Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, judge, author, human rights activist, and mother. She has dedicated her life's work to the protection and promotion of human rights, particularly the rights of women and children.
Ebadi was born in Hamadan, Iran in 1947 to educated parents. She moved to Tehran at an early age, at which Ebadi continued to live until 2009, when threats to her life compelled her to leave her homeland.
Perhaps inspired by her father, a professor of commercial law and one of the first lecturers in the field in Iran, she was admitted to the law department of the University of Tehran in 1965. After earning her law degree, she passed the qualification exams to become a judge in Tehran City Court in 1969, later becoming the President of the Bench. In her own words, "I am the first woman in the history of Iranian justice to have served as a judge."
Her career as a judge, however, came to an abrupt end in 1979, as a result of the Islamic Revolution. As Ebadi explains:
Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, since the belief was that Islam forbids women to serve as judges, I and other female judges were dismissed from our posts and given clerical duties. They made me a clerk in the very court I once presided over. We all protested. As a result, they promoted all former female judges, including myself, to the position of “experts” in the Justice Department. I could not tolerate the situation any longer, and so put in a request for early retirement. My request was accepted. Since the Bar Association had remained closed for some time since the revolution and was being managed by the Judiciary, my application for practising law was turned down. I was, in effect, housebound for many years.
