The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Cory Reed Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi addressed participants of PeaceJam Northwest Youth Conference Saturday morning in the Memorial Union Ballroom. Ebadi spoke on women's rights and gender issues throughout the weekend.

Before she even opened her mouth to speak, the MU Ballroom erupted in applause for a full minute.

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi was a long way from home, but the messages she brought to OSU this past weekend were relevant to everyone who heard them.

"If a culture cannot tolerate equality of human beings, how can it tolerate democracy?" Ebadi said.

Ebadi, who won the 2003 Peace Prize for her efforts in fighting for democracy, peace and women's rights in the Middle East, came to OSU this weekend as part of the annual PeaceJam Northwest Youth Conference. She gave a free public lecture Friday night in the MU Ballroom titled "Rights for Women and Children, and Their Role as Leaders," sharing her views on gender inequality and democracy across the globe.

In 1975, Ebadi was the first Iranian woman to preside over a legislative court, but after the Iranian revolution she was demoted to a clerk. She resigned, and, although her application was repeatedly rejected, she eventually created her own law firm, defending political prisoners on a pro-bono basis. She has been repeatedly persecuted for her activism, and once spent a month in solitary confinement for defending a student.

Currently, Ebadi has been in the news due to her most recent decision to accept the defense of Roxana Saberi, and Iranian-American journalist who has been sentenced to eight years of prison after a closed-door trial in the absence of a jury.

However, Ebadi focused her speech not on her own achievements, but on the treatment of women and the relationship between their treatment, religion and democracies across the world.

"On the verge of the third millennium, we have achieved a lot, but when it comes to equality of men and women, we have not seen enough," Ebadi said.

"Women everywhere in the world are discriminated against. In European countries as well as the U.S., women are viewed as equal to men [by] the law, but even so, as women hold dual positions in society, they have fewer opportunities to take advantage of."

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