to repent on the spot before being released. These early cases made one thing clear. The new regime was willing to use public humiliation as a method of control.
Revolutionary guards and Committees of the Islamic Revolution were given wide authority to patrol neighborhoods, streets, and public spaces. They enforced modesty rules aggressively and often violently. Men and women accused of drinking alcohol, having relationships outside marriage, or showing signs of Western culture were arrested on the spot. In many cities, young couples were targeted simply for being close to each other.
Holding hands or sitting too closely in a cinema could lead to slaps, beatings, or detention. By late 1979 and into 1980, flogging had become common. Victims were tied to posts in public squares or parks and whipped in front of crowds. By the end of 1979, even before the Iranian Constitution was finalized, Khomeini had already shaped the country into a system ruled by strict versions of religious law. Revolutionary courts handed down thousands of sentences.
Political opponents were imprisoned or executed, but women were more likely to receive corporal punishment. Any behavior labeled “immoral” could result in jail time or lashings. Fear became part of daily life. Women watched their surroundings carefully. Mothers warned their daughters. People whispered about vigilantes stationed on street corners. Even attending a private party could turn dangerous if someone reported it. Ordinary social life became risky.
Despite all this, Khomeini continued to present himself publicly as a moral and restrained leader. He occasionally criticized punishments he felt were excessive. In 1980, after a stoning case in Kerman province, he reportedly instructed judges to stop issuing stoning sentences. He ordered a ban on stoning in the courts and said no more such executions should take place. This showed that he sometimes intervened personally.
But this restraint had limits. His concern was not with the suffering of women or the system itself. Floggings, arrests, and public punishments for moral offenses continued without pause. By 1980 and 1981, the early chaos of the revolution was turning into something permanent.
The Islamic Republic began locking Khomeini’s moral ideas into the legal system. A new constitution was adopted, and at its core was Sharia, or Islamic law. This meant religion was no longer just a guide for behavior. It was now the highest law of the country. Every major rule about crime, punishment, and daily life had to follow religious interpretation. Gender roles were no longer social expectations. They were legal requirements, written clearly into the law.
One of the first areas the government focused on was women’s work. In July 1980, a new order came down that directly affected women employed by the state. Any woman who tried to enter a government office without covering her hair was stopped at the door. Guards were placed at ministry entrances to enforce the rule. Women were not warned or fined at first. They were simply turned away. Many were told not to come back until they followed the dress code. For women who depended on their jobs, this was devastating. Refusing the hijab now meant risking unemployment and public shame. The pressure did not stop there. In 1981, the rule was expanded beyond government buildings.
Hijab became mandatory in all public spaces. Streets, buses, shops, and parks were now included. Checkpoints appeared in cities, where officers stopped women to inspect their clothing. Compliance was no longer optional anywhere outside the home. What a woman wore now determined whether she could move freely through her own city.
By 1983, the government made the consequences unmistakably clear. A new criminal law spelled out punishment for violating the dress code. Under this law, a woman whose hair was uncovered could be sentenced by a court to up to 74 lashes. At the same time, the state fully revived severe Islamic punishments for sexual behavior.
Crimes like adultery, fornication, and what the law called: “Moral corruption” were treated as major offenses. These charges often carried sentences of hundreds of lashes. In some cases, they could even lead to execution. During the early 1980s, thousands of women and men were sentenced to flogging, especially for accusations related to adultery or: “Corruption on earth.”
Human rights groups later documented what this meant in real life. Women accused of improper veiling were flogged. Women accused of premarital or extramarital sex were imprisoned, and in some cases, stoned to death. The rules were simple but cruel. Break the moral code, and you could lose your freedom, your health, or your life. Women were hit hardest by these laws because their appearance and behavior were under constant scrutiny.
The system that delivered these punishments was fast and unforgiving. Revolutionary courts and Islamic committees operated with almost no checks. Ayatollah Khomeini personally appointed revolutionary judges. These judges often issued sentences within days of an arrest. There was little investigation and almost no defense. An accusation alone could be enough. Confessions, often extracted under torture, sealed a person’s fate.
Judges openly justified their decisions using Khomeini’s ideology. They argued that harsh punishment was necessary to cleanse society. Public executions of former officials and war criminals did take place, but what truly terrified ordinary families were the everyday punishments. Seeing a neighbor whipped in a public square or a relative humiliated in front of a crowd left deep psychological scars.
By the mid-1980s, enforcement became even more visible. The so-called morality police, officially known as the Guidance Patrol, began operating openly in cities. They were joined by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Committees. Some wore uniforms. Others wore plain clothes. This made them harder to identify and more frightening. Their job was to find violations of morality laws, especially: “Bad hijab.”
Women were stopped on sidewalks and in marketplaces. Officers examined headscarves and coats. If a strand of hair showed or a coat was judged too short, a woman could be detained immediately. Human rights reports describe women being slapped, stripped, beaten, or dragged into police vans without explanation. Many Iranian women remember how this fear shaped their daily routines.
They stood still at red lights, afraid to move suddenly. Some worried that if they adjusted their scarf the wrong way, an officer might grab them from behind using a catchpole, a metal tool designed to seize a person by the neck. The threat of punishment was everywhere, and women learned through experience to stay quiet and cautious.
Floggings became a public spectacle across the country. Sentences were carried out in mosques, markets, and town squares. Sometimes shops closed while a punishment took place. People who lived through this period remember the sound of the whip cracking through the air. It became a common and terrifying noise.
Punishment did not stop with flogging. Women faced fines, arrests, and long prison sentences. Families were pulled into the system as well. Husbands could be jailed if their wives appeared in public without a hijab. The education system was reshaped to match the new ideology. Girls were segregated from boys starting in primary school.
Certain fields, including religious studies and engineering, enforced especially strict dress rules. Public beaches and parks were segregated or closed entirely to mixed groups. At the same time, stoning quietly returned in remote areas where oversight was weak. In 1986, one of the most infamous cases took place.
A 35-year-old village woman known as Soraya Manutchehri, a pseudonym, was accused of adultery with a local widower. Her husband wanted to marry a teenage girl and saw Soraya as an obstacle. In a small village court, under pressure and intimidation, Soraya was sentenced to death by stoning. On August 15, 1986, villagers gathered in Kuhpayeh to carry out the sentence.
Soraya was buried up to her waist and killed slowly as stones were thrown at her by a crowd. Her execution later became widely known through the book and film The Stoning of Soraya M. Punishments that stopped short of execution were still brutal. A sentence of several hundred lashes could permanently damage a person’s body.
The new penal code also brought back other severe penalties. Theft could result in amputation. Drinking alcohol could lead to flogging and heavy fines. Crimes like “waging war against God” carried the death penalty. Women were not exempt from any of this. A woman caught drinking could be publicly humiliated, whipped in prison, or jailed.
Girls were arrested simply for being with male friends or attending mixed-gender parties. The state labeled ordinary social behavior as criminal acts. In public speeches, Khomeini defended these laws. He described them as just, Islamic, and necessary. He said modesty protected families and purified society. But inside homes, the reality was different. Mothers cried in private. Parents kept daughters home from school out of fear.
By 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini was old and seriously ill. The revolution that had once filled the streets with hope now felt distant and broken for many Iranians. What Iran had become instead was a country shaped by fear, war, and constant surveillance. The Iran–Iraq War had taken hundreds of thousands of lives.
Political purges, executions, and prisons had torn families apart. And for women, daily life had become a careful exercise in avoiding punishment. When Khomeini died in June 1989, millions mourned him publicly. But privately, many Iranians reflected on the cost of his rule. By then, an entire generation had grown up knowing nothing else.
Children born around the time of the revolution entered adulthood having lived their entire lives under strict laws. The system Khomeini built did not end with his death. It continued almost unchanged. The dress codes and morality laws he introduced remained part of Iranian law for decades. The campaigns of the 1980s were not forgotten.
Women remembered the street patrols, the arrests, and the public punishments. Human rights reports later documented that in the years after Khomeini’s death, “thousands of Iranian women” were still being arrested simply because of their clothing. The methods stayed the same. Women were slapped or beaten by patrols. They were dragged into vans using catchpoles. Some were jailed. Others were sentenced to lashes.
These punishments were no longer treated as emergencies or temporary crackdowns. They became part of how the state enforced control. Families adjusted their behavior around them. Parents warned daughters to stay quiet and avoid attention. Husbands worried that their wives’ clothing could bring trouble to the entire household.
Fear shaped routine decisions, from what time to leave home to which streets felt safest to walk. For those who lived through the early years of the Islamic Republic, memories of Khomeini’s campaigns still carry heavy emotion. Many recall them with anger, others with deep sadness.
Public shaming and violence did not just punish individuals. They damaged trust inside families and communities. Over time, some of Khomeini’s harshest policies were softened. Later leaders eased certain rules. International pressure sometimes stopped a public whipping or delayed a harsh sentence.
But the core system remained intact. The laws introduced during Khomeini’s rule had already done their work. They turned women’s bodies into symbols of obedience and tools of political power. What Khomeini left behind was not just a legal system, but a culture of fear built into daily life. For many Iranian women, the shadow of that period never fully lifted. It still follows them, step by step, through the streets.
