TEHRAN -- It was during a recent visit to a middle-class beauty salon here, amid the women getting their upper lips threaded and their legs waxed, that I saw what the One Million Signature Campaign is up against. A female volunteer approached another customer and encouraged her to sign a petition, which organizers hope to submit to Iran's parliament along with a request for legal reforms on gender equality. The woman said she supported the demands for equality but shied away from what she considered overt political activity against the regime.
The campaign against gender discrimination is encountering resistance on multiple fronts.
Activists gave themselves two years to collect a million signatures, but tomorrow, the campaign's one-year anniversary, they will not have more than 100,000 to report. But unlike other human rights movements battling repressive regimes, which have traditionally looked
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