When a women's suffrage bill was introduced in the 1906 parliamentary debates, cleric deputy Sheikh Asadollah reacted with dismay: “never in a life of misfortune had his ears [been] assailed by such an impious utterance.” Women lack “souls” and “rights,” he argued: “God has not given them the capacity” to participate in “politics and elect the representatives” of the country; nor have women “the same power of judgment as men have.” Should “the weaker sex” be enfranchised, he asserted passionately, the entire system would crumble and that “would mean the downfall of Islam.” It nearly took ninety-one years to realize Asadollah's fear: the politicization of women who would thus exert power to upset the status quo.

Whether opponents or proponents, employed or unemployed, urban or rural, veiled or unveiled, Iranian women today are visibly contesting the system of gender asymmetry. In an event unprecedented in Iran or any other Muslim country, in May 1997, the large electorate of dissident women defeated the presidential candidacy of the conservative cleric Nateq-Nouri. Women were crucial to the landslide victory of the reformist cleric Seyyed Hojjatol-Eslam Mohammad Khatami who had pledged equal opportunity and high governmental positions for women, not because of their gender but because of their merit. Speaking for the reformist coalition in 2005, Dr. Elahe Kulai'e became the first Iranian spokeswoman to represent a presidential candidate in the history of the Islamic regime, although Dr. Mahmood Ahmadinejad won the seat of presidency for 2005–2009.