Parvin Ardalan (Persian:پروین اردلان; born 1967 inTehran) with a Kurdish background, although not a Kurdish speaker, is a leading Iranianwomen's rights activist, writer and journalist.[1] She was awarded theOlof Palme Prize in 2007 for her struggles forequal rights for men and women in Iran.[2]
In the 1990s Ardalan, along with e.g.Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, established the Women's Cultural Centre (Markaz-e Farhangi-ye Zanan), which since then has been a center for forming opinions, analyzing and documenting the women's issues in Iran.[3] Since 2005 the organization has published Iran's first online magazine on women's rights, Zanestan, with Ardalan as its editor. In its constant struggle against censorship – the magazine comes back with a new name all the time – the newspaper has dealt with marriage, prostitution,education, AIDS, andviolence against women. WithNoushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Ardalan co-authored a book about the country's first female lawyer,Mehrangiz Manouchehrian, titled "Senator: the Work of Senator Mehrangiz Manouchehrian in the Struggle for Legal Rights for Women". The book received the Latifeh Yarshater Book Award in 2004.
Ardalan is one of the founding members of theOne Million Signatures Campaign,[4] attempting to collect a million signatures for women's equal rights. As a part of the campaign she has taken part in protests that have been violently silenced. In 2007 she, together with Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, was sentenced to three years in prison for "threatening the national security" with their struggle for women's rights. Four more women's rights activists later received the same sentence.
In 2012 the Swedish Migration Board decided that Ardalan would be granted permanent residency inSweden, where she had moved 3 years earlier.[5]
Parvin Ardalan is one of the members of theFeminists for Jina network, which was established following the nationwideWoman Life Freedom uprising initiated by a group of Iranian feminist activists.[6][7]
 | This Iranian biographical article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it. |
