Just last week, thousands of Iranians marched to the city of Saghez, the hometown of Mahsa “Zina” Amini, whose death in custody 40 days earlier had sparked an outpouring of public grief and outrage that has evolved into a mass movement.Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian, had been visiting family members in Tehran when she was arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran’s hijab law.As two of us (Chenoweth and Marks) wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, “fully free, politically active women are a threat to authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning leaders—and so those leaders have a strategic reason to be sexist.” Over the past year in Iran, the government’s control over women’s lives has tightened, especially regarding the hijab law.In addition to the hijab-related attacks, the government recently implemented a natalist population policy that imposes social control over women and families and is poised to further marginalize women from the public sphere.From protesting in traffic circles to spearheading massive demonstrations, women are not just symbolizing freedom but also taking tremendous risks—in some cases, losing their lives—to demand it."