BUS STORY # 330 (An Iranian Woman Bus Driver’s Story)

Farahnaz Shiri, Downloaded from the website Iranian.com..

While searching for videos of bus driver interviews, I came across a remarkable documentary about a woman named Farahnaz Shiri, “the first female bus driver in Tehran.” (You can read more about the film here.)

Tehran is a long way from Albuquerque, but I have shared bus stories from elsewhere before. (For the last such example, see here.) True, these have been stories told to me first-hand by friends or family. But I thought this eight-plus minute film too compelling a story to be relegated to a sidebar link.

In addition to being a remarkable bus story, it also is a reminder of how far many of us have come in our own cultures, and that gender equality is not a universally shared value among all contemporary cultures.

Regular riders here also might note how quiet, orderly, and polite the riders are in Tehran, in contrast with some bus behaviors in the land of the free. However, the heated, profanity-laced exchange between drivers seen and heard in this video is all too familiar.

 

This film was made in 2007 -- two years before the "Green Revolution" protests against the rigged election that kept the cultural hardliners in power, and the Iranian government's brutal repression of those protests.

On October 14, 2011, a press release from the Social Democratic Party of Iran (SPI) reported Shiri and 30 other women bus drivers were forced out of their jobs. You can read the press release, updated on April 19, 2012, here.

I have found no further word on the status of Ms. Shiri.

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12/20/23: I found this update from Iranwire dated 10/30/23: Iranian Influential Women: Farahnaz Shiri (1967-Present). Unfortunately, Ms. Shiri's situation mirrors the difficult status of women in 2023 Iran.

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The photo at the top of this story was downloaded from the Iranian.com website.