How “Women, Life, Freedom” Was Contained
“Woman, Life, Freedom” began as a plural uprising from Iran’s margins. Through media framing and nationalist reframing, its radical challenge to centralism was narrowed into a single narrative, turning unity into a vehicle for erasure.
Media Hegemony and the Nationalist Reframing of Iran’s Uprising
By Sevil Suleymani
The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022 was one of the rare contemporary uprisings in Iran that did not originate among elites, but among ordinary people, among those long pushed to the margins of society. It took shape in the aftermath of the state killing of Jina, Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman whose death became a symbol of structural violence against the marginalized.
An Uprising from the Margins
From its inception, the movement’s significance lay in this reversal: for the first time, the lived experiences of those whose rights had consistently been denied in Iran, women, ethnic and national minorities, religious minorities, queer communities, and the socially excluded, moved to the center of political protest.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” condensed years of accumulated suffering into a common political language. The slogan was not only directed against the Islamic Republic, but it also challenged the broader architecture of power and its intellectual foundations in Iran, a structure that, under both monarchy and the rule of the Supreme Jurist (Velayat-e-Faqih), has been shaped by patriarchy, domination, centralism, and ethnic-national erasure.
For communities long accustomed to exclusion, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, Baluch, the movement generated a new sense of belonging and recognition. This sentiment had scarcely existed even within the diaspora or in Persian-language media abroad. For the first time, segments of the Iranian diaspora were compelled to confront the country’s diversity and reconsider their political assumptions.
Political Grammar and the Seizure of Narrative
As the movement unfolded, however, its trajectory gradually shifted. The decisive rupture came when control over the movement’s intellectual narrative passed from the streets and protesters to diaspora media outlets and elite figures, many of whom had long reproduced nationalism under the more palatable label of patriotism. These were actors who had themselves contributed to the marginalization of ethnic-national and other minorities, and to the erosion of democratic practice.
The transformation was not merely rhetorical. It marked a disruption in Iran’s dominant political grammar. A slogan rooted in Kurdish feminist struggle entered the national lexicon and displaced the traditional, male-centered, state-centered language of protest. It articulated a political ethics grounded in life rather than in state sovereignty and placed the dignity of citizens, whether at the margins or at the center, above territorial abstraction. In doing so, it unsettled the Persian nationalist claim to define the boundaries of political legitimacy.
Yet the progressive force of “Woman, Life, Freedom” was gradually sidelined, replaced by reactionary slogans such as “Man, Homeland, Prosperity.” These were introduced in the name of unity. The crucial question, however, was unity for whom, and in the service of which vision of Iran?
Unity constructed around a conception of “Iran” that carries forward the legacy of patriarchal monarchy and theocratic guardianship is neither neutral nor inclusive. Consciously or not, it reintroduced the very symbols of exclusion that the Jina-Mahsa uprising had sought to dismantle. A movement born from below and from the margins was thus increasingly contained within the framework of dominant Persian-Shi’a nationalism.
This shift was structural. When unity is defined without confronting centralism, it becomes a call for conformity. The margins are invited in only on the condition that they suspend their demands for recognition. What appears as cohesion operates, in practice, as the absorption of dissent into a familiar hierarchy.
Diaspora Conferences and the Politics of Omission
This change of direction was visible in diaspora conferences. The February 2023 gathering at Georgetown University, titled “The Future of Iran’s Democracy Movement,” culminated in the unveiling of the “Mahsa Charter” and was presented as an effort to unify opposition forces. Public figures, including Nazanin Boniadi, Golshifteh Farahani, Shirin Ebadi, Masih Alinejad, Hamed Esmaeilion, Ali Karimi, Reza Pahlavi, and Abdollah Mohtadi, took part in its drafting.
Yet the composition of this group raised difficult questions. Many participants had long records of neglecting minority concerns or of remaining silent in the face of systemic injustice. Reza Pahlavi’s characterization of the 1946 military assault on Azerbaijan by his father, the monarch at the time, as the “Day of Azerbaijan’s Liberation” casts a long shadow over any professed commitment to minority rights and pluralism.
Abdollah Mohtadi from Kurdistan was the sole representative of an ethnic minority present, an important presence, but an insufficient one. None of the speakers addressed the system of domination and centralism that lay at the heart of the uprising.
A similar pattern emerged at Stanford University’s conference on “Pathways to a Secular and Democratic Iran.” Despite the participation of representatives from several ethnic groups, Iran’s largest minority, the Turks, was absent. LGBTQ communities and religious minorities were reduced to vague formulations such as “Iran for all Iranians” or “freedom for all.” Yet these expansive slogans were not accompanied by concrete definitions of minority rights, nor by substantive accounts of democracy itself.
The discourse of “transition” largely presumed the preservation of the centralized nation-state model. The debate revolved around who should wield power, not how power ought to be redistributed. Federalism, linguistic rights, and structural decentralization remained peripheral, revealing the limits of the proposed democratic horizon.
These omissions weakened the movement and granted the Islamic Republic space to deepen divisions and intensify repression. Through executions and arrests, the state imposed a fragile calm, a calm before the storm.
Media Engineering and the Simplification of Crisis
The protests of December 2025/January 2026 cannot be separated from “Woman, Life, Freedom.” They were a continuation of the same structural crisis produced by centralism, authoritarianism, economic collapse, hyperinflation, class polarization, ethnic-national discrimination, and gender repression. The problem is not merely the replacement of a political figure or the removal of a particular faction. It is an authoritarian order that simultaneously monopolizes the economy, culture, and politics.
Yet what unfolds in the media sphere is not a faithful reflection of this complexity, but its reconfiguration and engineering. Media framing does more than prioritize events. It constructs interpretive pathways. By amplifying emotionally resonant but politically narrow symbols, media ecosystems can redirect collective anger toward pre-packaged solutions. The structural crisis is thus edited into consumable spectacle.
Interviews with participants in December’s protests in Ardabil, Tabriz, and Hamedan confirm this dynamic. Demonstrations were shaped by diverse, multilayered, and fiercely anti-government slogans, ranging from denunciations of poverty and economic collapse to protests against corruption and dictatorship, including chants of “Death to Khamenei.”
At a particular moment, however, a small, carefully coordinated group entered, chanting “Long live the Shah,” and recorded and disseminated the scene. That image was amplified across networks and repeatedly rebroadcast, while the multiplicity of other slogans went largely unreported. Persian-language outlets abroad, including Iran International, presented these images as representative of the protests. It was as though thousands of other voices had never existed.
Media Hegemony and Discursive Homogenization
Here, the concept of media hegemony becomes crucial. Hegemony is not simply overt domination; it is the capacity to shape society’s horizon of meaning, to determine what is visible, what is legitimate, and what is rendered invisible.
In this framework, media outlets shift from reflecting reality to producing it. Through selective imagery, the strategic repetition of a single slogan, and the exclusion of competing voices, a process of discursive homogenization takes hold. A plural, polyphonic movement is recast as a single-axis narrative.
This can also be understood as a symbolic monopoly, the moment when a political current appropriates the signs and meanings of protest and presents itself as the natural alternative. Reza Pahlavi is thus consolidated as a central option, not necessarily through organizational strength within the country, but through sustained media representation. Continuous association with protest imagery gradually produces the impression that the protests are inherently oriented toward his leadership.
Repetition normalizes. What is replayed appears representative. What is absent seems implausible. Visibility is confused with legitimacy, and manufactured prominence is presented as organic leadership. This is hegemony operating through circulation rather than coercion.
The result is a simplified binary: the Islamic Republic or the leadership of Reza Pahlavi. Economic collapse, class inequality, labor demands, women’s resistance, ethnic discrimination, and the call for structural democracy recede from view. Complexity is flattened, alternative futures narrowed.
In such conditions, social movements face the risk of being redefined from the outside. When the media field stabilizes a dominant narrative, the movement is severed from its internal plurality and fitted into a frame that may not reflect the demands of its participants. Unity becomes an instrument of exclusion. A promised rupture risks becoming continuity.
The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement initially challenged a hegemonic order built on centralism, patriarchy, and the denial of difference. If a single political current monopolizes its narrative, the same hegemonic logic is reproduced, this time in the name of royalist opposition. The central question today is not only who governs, but who controls the narrative. In a media-saturated age, control over narrative is the precondition for control over the future.
© Copyright IranDraft
We are dedicated to looking beyond headlines.
We bring the full story and context to you when it comes to news from Iran.
Concepts
Media Hegemony
A form of power exercised not through direct coercion, but through shaping the field of meaning, determining what is visible, legitimate, and imaginable.
Centralism
A political structure in which authority, decision-making, and cultural definition are concentrated in a dominant center, often marginalizing peripheral regions and minorities.
Discursive Homogenization
The gradual elimination of competing voices and interpretations in public discourse results in a unified, single-perspective narrative.
Symbolic Monopoly
The appropriation of protest symbols, imagery, and meanings by a particular political current to present itself as the natural or inevitable alternative.
Political Grammar
The underlying structure of concepts and assumptions that shape how politics is spoken about, understood, and made intelligible.
Structural Democracy
A model of democracy that addresses the distribution of power across institutions and communities, rather than focusing solely on leadership change.
