AI Surveillance as an Extension of Gender Apartheid Practices in Iran

Maral Hamzehloo

Introduction 

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has constructed a legal and institutional order that systematically segregates and subordinates women, meeting the emerging definition of gender apartheid under international law (Rehman, 2023; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). Affirmed by recent findings from United Nations bodies, this system is characterized by the commission of inhumane acts within a framework of institutionalized domination. Compulsory veiling, criminalized under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code, has served not only as a tool of bodily control but as a foundational instrument of ideological enforcement, embedding gender-based exclusion into both the legal code and the social fabric (Islamic Penal Code 2016).

Over the past decade, and particularly following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody in 2022, Iran’s approach to gender governance has undergone a significant technological transformation. In response to mass mobilizations challenging the compulsory veiling regime, the state shifted from highly visible street-level enforcement to a system of integrated digital and biometric surveillance  (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). Leveraging the National Information Network (NIN), telecommunications infrastructures linked to national identity databases, and AI-powered facial recognition systems , authorities embedded compulsory veiling enforcement into the underlying infrastructures regulating mobility, access to services, and civic participation.

Globally, scholars have raised concerns that AI-driven surveillance technologies increasingly extend state control over marginalized populations, particularly in suppressing political dissent and racialized communities (Feldstein, 2019; Latonero, 2018). In Iran, however, this infrastructure has been specifically adapted to operationalize gender apartheid. This paper argues that Iran’s use of AI-driven surveillance technologies constitutes not merely a modernization of repressive practices but a structural deepening of gender apartheid. Through continuous, impersonal, and opaque enforcement mechanisms, the state has embedded gender-based repression into the digital architecture of governance, effectively automating exclusion without recourse to judicial review or public accountability. In doing so, this essay highlights urgent challenges for international human rights frameworks, particularly the adequacy of current legal standards in addressing technologically mediated forms of systemic discrimination.

Foundations of Gender Apartheid 

In the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran developed a legal and institutional system that meets the emerging definition of gender apartheid: the systematic segregation and domination of women and girls through state law and policy. This classification has been affirmed by both the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran (2023) and the UN Fact-Finding Mission (2024), which concluded that Iran’s legal framework satisfies the core elements of apartheid under international law, including the commission of inhumane acts within a state-sanctioned regime of domination over women (Rehman, 2023 ; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025).

A central pillar of Iran’s gender apartheid regime is the compulsory hijab, enforced not only as a legal requirement but also as a means of ideological and bodily control. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s founding figure, described veiling as “a symbol of the Islamic Revolution” and “a weapon against imperialist culture,” positioning it as essential to the post-revolutionary order (Bazargan, 2025). This imposition was met with immediate public opposition, particularly from women, culminating in mass demonstrations on International Women’s Day in March 1979 that drew tens of thousands into the streets to protest mandatory veiling. 

Although the state temporarily delayed enforcement in response to public outcry, it soon moved to formalize the mandate. By 1983, compulsory veiling was codified in Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code, which criminalizes appearing in public without a “proper” hijab and imposes penalties ranging from fines and lashes to imprisonment (Islamic Penal Code 2016). In the ensuing years, hijab enforcement was carried out by Revolutionary Committees, Basij militias (a paramilitary force tied to the IRGC), and informal morality patrols (McIntosh, 2025). These actors operated without a standardized framework, relying on plainclothes officers and local informants to monitor women in public institutions, workplaces, and urban streets. 

The scale of enforcement grew significantly during the 1990s and early 2010s, with tens of thousands of women stopped, warned, or detained annually for perceived violations of hijab regulationsIn the early 2000s, the state intensified hijab enforcement through the creation of the Guidance Patrol (Gasht-e Ershad), a national police unit tasked with enforcing public morality, a legal category used by the Islamic Republic to criminalize behaviors deemed contrary to Islamic values, particularly those related to gender, dress, and social conduct. This included violations of the compulsory dress code, mixed-gender interactions, dancing in public, and the use of cosmetics or "immodest" clothing (McIntosh, 2025). 

The force deployed uniformed officers, marked vans, and standardized procedures, making hijab enforcement a visible and routine aspect of daily life. By 2014, official reports indicated that over 220,000 women had been taken to police stations and compelled to sign pledges of compliance, while another 3.6 million received warnings for dress code violations (Hashemi, 2022; McIntosh, 2025)

Veiling requirements imposed by the state gave rise to various forms of public opposition. In 2014, journalist Masih Alinejad launched My Stealthy Freedom, an online campaign through which women publicly documented their refusal to wear the hijab in public spaces (Boroumand, 2022). The initiative later developed into White Wednesdays (2017), which explicitly contravened Article 638 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code by encouraging women to appear unveiled or dressed in symbolic white clothing in weekly acts of civil disobedience against compulsory veiling laws (Islamic penal code 2016). 

Beyond the regulation of dress, Iran’s gender apartheid regime systematically restricts women’s autonomy across legal, institutional, and economic domains. Article 1041 of the Civil Code requires a male guardian’s approval for a woman to marry. In court, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s, and daughters receive only half the inheritance allotted to sons. Women are barred from serving as judges and face legal disadvantages in divorce and child custody proceedings, entrenching their unequal status under the law (Amnesty, 2024). 

These restrictions are further entrenched through gender-based exclusions in public life. Women are prohibited from attending men’s sporting events, separated from men in schools and universities, and face limitations on mobility within public institutions and workplaces (Amnesty, 2024). Employment in various sectors, such as law enforcement, the judiciary, and certain areas of media and entertainment, remains restricted under the pretext of preserving public morality. At the same time, financial independence is curtailed through guardian permissions and limited access to credit, licensing, and entrepreneurship (Amnesty International, 2024). 

Despite these constraints, women continued to challenge the regime’s gender-based restrictions through both symbolic and direct forms of protest. In 2018, Vida Movahed, later known as the "Girl of Enghelab Street," stood unveiled on top of a utility box in Tehran. Her arrest sparked the Girls of Revolution Street protests, during which others also removed their hijabs in public and faced detention (Kaufman et al., 2023). 

Acts of civil disobedience also took less visible forms: some entered stadiums disguised as men, while others, such as artist Yasaman Aryani, distributed flowers without a headscarf on public transit, an act that resulted in a multi-year prison sentence (Amnesty International, 2019). As these individual acts of disobedience accumulated, they signaled a broader challenge to the foundations of the Islamic Republic’s gender apartheid regime. This challenge reached a critical turning point in 2022, when mass mobilizations pushed the state’s physical enforcement apparatus beyond its limits, an inflection point explored in the following section.

Surveillance Pillars of Gender Apartheid

Prior to 2022, the Islamic Republic codified digital surveillance through the 2009 Computer Crimes Law and the 2017 Filtering Regulations (Article 19, 2012). Presented as protective measures against “foreign propaganda and terrorism,” these laws granted state institutions expansive powers to monitor internet traffic, censor online content, and restrict access to foreign platforms. Together, they laid the legal foundation for the state's consolidation of digital control over the population.

This consolidation is operationalized through a three-pillar surveillance infrastructure: the National Information Network (NIN), a centralized domestic internet system; telecommunications networks directly linked to national ID databases; and biometric authentication technologies embedded across essential public and private services (Michaelsen, 2017). Each component reinforces the others, creating an integrated system capable of monitoring, identifying, and regulating individuals’ online and offline activities with unprecedented precision

National Information Network (NIN)

Iran’s development of the National Information Network (NIN) in 2010 established the technical basis for comprehensive state surveillance that extended beyond political dissent to the enforcement of strict gender norms (Michaelsen, 2017). By routing all digital traffic through domestic servers linked to national identity databases, the NIN enabled authorities to trace online activities directly to individual citizens, creating a digital environment in which women’s expressions of autonomy could be systematically targeted and physically policed (Michaelsen, 2017). 

One early example of this environment was the arrest of 17-year-old Maedeh Hojabri, who was detained after posting videos of herself dancing without a hijab on Instagram (Tazmini, 2021). Although the specific surveillance mechanism leading to her arrest was not disclosed, her case reflected the broader pattern emerging under the NIN: women’s digital expressions of bodily autonomy were treated as ideological threats, monitored, and often met with punitive consequences. Her forced televised confession further demonstrated how online monitoring was paired with coercive public shaming to enforce compliance with state gender norms.

The NIN’s integration with national identity databases facilitated gender-specific targeting by linking flagged online behavior, such as appearing unveiled or criticizing compulsory dress codes to real-world identities. Women defying these norms could be rapidly located, summoned, or detained, reinforcing a surveillance structure that made digital dissent inseparable from the threat of physical enforcement (Azarhoosh, 2020). This system institutionalized gender-based discrimination in digital spaces, mirroring and expanding the regime’s broader control over women's bodies and behavior.

Building on this infrastructure, the state moved to suppress feminist organizing that challenged its gender order. Authorities filtered domestic traffic, subjected it to keyword monitoring, and carried out targeted content removal, disrupting campaigns that advocated against compulsory hijab laws and broader gender-based restrictions. Activists associated with these movements, such as Shaparak Shajarizadeh, faced not only online censorship through the removal of posts showing unveiled protests, disabling of accounts, and suppression of related hashtags, but also physical retaliation, including harassment, arrest, and surveillance beyond the digital sphere (Amnesty International, 2019). By systematically erasing content that challenged state-imposed gender norms, authorities cut activists off from their audiences, fractured their movements, and reinforced a climate of fear around women’s rights advocacy.

At the same time, the state curtailed access to international platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Telegram, critical spaces for feminist discourse and organizing (Azarhoosh, 2020). Using the centralized routing and filtering capabilities of the NIN, authorities were able to sever access to these platforms at the national level. This layered approach to digital control ensured that even during periods of unrest, such as the 2019 protests, surveillance, identification, and physical enforcement could continue without interruption. Operationalizing this infrastructure, agents from the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI), along with cyber units of the Revolutionary Guard and FATA police, manually reviewed flagged content, including social media posts showing unveiled protests, messaging app activity related to anti-hijab campaigns, and other digital expressions of women's rights advocacy, exercising broad discretionary authority under the 2009 Computer Crimes Law to determine which online activities warranted censorship, prosecution, or detention (Article 19, 2012). Online monitoring directly fed into physical crackdowns, as women identified through these digital traces were often located, arrested, or forcibly disappeared (Article 19, 2012).

Telecommunication Surveillance 

The surveillance infrastructure of Iran’s NIN is reinforced through major telecommunications providers, including Hamrahe Aval (MCI) and Irancell, which together control over 90% of the country’s mobile subscriptions (Akbarzadeh et al., 2024). Both companies are operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military-security entity sanctioned internationally for systemic human rights abuses (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2020). Through these networks, the IRGC conducts real-time surveillance of citizens’ call records, text messages, internet activity, and location data, with every mobile device linked to a user’s national ID.

This integration of telecom infrastructure and identity databases enables authorities to associate online activities such as posts, messages, and digital traces, with verified physical identities and to track individuals’ movements through device identifiers and cell tower triangulation (Akbarzadeh et al., 2024). Surveillance under this is system is a targetted tool to police gender norms. Women's unveiled photos, flagged messages discussing protests, or movement patterns toward banned gatherings can trigger targeting (Article 19, 2012). Authorities use a combination of keyword filtering and manual review by security agencies, including the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI), IRGC cyber units, and FATA police to identify women for enforcement actions.

Furthermore, by monitoring call logs, messaging apps, and contact lists, authorities map women's social circles, turning personal networks into sites of vulnerability. Security forces use this information to identify, track, and dismantle activist groups and support systems (Article 19, 2012). Numerous women have recounted that during interrogations, authorities confronted them with detailed knowledge of their private calls and messages, exposing how digital surveillance is weaponized to penetrate and fracture women's networks. Sepideh Gholian, a labor and women's rights activist, described how interrogators used information from her private communications to pressure and isolate her during detention, illustrating how surveillance is used not only to target individuals but to dismantle their broader networks (Amnesty International, 2019). 

Crucially, telecom surveillance is not limited to digital monitoring; it directly facilitates physical policing. Once flagged, women are rapidly located, summoned, arrested, or forcibly disappeared based on digital evidence (Eikder, 2025). Documented cases include Sepideh Rashno, arrested after a video of her confronting a hijab enforcer circulated online; Yasaman Aryani, detained following the posting of unveiled footage on a train; and Vida Movahed, apprehended after her public unveiling protest. These cases demonstrate how digital traces are systematically leveraged to facilitate physical repression. In this system, digital dissent directly translates into physical risk (Amnesty International, 2019). 

By embedding surveillance within mobile infrastructure, the state continuously monitors, censors, and polices women’s movements, associations, and expressions. Telecommunications control under the IRGC functions not as an ancillary tool, but as a central mechanism of gender apartheid, regulating women’s lives across both digital and physical domains.

Biometric Surveillance

Building on the surveillance architecture established through the NIN and telecom monitoring systems, biometric authentication technologies expanded the state's control over physical spaces and everyday activities. These systems, using fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, and iris identification, were systematically integrated into essential services such as banking, SIM card registration, healthcare access, and public transportation (George, 2023). Biometric verification became a mandatory condition for accessing these services, binding individuals’ physical traits to their national ID and creating a continuous, inescapable record of movements, transactions, and identity-linked activities.

While publicly framed as administrative modernization, the biometric system functioned as a tool for reinforcing gender apartheid by embedding surveillance into the conditions of civic participation. Women’s access to healthcare, education, employment, and financial services increasingly depended on biometric compliance, enabling authorities to monitor, control, and restrict women's mobility and autonomy in both digital and physical domains. For instance, biometric checkpoints at metro stations and government buildings were used to flag women deemed noncompliant with compulsory hijab regulations. Although immediate arrests at these points were not systematically reported, biometric identification enabled authorities to later summon, interrogate, or detain flagged individuals (George, 2023).

Surveillance through biometric verification did not merely monitor women’s behavior; it transformed basic social and economic rights into privileges contingent upon adherence to gendered state norms. Flagged women faced intensified targeting, including service denials, blacklisting, travel restrictions, and physical coercion through arrests and interrogations. For example, activist Mojgan Keshavarz was arrested and sentenced to a long-term prison term after a video circulated showing her unveiled, distributing flowers, and speaking about women's rights on a Tehran metro train, a space heavily monitored through biometric-linked surveillance systems (Amnesty, 2019). Keshavarz’s case illustrates how biometric-linked surveillance transformed everyday acts of expression into grounds for severe punitive action, reinforcing a system where women’s basic freedoms are conditional on constant state monitoring and ideological compliance.

From Physical to Digital Enforcement

The death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody in 2022 catalyzed widespread protests, marking a rupture in the Islamic Republic’s system of gender apartheid. Mobilizations led by women and youth spread across all 32 provinces and more than 100 cities, directly challenging the regime’s authority over women’s bodies and public space (Motamedi, 2022). In response to mass civil disobedience and international condemnation, authorities announced the abandonment of physical morality patrols, framing it as a reflection of societal demands and modernization efforts (Tahbaz, 2023). However, rather than dismantling compulsory veiling enforcement, the state restructured its mechanisms to reduce public visibility while maintaining regulatory control over compliance.

In place of street-level confrontations, enforcement shifted toward administrative and technological means. Facial recognition systems embedded in traffic cameras and public surveillance infrastructure were deployed to detect perceived dress code violations. Automated administrative measures such as SMS warnings, fines, and vehicle impoundments replaced in-person interventions (The Guardian, 2025). This transition, though framed as modernization, enabled enforcement to continue through less visible, more bureaucratic means. Penalties were increasingly issued without physical intervention, judicial oversight, or transparency, thereby limiting individuals' opportunities to contest or document abuses. 

As outlined in the following sections, the Islamic Republic’s adoption of digital and administrative enforcement mechanisms would eventually embed veiling compliance into the underlying infrastructure of daily life, marking a critical evolution in the consolidation of gender apartheid.

Restructuring Enforcement after 2022

In response to the 2022 protests, the Islamic Republic launched widespread crackdowns characterized by lethal force, mass arrests, and intensified censorship. Security forces targeted women, youth, and ethnic minorities across all 32 provinces, employing live ammunition, beatings, and arbitrary detentions to suppress dissent (The Guardian, 2025). Numerous women were arrested in connection with acts of civil disobedience, while others, including Hadis Najafi and Nika Shakarami, were killed during the protests under circumstances suggesting the deliberate use of excessive force (The Guardian, 2025) . Cases such as Armita Abbasi, who was detained and reportedly subjected to torture and sexual violence while in custody, further exemplified the brutality of the state’s response. 

The violent suppression of protests prompted widespread international condemnation and reinforced scrutiny of Iran’s gender apartheid system. In response to both the crackdown and the systematic violation of women’s rights, several governments and international bodies adopted punitive measures. In December 2022, member states of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, citing the state's suppression of peaceful demonstrations and systemic gender-based discrimination (United Nations, 2022). The United States imposed targeted sanctions on the morality police and senior officials responsible for human rights abuses, while the European Union enacted similar measures against individuals and institutions involved in enforcing compulsory veiling and repressing dissen t(U.S. Department of State, 2022; Council of the European Union, 2023/0. These coordinated actions imposed reputational and economic costs on the Iranian state and signaled international condemnation of its gender-based policies and practices.

While international pressure on the Islamic Republic intensified, acts of domestic resistance particularly by women, continued to challenge the state’s authority. Despite the heightened risk of imprisonment, corporal punishment, or financial penalties under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code, many women engaged in sustained acts of civil disobedience, including acts of public unveiling, the circulation of protest images and videos, and the use of social media as a tool for both documentation and mobilization. Public unveiling, in particular, operated as a visible and symbolic rejection of the compulsory hijab, directly challenging one of the central pillars of the Islamic Republic’s gender governance framework (Article 19, 2012). The widespread dissemination of protest footage through platforms such as Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter extended this contestation beyond the physical streets, constructing a transnational narrative of defiance that galvanized both domestic and international solidarity (Filterwatch, 2025). This persistence reflected not merely an objection to specific legal mandates, but a fundamental repudiation of the state's authority to regulate women's presence, visibility, and participation in public space.

As state surveillance mechanisms expanded in response, protesters increasingly adapted their methods to navigate the digital constraints imposed by the National Information Network (NIN), the government’s internal internet infrastructure designed to monitor, filter, and control online activity. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), encrypted messaging applications, and other circumvention technologies became essential tools for evading censorship, preserving anonymity, and sustaining communication within activist networks (Filterwatch, 2025). The strategic use of these technologies enabled women to document human rights violations, disseminate protest narratives internationally, and maintain the momentum of civil resistance despite escalating digital repression.

This restructuring enabled the automated enforcement of hijab laws. Systems processed video inputs in real time, identified license plates or facial features, and matched them to centralized identity records, eliminating the need for manual monitoring or police intervention. The regime’s surveillance model combined real-time video monitoring with telecom infrastructure, allowing facial features, license plate data, geolocation, and device identifiers to be cross-referenced against centralized databases without the need for in-person verification.

Once a hijab violation was detected, telecom records were used to confirm the individual’s identity and legal status, triggering automated enforcement measures such as SMS warnings, service suspensions, and travel bans (Filterwatch, 2025). In one documented case, a woman was barred from boarding a flight after being flagged by the system for non-compliance, despite having no direct contact with law enforcement (Moradi et al., 2024).

The state also expanded automated enforcement through biometric surveillance systems, leveraging a national identity database that includes the majority of Iran’s adult population. Since 2015, biometric data, including facial images, fingerprints, and iris scans have been collected for national identity cards, banking, and SIM registration (Moradi et al., 2024). After 2022, these records were directly linked to live surveillance feeds in public and institutional settings, allowing facial recognition software to identify unveiled women based on physical features rather than device or location data. Once detected, the system matched their images to biometric records and triggered enforcement measures without police involvement.

This model was implemented across urban infrastructure, including metro systems and universities. According to a 2024 United Nations report, facial recognition systems were installed at Tehran’s Amirkabir University to monitor hijab compliance, resulting in approximately 200 students being denied campus access after being flagged by the system (United Nations, 2024). Their biometric profiles were used to deactivate digital student IDs and restrict entry, without any disciplinary hearings or in-person enforcement. By embedding biometric verification into access control systems, the state replaced physical confrontation with automated exclusion, making veiling enforcement continuous, impersonal, and structurally embedded in everyday life.

Automated Gender Enforcement 

Taken together, the AI-supported enforcement apparatus reflects a structural evolution from visible street-level policing to an expanded system that sustains gender apartheid through automated surveillance and bureaucratic control. This transformation has not eliminated physical enforcement but has extended it into networked systems that operate continuously and impersonally. Legal mandates such as Article 638 are now implemented not only through agents such as the morality police but also through data-driven processes that monitor behavior and administer sanctions without direct human intervention (The Guardian, 2025). In this model, compulsory veiling is enforced not only through confrontation but also through mechanisms that convert behavioral data into administrative penalties.

Rather than pursuing new legislation, authorities implemented the shift through executive directives and reinterpretations of existing statutes. Although not ratified by the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the 2022–2023 National Hijab and Chastity Plan outlined a coordinated enforcement strategy involving multiple state institutions (Amnesty International, 2024). It was executed through directives from the Ministry of Interior, the Judiciary, and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. These bodies treated Article 638 as a sufficient legal basis, framing unveiled presence as a threat to public morality and thereby justifying automated surveillance and administrative penalties without judicial oversight. Bypassing parliamentary ratification allowed authorities to implement the plan without public debate or judicial oversight. In effect, the enforcement model was embedded into executive and administrative structures, allowing it to operate with minimal transparency during a period of intensified domestic protest and international scrutiny, including the establishment of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (AccessWDUN, 2025). 

This apparatus extends gender-based repression from visible policing into the institutional machinery of the state. Enforcement is continuous, automated, and procedurally opaque, carried out through surveillance-driven systems that operate without judicial oversight or avenues for appeal. Penalties are imposed based on behavioral data, often without notification or legal recourse (Amnesty International, 2024). Rather than representing a rollback of compulsory veiling, this shift embeds gender-based discrimination into the administrative processes that regulate access to public services, mobility, and civic life. In doing so, it aligns with internationally recognized indicators of apartheid: the systematic exclusion of a targeted group, the use of administrative mechanisms to enforce domination, and the denial of equal rights based on gender (AccessWDUN, 2025).

AI Surveillance and Modernized Gender Apartheid

The Islamic Republic’s shift from physical to AI-powered enforcement has extended the state’s reach of its gender apartheid regime into the underlying digital infrastructure that governs access to public life. This transformation has resulted in two principal consequences for Iranian women, namely the expansion of exclusion from essential services and the dismantling of basic legal protections. These effects have substantially reshaped women’s daily lives by extending the reach of compulsory veiling laws while simultaneously eliminating procedural safeguards and reducing institutional transparency.

Exclusion from Essential Services

As outlined in earlier sections, prior to 2022, hijab enforcement was primarily carried out by the Guidance Patrol through public warnings, fines, or short-term detention. While deeply coercive, these operations were concentrated in urban centers and typically occurred in designated public spaces such as streets, parks, shopping areas, and university campuses, during specific hours of patrol activity (Amnesty International, 2024). The dependence on physical presence and scheduled deployments meant that enforcement was limited in frequency and geographic coverage. The AI-based model expands this enforcement structure into a system of continuous, location-independent monitoring that is both more expansive and less visible. Between March and April 2023, Iranian officials reported issuing over one million automated SMS warnings to women identified through AI-assisted traffic cameras, a scale of enforcement far exceeding the 220,000 detentions and 3.6 million warnings recorded in 2014 under physical patrols (Hafezi, 2023). 

This expansion is not limited to affecting a greater number of women but extends to the scope of impact across sectors and institutions. Prior to 2022, enforcement in domains such as education, finance, telecommunications, and civil administration was largely discretionary and dependent on individual actors, including members of the Basiji and morality police. In the absence of centralized protocols, access to services often relied on the judgment of institutional gatekeepers. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International (2015) and Human Rights Watch (2010), documented that women were frequently denied entry to universities, banks, and public offices for perceived dress code violations, while others in similar circumstances faced no consequences (Amnesty International, 2015; Human Rights Watch 2010). This variability reflected not standardized policy, but fragmented, context-specific enforcement across institutions.

Building on this foundation, post-2022 AI-empowered enforcement coordinates punitive measures across multiple state institutions in real time. Hijab violations detected by AI-enabled surveillance, such as facial recognition cameras and traffic monitoring, are cross-referenced with biometric databases and national identity records, automatically restricting women’s access to public services across multiple domains (Filterwatch 2025). . Previously distinct institutions now operate through shared digital infrastructures, meaning that a single surveillance event, such as appearing unveiled on traffic footage, can trigger coordinated exclusions from mobile networks, banking platforms, university campuses, and government service portals. This model extends the reach of gender apartheid by embedding dress code enforcement into the systems that regulate access to public life. At Amirkabir University, for example, facial recognition technology was used to block campus access for approximately 200 female students flagged for non-compliance (The Guardian, 2025).

Erosion of Legal Protections 

Prior to 2022, women subjected to hijab enforcement retained limited but tangible avenues to contest state actions. Those detained by the Guidance Patrol (Gasht-e Ershad) for alleged dress code violations could, in some cases, file administrative complaints, petition for the return of confiscated property such as vehicles, or seek judicial review to challenge the imposition of fines (Amnesty International, 2024). Although these mechanisms were limited in scope and subject to constraints within the broader judicial system, they nonetheless provided a formal framework through which women could initiate legal claims and seek redress against enforcement actions.

AI-empowered enforcement eliminated these avenues entirely. Penalties ranging from SMS warnings to service suspensions and access restrictions are now issued automatically, without prior notice, explanation, or any mechanism for appeal (Filterwatch, 2025). Testimonies collected by Amnesty International confirm that women often only become aware of these penalties upon being denied access to services, with no identifiable official accountable for the decision (Filterwatch, 2025). The elimination of notification, explanation, and avenues for appeal dismantled the limited procedural safeguards that once existed,  barring women from challenging or participating in any legal process concerning state-imposed penalties.

This restructuring dismantles core procedural guarantees recognized under both international and domestic law. Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Articles 2 and 15 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) affirm the rights to due process, equal protection under the law, and access to legal redress (United Nations Human Rights Council, 1996). Iran’s domestic legal framework similarly codifies these protections: Article 34 of the Constitution provides the right to seek recourse through competent courts, Article 37 upholds the presumption of innocence, and the Civil Procedure Code mandates the right to notification and response (Islamic Republic of Iran, 2015). AI-driven enforcement eliminates these procedural rights in practice, imposing penalties without formal notification, evidentiary disclosure, or any opportunity for review.

The automation of gender-based enforcement formalizes a legal structure in which women are systematically excluded from participation in the legal system. Those subjected to AI-issued penalties are denied both access to legal redress and recognition as legal actors capable of contesting state action. This systemic exclusion aligns with internationally recognized indicators of gender apartheid, particularly the administrative domination of a targeted group and the denial of fundamental legal rights. By embedding veiling compliance monitoring into the infrastructure of digital governance, the Islamic Republic extends its gender apartheid regime into the administrative and technological structures of daily life.

Conclusion 

Iran’s adoption of AI-driven surveillance to enforce compulsory veiling represents a fundamental transformation in the structure of gender apartheid. By embedding ideological compliance into the architecture of digital governance, the Islamic Republic has extended gender-based repression into new, opaque, and continuous dimensions, displacing traditional mechanisms of physical enforcement with technologically mediated control.

This evolution reveals critical blind spots within existing international legal frameworks, which remain insufficiently equipped to address how emerging technologies facilitate systemic discrimination. While global scholarship on AI and human rights has largely focused on political dissent and racialized surveillance, the Iranian case demonstrates that gender can also be a primary axis of algorithmic domination.

Confronting technologically mediated apartheid demands that human rights law, international sanctions regimes, and digital governance frameworks evolve in step with authoritarian innovation. It requires explicit recognition of AI-facilitated structural discrimination as a human rights violation and mandates the development of legal and political tools that can hold states accountable for automated forms of exclusion.

As Iran’s case shows, the automation of gender-based repression is not merely a modernization of oppression but a warning. The struggle over technological infrastructures will be central to the future of women's rights and systemic equality worldwide. Addressing it will require not only doctrinal innovations but a global political will to recognize and resist the weaponization of technology against marginalized groups.

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