Iranian women are at the forefront of an antigovernment protest movement that has swept the country in the past month, demanding greater freedom from the country’s strict Islamic rules. ⁠ ⁠ For years, many Iranian women have been testing the Islamic Republic’s ultraconservative cultural norms in subtler ways, upending tightly prescribed gender roles in Iranian workplaces and society. ⁠ ⁠ Although women represent more than 50% of university graduates, they made up just 14% of the labor force in 2021, according to the United Nations' International Labor Organization. That is roughly half the rate in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkey.⁠ ⁠ Women tend to work in healthcare, education and social services, although some are entering professions traditionally reserved for men, often defying societal prejudice. ⁠ ⁠ Simin Taheri is one of Iran’s few female pilots. She has logged about half the roughly 3,500 flight hours required to become a captain. “My mother was one of my supporters and pushed me to look into the aviation career,” she says. ⁠ ⁠ For decades, the Iranian aviation industry was almost exclusively a male domain. “At the time I started to study to become a pilot, it wasn’t as welcoming as today for women to even aspire to become pilots,” she says. ⁠ ⁠ Alongside her job as a broker of petrochemicals and oil products, Arezou Niavarani rescues dogs off the street, a highly controversial practice in the country where religious conservatives view the animals as impure.⁠ ⁠ Ms. Niavarani brings the dogs she rescues to receive medical treatment and be spayed at a shelter on the outskirts of Tehran.⁠ ⁠ Mona Godarzi, 39, fixes cars for a living. She got her first vehicle at 20. When it broke down, she would roll up her sleeves and work on it. “I always liked to get greasy and dive into the engine,” she says. ⁠ ⁠ Sometimes when Nasrin Hemmati, whose job is to clean windows, is suspended hundreds of feet in the air on the face of a building, she hears people shouting at her from below “Superwoman!” or “Keep strong, well done.” Read more at the link in our bio. Photos by @mariamrahmanian for @wsj.