The winds of war are blowing strongly, and the public attention generated by our justified struggle against the despicable Iranian regime is focused in one direction: the security arena. In a reality where missiles whistle overhead, shaking our lives and causing destruction and devastation to property, psyche and human life, it might seem that this is indeed the only natural way to view the war.
Yet examining the war also requires looking at the dynamics that preceded it — and those that may even serve as a catalyst for its end — a dynamic of power that is not military or security-related, but distinctly female and civilian.
As is well remembered, in 2022 the largest civil resistance in Iran’s history until recently erupted. Mahsa Amini, a young woman whose hijab — which she was forced to wear on her hair — was considered too loosely arranged by the extremist religious authorities, died after severe torture at the hands of Basij thugs. Her death sparked an unprecedented protest movement across the republic.
2 View gallery
Demonstrators mark the anniversary of Mahsa Amini's death
(Photo Dan Kitwood /Getty Images)
The protest was ignited by a clear case of female oppression, but the struggle in the streets that followed included citizens of all kinds. Men and women stood side by side, courageously chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom,” out of the understanding that liberating women from the burden of oppression would secure the basic foundations the Iranian people long for: life and freedom.
International Women’s Day, which takes place this year on Sunday, falls in the shadow of the second Iran war and the second wave of Iranian civil protest, and it demands that we examine the war through a security-and-gender lens.
On this day, womanhood is meant to be celebrated as equal in value, worthy of recognition in its own right. This is also why many believe such a day is no longer necessary — because it is obvious that women are equal to men, and there is no longer any need to refer to some imagined “war between the sexes,” when such struggles supposedly belong to the past.
But reality teaches us otherwise. Just this week, The Guardian published research showing that Generation Z — the most advanced and youngest generation — holds particularly conservative views and believes women’s main role lies primarily in the sphere of children and the home, and far less in decision-making. The study was conducted in the United States, England and Australia. Not in Iran, heaven forbid. The struggle of Iran’s Generation Z is so different from that of their counterparts in these Western countries. On International Women’s Day 2026, those who have personally paid the price of women’s oppression stand opposite those who have forgotten what it even looks like.
2 View gallery
Female IDF soldier operates in Operation Roaring Lion
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Standing up for women’s rights to equality, in the most basic and fundamental sense, also remains relevant in Israel in 2026. In a reality where women hold an unprecedented minority of public leadership positions it is relevant. In a reality where the importance of women’s military service, which has repeatedly proven how essential it is to our national security, is belittled it is relevant. In a reality where rabbinical courts are granted enormous expansions of authority it is relevant. In a reality where a religiously affiliated university finds itself defending against a lawsuit by a student insisting on covering her face completely with a niqab, represented by a human rights organization it is relevant. In a reality where members of the Knesset complete the passage of legislation promoting gender segregation in academia, so that it could apply even in a doctoral science laboratory, it is relevant.
It seems that Israel — rightly alarmed by what it sees as the progressive madness of the West, which mourns the fall of the Iranian regime while freedom-seeking Iranians celebrate with joy — must once again recognize that the question of gender equality is relevant to it as well. International Women’s Day is yet another opportunity to remind ourselves of what, according to Israel’s Declaration of Independence, should have been self-evident:
“The State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
The author is the president of Achva Academic College