On August 10, 2024, the Iranian Motorcycle and Automobile Federation announced that its country would participate for the first time in the Women’s Motocross Asian Cup, which was being held that month in Thailand. Iran’s envoy was motorcyclist Arezou Abedini, a professional in this discipline who competes in championships and is photographed performing incredible jumps on two wheels. However, he does not have a motorcycle license. Neither her nor any Iranian. In this country, women can drive cars, buses and even pilot commercial planes, but they cannot legally drive two-wheeled vehicles because the law that regulates this license only mentions “men”. Another misogynistic norm that more and more Iranian citizens are contesting. The image of girls in scooters; Mothers taking their children to school on motorcycles or, even in rarer cases, women riding large-displacement motorcycles are no longer unusual in Iranian cities.
As is the case recently with the imposition of the law on compulsory veiling, which thousands of Iranians renounced as a sign of civil disobedience, the authorities and the police are showing a certain tolerance in the face of what is already a fait accompli that Iranian women have adopted with great courage.
The phenomenon is becoming normalized so quickly that the demand for training in driving these vehicles is also increasing. Unable to normally enroll in a driving school, these women sign up for closed circuit courses and motorcycle clubs. Sometimes these lessons are taught by other women, professional or simply experienced bikers. Some of them had been riding for years in training centers or at night, taking advantage of the fact that the streets were deserted. Famous photographer Maryam Saeedpoor also dedicated a beautiful series of images to her fellow bikers.
A video documentary published on November 12 by the Iranian portal in exile IranWire attests to the phenomenon, but also that this tolerance from the authorities is relative. For a woman, driving a motorcycle in Iran is breaking the law, since she does it without a license. Without this document, the police can fine them and confiscate their vehicle, while the courts can force them to pay civil liability in the event of an accident, although, another paradox imposed by sexism in Iran, women can buy, own and insure motorcycles which they are then not authorized to drive. This lack gives insurers a pretext to avoid paying compensation in the event of an accident.
In this documentary, a camera follows two young bikers who agree that the police will “leave them alone” if they “respect the highway code.” However, both speak anonymously and with blurred faces.
The fear persists, but to a lesser extent: “At first, when I was riding a motorcycle, I was afraid that the traffic police would stop me on the street, but now that worry has diminished,” one of them said before declaring: “The Iranian police have become accustomed to women motorcyclists. »
A “cosmetic” tolerance
Several regional media outlets have highlighted that this police tolerance is the product of social changes imposed by the Iranians. The Franco-Iranian sociologist and political scientist Mahnaz Shirali, author of Window on Iran, the cry of a gagged people (Window on Iran, the cry of a gagged people, Edito Les Pérégrines)— However, he considers that the eye that agents turn a blind eye to bikers is due to the search for a “friendly” image in the West. This is a “cosmetic” measure, he explains on the phone from Paris.
The Iranian regime emerged weakened, but not shaken, from 12 days of Israeli and American bombings last June. The attacks by these two countries damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, killed prominent scientists and the leaders of the country’s two armies – the regular army and the most powerful of the Revolutionary Guards. Above all, they caused the death of more than a thousand civilians, according to NGO calculations.
The Islamic Republic was already going through a moment of fragility. Militarily – due to Israel’s 2024 attacks and the practical dismantling of its network of regional alliances during the two years of Israel’s invasion of Gaza; and economically, due to drought, the impoverishment of its population, the corruption of its elites and international sanctions against its nuclear program. Added to these factors is the repression which has widened the chasm between an ultra-conservative religious regime and part of an increasingly secularized population.
In this context, the government of the pragmatic Masud Pezeshkian shows signs of flexibility in the face of minor problems. The aim could be to prevent the anger of many Iranian women – fed up with discrimination – from escalating. Also offer an image of moderation without having to undertake major changes or pay a high political price. Tolerating that Iranian women, who have been driving cars for decades, also drive motorcycles does not change the foundations of the Iranian political system.
In August, Kazem Delkhosh, deputy in the Parliamentary Affairs Office of the country’s presidency, announced that a bill to extend motorcycle driving licenses to women had been tabled in Parliament.
The Iranians, for their part, are suspicious. “Public opinion remains divided” on the question of whether this “sudden change in policy” is “authentic or the result of a political maneuver,” he analyzes. IranWireto gain this popular support which has collapsed, especially since the repression which followed the demonstrations of 2022. Its trigger was the death by the police, on September 16 of the same year, of a young Kurdish girl of 22, Yina Mahsa Amini, arrested three days earlier, accused of wearing the veil in an “inappropriate” manner.
More optimistic, other Iranians, affirms the Iranian portal in exile, believe that “the authorities had no other choice but to give in to the persistent demands of women”.
This same statement can also be applied to the much more crucial issue of the veil. The hijab is not just a piece of fabric, but the outward symbol of the regime’s ultra-conservative Islamic ideology and the oppression women face in a country where fathers and husbands can forbid them from studying, traveling or working.
Neither the threat of prison, nor fines, nor cameras, nor the confiscation of cars, nor the imposition of terrifying punishments – such as washing corpses – have deterred many Iranian women from continuing to do without the garment, which many removed after Amini’s death. There are now thousands of them. However, Iranian laws have not changed. The veil remains obligatory and progress on this issue is reversible.
To be approved, the plan to legalize female motorcycle riding would have to overcome opposition from the most conservative sector of the Islamic Republic. “Some (women) ride motorcycles without hijab, with inappropriate hijab or with insufficient covering… such behavior is against Islamic law,” criticized Abdolhossein Khosropanah, a member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, the state body that oversees Islamic cultural and educational policy. It is clear from their statements that, as Iranian feminists affirm, more than a piece of clothing, the imposition of the hijab goes beyond the religious symbol to become a transversal tool of control.
Mahnaz Shirali considers it “ridiculous” that Western attention is focused on “millimetre progress”, such as the possibility for women to drive motorcycles, while “repression in Iran has intensified”, she says.
“Let’s tolerate unveiled women, riding motorcycles and people dancing at concerts in the street,” he criticizes, referring to a viral video of a rock band playing in Tehran while many young people danced. “Meanwhile,” laments the sociologist, “the regime continues to imprison, torture and disappear hundreds of Iranians. » On October 31, the UN fact-finding mission on Iran denounced an “increase in repression and an extraordinary increase in executions” in Iran since the Israeli attacks in June.
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