Mehrangiz Kar
1944 -
Iranian lawyer, writer, and women's rights activist.
Mehrangiz Kar was born in Ahvaz, Iran, in 1944. She studied law at the School of Law and Political Science, Tehran University. After graduation, she worked for the Social Security Department and also wrote for the press, publishing more than 100 articles on current social and political issues in newspapers and magazines. She obtained her attorney's license in 1978, shortly before the Iranian Revolution, but she did not start her own practice until the early 1990s. In 1992 Kar began collaboration with Zanan, a monthly journal (launched the same year) with an Islamic feminist agenda. Her advocacy of political, legal, and constitutional reform, including the promotion of civil society and democracy and the dismantling of legal barriers to women's rights, made her a target of the antireformist backlash that followed the massive reformist victory in the February 2000 parliamentary elections. In April 2000, Kar was arrested for participating in the Berlin conference on the future of reforms in Iran, charged with acting against national security and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic regime. Released after six weeks, then tried in closed hearings in January 2001, she was convicted and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Granted bail to leave the country for medical treatment, she moved to the United States. The appeal court later reduced her sentence to a fine, but meanwhile her husband, Siyamak Pourzand, was jailed. She has published several books in Persian and has received many international awards, including the 2002 LudovicTrarieux Award.
Bibliography
Kar, Mehrangiz. "Women's Strategies in Iran from 1979 Revolution to 1999." In Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts, edited by Jane H. Bayes and Nayereh Tohidi. New York and Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001.
— ZIBA MIR-HOSSEINI
