Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh

Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh is an Iranian women's rights activist, researcher and film-maker. She is a director of Zanan Broadcasting Network (www.zanantv.org), and an active member of the Stop Stoning Forever campaign and the Iranian Women’s Charter movement. She has headed the Association of Women Writers and Journalists and was editor-in-chief of the women's studies journal Farzeneh. Since 2004, when her Non-Governmental Organisation Training Centre (NGOTC) was shut down, she has been arrested several times. In 2010, after she had left Iran for Europe, Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced her to two and a half years in jail and 30 lashes for "acts against national security".

Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh was born in Khoramshahr in southern Iran. She holds a BA in Theology from Tehran University, a BA in Islamic Sciences from Islamic Azad University in Tehran and an MSc in Communication Sciences from Allameh Tabatabaee University in Tehran. She studied Arabic literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo. A participant in Iran's Islamic Revolution, she became interested in feminist readings of the Quran. Participating in a Quran reading group with Monir Gurji and Monir Amadi, she founded the Institute of Women's Studies and Research (IWSR) with them in 1986. She became editor of the Institute's journal Farzaneh [Wise Woman] in 1993, continuing to edit it after she left the IWSR in 2003. In her editorial for Farzaneh's first issue, she argued the need for women's studies as a science which can aid women to live a good Islamic life. In 1997, faced with repression of women's publications by the Iranian judiciary, she founded the Association of Women Writers and Journalists. She has been active in the Women's Access to Public Stadiums campaign, the Stop Stoning Forever campaign, and the Iranian Women's Charter.

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