Iran admits it allows women to drive motorcycles

The Iranian government is considering allowing women to drive motorcycles, something that has not been allowed since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the vice president for women’s affairs said today.

“We are following the issue of licensing motorcycles for women,” Ensi Jazali told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The vice president, the only woman on Iran’s Council of Ministers, said the law needed to be changed to allow traffic authorities to issue motorcycle licenses to women.

“It is necessary to prepare a bill. We are analyzing this issue,” Khazali said.

The vice president said that the possibility of allowing women to work as motorcycle couriers is also being considered in the future.

Women have not been allowed to ride motorcycles in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, and for decades it has also been a problem for women to ride bicycles.

“Women riding bicycles or motorcycles can spread corruption and are therefore prohibited,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said several years ago.

But in fact, the law does not directly prohibit women from driving motorcycles, it simply does not issue them licenses, lawyer Naim-Reza Nezami told the reformist Shargh newspaper.

Iran is led by an ultra-conservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, and has an equally conservative parliament.

Women’s rights in the Persian country have been the subject of heated debate in the past two years following the death of young Mahsa Amini after being detained for improperly wearing an Islamic burqa, sparking strong protests under the slogan “Woman, Life”. , Liberty”.

Many Iranian women have stopped wearing veils as a sign of civil disobedience against the Islamic Republic, while the government is preparing a law that could punish women who do not cover their hair with up to 10 years.

In recent years, women’s voices have begun to express their dissatisfaction with this situation, and, in fact, since 2016 the Motorcycling Federation has allowed women to use the tracks for training, and since 2019 they have their own competitions in which men cannot participate.

But on the streets it is still prohibited in practice.

“If a woman is a passenger of a man driving a motorcycle, there is no problem. But if she moved forward 25 centimeters [para o lugar do condutor]so it’s a terrible thing,” Iranian motorcyclist Maryam Talai told Spanish news agency EFE in 2022.