"Iran Awakening" written by Shirin Ebadi offers a firsthand perspective on the changes that Iran underwent during the 1980s. I think it becomes most apparent after she returns from the United States to find how drastically the social order has changed on a public level. And with Shirin being a woman, the biggest change is having to cover her face while in the public view. I remember reading how she always forgot her cover; she would be sitting in traffic and got these strange stares from other people because she simply forgot to wear it. I think that says a lot about the freedom women did not have compared to men, but it also gets worse. Shirin lost her prestigious job as a head female judge and instead filed paperwork, a significant downgrade.
Through all the trouble she and other women had underwent, I think the chapter ends on a high note. It explains how Iranian women attended secondary education (and eventually out numbering male students by a slim margin) as well as learning the fundamentals of feminism. She explained that feminism was still all too new to women in the nineties to do anything with it; however, I think that this chapter is helping set the tone for the remainder of the book.
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