What s happening in Iran right now is unprecedented. But the Iranian people s struggle for gender equality began generations before the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known by her Kurdish name, Jina Amini. The successes of this struggle, as well as its setbacks and horrors, are well-documented, but often misunderstood. Scholar Arzoo Osanloo argues that women have been at the center of Iran s century-long fight for freedom and self-determination. It s a historical thread that goes all the way back to Iran s Constitutional Revolution in the early 20th century: A complicated story of reform, revolution, and a fundamental questioning of whether Iranian people and people around the Islamic world will accept a government of clerics as the sole arbiters of Islam and the state.