Nina Ansary on Overlooked Historical Figures, Female Equality, and Virginia Woolf

Growing up in prerevolutionary Iran, Dr. Nina Ansary watched her homeland radically change during her adolescence, including the lives of its women, who were stripped of their rights. In 2015 she published Jewels of Allah—a study of women’s lives in Iran over the last 40 years—to raise awareness about the plight of women in her home country. Since the book’s publication, Ansary has been on the front lines of activism, hoping to bring about meaningful change by highlighting the oppression and discrimination happening under the current regime. The book went on to win numerous awards, including a 2016 International Book Award.

Now Ansary is back with her followup book, Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality, which will be released on March 8, 2020. This time she goes beyond Iran, taking readers on a 4,000-year journey to explore the roots of institutionalized gender discrimination and celebrate often overlooked female innovators and pioneers in world history.

Here, Ansary tells Glamour about her inspirations and writing process and shares the impact she hopes Anonymous will have on readers.

Glamour: Your first book, Jewels of Allah, explored the stories of Iranian women before and after the Islamic revolution. It also cemented you as an authority on women’s equity in Iran. Anonymous Is a Woman is more wide-sweeping. Tell me about what brought you to this topic, and why this was the next project you wanted to take on after Jewels.

Nina Ansary: What initially inspired this book was my work both as a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace, and Security and as a U.N. Women Global Champion for Innovation. My academic and advocacy journey leading into this project came about from research exploring centuries of gender inequality and its repercussions not only for women and girls, but also for the global community. Fact is, women worldwide face interconnected challenges when it comes to numerous issues concerning women’s rights and gender equality. As an example, an essential component of raising awareness of the ongoing gender apartheid in countries like Iran requires support and pressure from the international community, including human and women’s rights organizations.

“We still have a long way to go before women and men are equally represented.”

You begin the book by discussing Virginia Woolf, and the author is a frequent presence throughout. When did you read Woolf for the first time, and did her work have a profound impact on you? Why did you decide to have her anchor the work?

I remember reading Virginia Woolf for the first time in my high school English literature class and being struck by the profound contributions she has made to changing the role of women—boldly challenging and raising the question of why women cannot be independent.

Nearly a century ago, Woolf reflected on the absence of women writers during Shakespeare's time. She concluded, “Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Woolf was referring to a specific period when women writers had to hide their female identity in order to publish and/or gain acceptance of their work. In many ways her statement—frequently modified as “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”—still echoes in the 21st century as discriminatory policies, laws, and stereotypes prevent women from reaching their full potential.

When you look at the current global statistics, including the gender gap index—especially in the health, education, economic and political sectors—it is clear that we still have a long way to go before women and men are equally represented. Research and statistics show the impact of discrimination on families, communities, and society—and part of this landscape includes the failure to give proper recognition to women for their contributions throughout history.

In Anonymous you spotlight some remarkable and often overlooked historical figures. Whether it’s Bibi Khanum Astarabadi, author of the first declaration of women’s rights in the history of modern Iran, or Eunice Newton Foote, who discovered the principal cause of global warming. What drew you to these women in particular, and what was your process of selecting which ones you’d spotlight? I imagine it was quite hard to narrow down.

It was definitely a challenge to select 50 women out of the thousands of accomplished women who have been inadequately acknowledged throughout history. My objective was to highlight from a range of countries, ethnicities, cultures, and fields of endeavor. All were born before 1900—from 2300 BCE to 1892 when opportunities were even more limited for women than they are today. My criteria for choosing these women was that they had not been widely written about, or that their successes were alleged to have been attained by men, or because their relative lack of recognition was in stark contrast to their male counterparts.

“The courageous and resilient women in Iran serve as inspiration for the countless women who don’t feel like they have a voice.”

All proceeds for the book will go to charities benefiting causes close to your heart: human and women’s rights. Tell me more about the specific initiatives the proceeds will benefit?

The primary recipients of the book’s proceeds will be the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace, and Security and New York–based organization the Center for Human Rights in Iran. Philanthropy is an essential component of my work because building and sustaining an infrastructure that can enact meaningful change requires long-term core funding. Therefore, my objective was to donate to organizations and institutions that I have a close affiliation with, and have seen the impact of their work when it comes to human rights, justice, and women in conflict-affected situations around the world.

What is your message for women who still don’t feel like they have a voice? What do you hope they gain from this book?

The courageous and resilient women in Iran serve as inspiration for the countless women who feel like they don’t have a voice. Despite four decades of discriminatory laws, they have been able to make tremendous strides in practically every sector, and remain steadfast in their resolve to bring about change. Today technology has made it possible for some of the most isolated women and girls to connect with those who have basic freedoms and therefore can amplify the hardest-to-reach voices. It has created an open space to connect—raising awareness around issues concerning women’s rights.

My hope is that this work will create, even in a small way, a more equitable path for future generations and also inspire women and girls to move beyond gender-based assumptions and barriers by not looking at obstacles as roadblocks, but as challenges to overcome.

Anonymous Is a Woman, out on International Women’s Day—March 8, 2020—is now available for preorder everywhere books are sold.

Originally Appeared on Glamour