Gender Policymaking in Iran: The Case of Domestic Violence, Femicide, and the Obligatory Hijab

Violence against women is widespread in Iran, in large part due to the absence of comprehensive legal protections. In the first month of 2025 alone, 14 cases of femicide were reported nationwide, consistent with an average of 14 women killed per month since 2022—most often by husbands, fathers, brothers, or other male relatives (Rouydad24 2025). Despite this ongoing crisis, the Iranian legislature has spent more than two decades debating the title and language of a proposed “Protection, Dignity, and Security of Women against Violence” bill, with no substantive law enacted. In sharp contrast, in December 2024 the regime passed a new “Chastity and Hijab” law in under six months, imposing severe penalties—including imprisonment, fines, and lashes—on those who defy compulsory veiling. This paper uses these two cases to analyze the contrasting trajectories of gender policymaking in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Drawing on legislative debates, policy documents, and media coverage, the study examines how the same authoritarian state that fails to address gender-based violence has rapidly advanced coercive laws regulating women’s dress and behavior. The analysis situates Iran within broader debates on gender and authoritarian politics. Tripp (2019) argues that autocracies selectively adopt women’s rights reforms to bolster domestic or international legitimacy, a pattern widely observed across Arab regimes. Iran, however, departs from this logic: the regime finds greater political utility in intensifying gender-based repression than in adopting reforms that would protect women. Similarly, the Iranian case complicates Donno and Kreft’s (2019) argument that authoritarian multiparty systems promote women’s rights to secure loyalty and respond to international incentives. Despite operating within a multiparty electoral authoritarian framework, Iran has neither pursued rights-expanding reforms nor reacted to international pressure in this domain. By highlighting these departures, this paper contributes to comparative gender politics beyond established democracies (Htun & Weldon 2010). It argues that Iran’s policymaking reflects a selective authoritarian logic: reforms expanding women’s rights encounter ideological and institutional resistance, while policies reinforcing patriarchal control advance swiftly because they strengthen ideological legitimacy and loyalty, manage dissent, and consolidate state power under the banner of moral governance.