The suffragettes have been an inspiration for countless women around the world. This month it will be exactly 80 years since their momentous struggle led to the Bill for full women’s suffrage being presented to Parliament.

Women in modern Britain may not live in a discrimination-free utopia, but the law, at least, is mostly on their side. This is what we need in Iran — laws that protect and empower women. Instead, we have laws for men that institutionalise prejudice. The law looks disfavourably on Iranian women — literally with a male face. Since the 1979 Revolution Iranian women have been forbidden from serving as judges. In Iran a woman’s evidence in court is worth half that of a man. Men can have multiple wives, while young girls can be married off to older men by their fathers. Sentences of stoning to death for adultery are still imposed, disproportionately on women, a practice denounced as grotesque and horrific by Amnesty International...

I have a question for President Ahmadinejad. How is this unlocking the fantastic potential of the Iranian people? A hundred years ago women in Iran battled to establish girls’ schools in a fight that preceded even Emmeline Pankhurst and her redoubtable sister campaigners. A century later, with educated young Iranian women making up two thirds of university students, we are a nation bursting with female ability but one hobbled by legalised prejudice and social bigotry.

Now more than ever the women of Iran deserve our support.

Excerpted from Shirin Ebadi’s comment, ‘Suffering and suffrage in Iran’ in The Times, London, March 2