In arguably her most powerful and timely podcast episode yet, Meghan Markle has spoken to two incredible women in a discussion called ‘The Audacity of Activism’ on how movements for female empowerment have historically been undermined, and disproportionately punished, to ‘make an example’ of those on the frontline and deter other women from fighting for their freedom.
In the Archetypes episode, Meghan spoke to Iranian actor and activist Shohreh Aghdashloo who bravely demonstrated in the first modern wave of Iranian resistance against the Islamic regime back in the late 1970s.
The interview comes at a poignant time. Just last week, the Iranian parliament voted to execute protesters currently in custody to send a ‘hard message’ to rebels against the regime. It means that the more than 14,000 people who have been arrested could be subject to the death penalty, most of them women and girls.
‘This generation is the internet generation [and] very well educated,’ Shohreh, who left Iran after the new regime took power in 1979, told Meghan. ‘This generation has witnessed everything that my generation had never witnessed before. We were politically naïve; this generation has seen it all, either on internet or television, or on the streets here in Iran. They know the whole world is watching. My generation had no idea if the world would see what we were trying to do for Iran, to bring back a democracy for Iran.
‘We felt hopeless. If my generation had the world support, lovingly looking at what is going and trying to help out as much as possible, I would have not left Jaleh Square [a main protest square in Iran’s capital, Tehran, where much of the protests are taking place today]. I would have taken some painkillers and gone back to the square, until we would have been able to bring back democracy to Iran.’
For those unaware of Iran’s history, the country hasn’t always been run by such an extremist regime, up until 1979 Iran enjoyed major allyship with Western democracies and was considered more progressive on women’s rights and education in the middle east. But, as Shohreh recalls, the ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ took power almost overnight, with women seeing their rights stripped.
Now then, what’s happening today in Iran is ‘beyond belief' for Shohreh. ‘I never thought it would start like this. Both the light at the end of the tunnel… that gives them the courage the stamina the perseverance not to leave the battlefield. When a woman puts her headscarf in a bonfire in a religious society, the message is bold, loud and clear: Leave me alone, or kill me. When a 14-year old bare handed, unarmed stands before a whole army and stares into their eyes, it’s their eyes are talking, saying "aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Killing me, for asking for my basic rights?" That tells me that this movement is going to grow; this movement is not going to go in vein. It has to win, millions of Iranians rising against tyranny; it has to win.’
The Duchess of Sussex also spoke to Jameela Jamil, who’s social media campaign IWeigh – conceived in 2016 to allow women to celebrate their attributes away from the number on the scales – has grown to encompass mental health, reproductive rights and other issues affecting women and female identifying people today.
‘The reason they go after powerful women leading public lives is because they’re trying to make an example of us,’ Jameela said. ‘[It’s] a warning to other women who might get the wrong idea that they too should use their voices and speak up and fight back. A lot of women cancel themselves or retreat when they get piled onto. Women can’t be given the benefit of the doubt because we’ve spent it already, on men.
‘It’s hard to fight for equality when you’re on a weight loss drug that’s destroying your internal organs, it’s hard to fight for equality when you’re being forced to have a baby that you aren’t ready for.They’ve taught us to abuse ourselves with their rhetoric.’
Closing the episode, Megan recalled being told by ‘a very, very influential and inspiring woman who for her own privacy, I won't share who [it] was with you, but she said to me, I know that your life is changing but please don't give up your activism, don't give up because it means so much to women and girls.’
Which tabloid coined the term ‘suffragette’?
Early on in the episode, Meghan referenced the coining of the term ‘suffragette’ by a UK tabloid which still exists today, explaining that the word had been adapted from the existing term for campaigners for women’s suffrage – ‘suffragists’ – with the diminutive ‘ette’ added to the end, to undermine, and to ‘laugh at’, the women who dared challenge the status quo.
It will come as no surprise that the tabloid in question was the Daily Mail, by a journalist reporting on the Women’s Social and Political Union rallies in the early 20th century, initially meant as a sexist insult but coming to embody the movement of brave women who successfully campaigned for the women’s right to vote.
A powerful and enlightening episode indeed.