23 Facts About Mahnaz Afkhami

Mahnaz Afkhami is an Iranian women's rights activist who served in the Cabinet of Iran from 1976 to 1978.

Mahnaz Afkhami is founder and president of Women's Learning Partnership, executive director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and former Minister of Women's Affairs in Iran's pre-Revolution government.

Mahnaz Afkhami has lived in exile in the United States since 1979.

Mahnaz Afkhami has founded and headed several international non-governmental organizations focused on advancing the status of women in Iran and later around the world.

Mahnaz Afkhami has lectured and published extensively on the international women's movement, women's human rights, women in leadership, women and technology, the status of women in Muslim-majority societies and on women's participation in civil society-building and democratization.

Mahnaz Afkhami's books have been translated into multiple languages and distributed internationally.

At 17, Mahnaz Afkhami joined a trade union and successfully challenged a breach of her rights as a worker when an employer laid her off temporarily then rehired her to avoid paying for the vacation she had earned.

In 1976, Mahnaz Afkhami was asked to join the cabinet of the Iranian government and became Minister of Women's Affairs.

In 2001, Mahnaz Afkhami published Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women to encourage women to be leaders in their families, communities, and countries.

At the time Mahnaz Afkhami became Minister of Women's Affairs, her sister was a leader in the students' movement demanding the overthrow of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In 1969, two years after returning to Iran as a professor of literature and Chair of the Department of English at the National University of Iran, Mahnaz Afkhami was drawn into Iran's women's movement and founded the Association of University Women.

Mahnaz Afkhami remained there for ten years, during which time she worked for Iranian women's rights.

Mahnaz Afkhami has served as a member of Iran's High Council of Family Planning and Welfare and on the boards of trustees of Kerman University and Farah University for Women.

When Iran's Islamic Revolution began in 1979, Mahnaz Afkhami was at the United Nations in New York negotiating the establishment of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women.

Mahnaz Afkhami contributed the piece "A future in the past, the prerevolutionary women's movement" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.

Mahnaz Afkhami has served on a number of boards and committees of international organizations including the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy, the International League for Human Rights, the Global Fund for Women, Gender At Work, Women Leaders Intercultural Forum and Global Women's Action Network for Children.

Mahnaz Afkhami currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, the Board of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M Sackler Gallery.

Mahnaz Afkhami believes that religion and feminism are not incompatible.

Mahnaz Afkhami believes that the movement is a new phase within a century-long cause.

Mahnaz Afkhami was born in Kerman, Iran in 1941, the eldest of three children.

Mahnaz Afkhami later attended the University of San Francisco and the University of Colorado in Boulder.

In 1967, Mahnaz Afkhami returned to Iran as a professor of literature at the National University of Iran.

Mahnaz Afkhami has published articles and books, with a particular focus on women's human rights, Muslim women, as well as the Iranian women's movement.