Political Fabrication in the Name of Women's Liberation

I did not intend to write about International Women's Day, but there is something that provokes writing.

Recently, Trump and Netanyahu have been frequently discussing the rights of Iranian women, sending messages to them in Persian to rise up against the regime, describing the opposition women as brave.

In the recent war on the Gaza Strip, the occupying army killed around 12,500 Palestinian women, most likely many of them were killed alongside their children.

Behind every number, there was a woman carrying a full life: a mother trying to protect her children, or a young woman dreaming of a simple future, or an elderly woman who thought her modest home would be the last remnant of her safety.

In the West Bank, the picture is no less brutal, even if it is less visible on screens. There, tens of thousands of women live under the daily reality of nighttime home invasions, where homes are stormed at night, and women and girls find themselves facing soldiers within their private spaces, amid barbarity characterized by the smashing of home contents, foul language, and the humiliation of the residents.

In the fields, where many women work alongside their families to cultivate the land, the lives of female farmers turn into a daily confrontation with violence and threats from settlers. Children and husbands are killed before the eyes of mothers and wives, the latest incident occurring last night in the village of Abu Falakh in the northern Ramallah region, in addition to dozens of Palestinian female prisoners and hundreds of minors who face horrors in the occupation's detention centers.

Netanyahu and Trump crudely and racially inject the Iranian woman into their speech, in transparent attempts to politically exploit her social issue to achieve their declared goal: to spread chaos to overthrow the Iranian regime, after destroying Iran and its military and economic capabilities.

There is undoubtedly discrimination against women, but not only in Iran. The reality within Iran is more complex than what the hostile American and Israeli media narratives present.

Women make up more than half of university students in Iran, and in some scientific disciplines, their proportion reaches high levels, sometimes up to 70%.

However, the gap appears when moving from education to the labor market or political life, where their economic participation remains relatively limited, ranging between 15% and 20%, a proportion similar to that of a country like Egypt.

Regardless of the exploitations by Trump and Netanyahu that every naive person realizes, the issue of women in Iran is not a black-and-white picture but a mix of progress and constraints at the same time. There is a society that is gradually changing and expanding educational opportunities for women, while a legal, political, and social system continues to impose limits on their public presence.

Real defense of women's rights assumes a stable moral position that does not change with geography or interests. When the situation of women in a country is used as a political pressure tool somewhere and neglected elsewhere, the issue transforms from a matter of human rights to a utilization of women's suffering in the game of international influence, even serving occupation and aggression.

This paradox becomes more brazen when we look at the scandal of Jeffrey Epstein's documents, which exposed networks for the exploitation of underage girls and trafficking them, involving influential figures in the American financial and political spheres, including Trump, who boasts about the rights of Iranian women.

Epstein's documents revealed the deep contradiction of a world that talks a lot about women's rights while being deeply entrenched in exploiting them in the ugliest forms.

When women's lives become so cheap in the scales of politics, the talk about women's liberation becomes just an empty slogan, and women's rights turn into a tool in the game of international power. At that point, defending women is not a moral issue, but merely another chapter in the story of global political hypocrisy.

The true test of the sincerity of these values is not found in speeches delivered on international platforms or at press conferences, but in the stance towards women who stand in the heart of wars, poverty, and occupation, and who are often left outside the spotlight when their suffering contradicts the interests of the occupying forces and their supporters and partners.

It is the duty of women, particularly those in leadership positions, to expose the rhetoric of Trump, Netanyahu, and their allies, who frequently discuss women's rights while they do not care about their lives when it comes to the women of a people enduring brutal occupation for decades.