Zanan, April 2005, Tehran

In the summer of 1993, I arranged to meet Shahla Sherkat, the editor of a new monthly women’s magazine, in her modest editorial offices. Sherkat had launched Zanan, which means “Women,” only a year earlier. What I found when I arrived were smashed windows and overturned furniture. The night before, vigilantes had attacked the magazine’s offices in Tehran. With glass everywhere, we sat on the steps leading from the terrace to a small garden. Sherkat seemed unflustered. The vigilante attack, she told me, was part of the struggle she wages every day to keep Zanan alive.

Sherkat was born to a traditional, middle-class family and was only in her early 20s when the Iranian Revolution began. Prior to working at Zanan, she was the editor of a woman’s magazine, Zan-e Ruz, or “Today’s Woman.” The magazine was published by the Kayhan group, which, after the revolution, gradually became a mouthpiece for conservative clerics. Kayhan’s shift to the right did not sit well with Sherkat. Nor did her ardent support for women’s rights endear her to the publishers. In 1991, after eight years at Zan-e Ruz, she was dismissed.

Despite strict censorship and little funding, Sherkat soon launched Zanan. Intended as a bridge between pre- and post-revolution Iranian women, the magazine is a reformist vehicle that speaks for liberal-minded Islamists and secularists. It’s a personal and unabashedly feminist mission for Sherkat, who once sold her cell phone to help pay the salaries of the women on her staff. Zanan has run articles on the...