Woman, Life, Freedom: History, Context, and the Legacy of Jina Mahsa Amini

Woman, Life, Freedom is a protest slogan that affirms that the rights of women are at the centre of life and liberty. Although the slogan is best known in English-language media for its use within the context of Iran, its roots go back much further. In September 2022, protesters in Iran and abroad adopted the slogan after Jina Mahsa Amini died while in custody for “improper” attire.

Origin of the slogan in the Kurdish women’s movement

While the circumstances surrounding Amini’s death made the slogan resonate throughout Iran and the world, it already had been in wide use among Kurdish activists. When conflict broke out between the Turkish government and Kurdish militants in the 1980s, Kurdish women served as combatants and emerged as a powerful contingent in the fight against Kurdish suppression. In the early 2000s, as Kurdish women and girls continued to be killed for allegedly denigrating the honour of their families, women took charge to lead proper funerals for the victims. Among those chants was “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî”—“Woman, Life, Freedom.”

The chant, the movement, and the notion of the centrality of women were amplified by the vocal support of Abdullah Öcalan, the ideological architect of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They flourished alongside the development of a theoretical paradigm, jineology, that centres Kurdish women in knowledge production. The impulse can be summed up in Öcalan’s oft-cited expression that “until woman is free, a society cannot be free.”

The Death of Jina Mahsa Amini

The identity of the woman at the center of the movement is significant. After Jina Mahsa Amini was born, her parents registered her under the name “Mahsa,” Persian for “moonlike,” but nobody called her Mahsa. Instead, she was “Jina”—a Kurdish word for “life” that shares the same root as jin and jiyan. However, “Jina” was not allowed and the name was deemed unorthodox and foreign by the National Organization for Civil Registration, despite the fact that the Kurdish language and culture are native to Iran.

The death of Amini, a 22-year-old Sunni woman from Iran’s minority Kurdish community, was a reflection of the escalating and unrelenting authoritarianism of the Iranian regime at a time of deepening economic instability. This event served as a catalyst for resistance, and funerals resounded with angry chants demanding change.

Protests and Economic Context in Iran

In 2022, when Amini was arrested, Iran’s regime was struggling to pacify a deeply disaffected populace. International sanctions on Iran, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine War were all roiling Iran’s economy while the hard-line government was cutting subsidies and increasing austerity measures. As the country became embroiled in protests and strikes, the movement challenged the patriarchal social structure and government policies.

Key Linguistic Variations and Meanings

• Jin / Zan: Woman
• Jiyan / Zendegī: Life
• Azadî / Āzādī: Freedom
• Jina: A Kurdish word for “life”
• Mahsa: Persian for “moonlike”