Mahnaz Afkhami

Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Election 2016 and the Global Women's Movement, Chicago, IL (November 1, 2016) (Moderated by Fay Hartog-Levin with Catherine Bertini and Ellen Chesler [Wikidata].)

Roosevelt Institute, Women and Girls Rising Conference, New York, NY (September 11, 2014) (Moderated by LaShawn R. Jefferson with Farida Shaheed and Jocelyn Olcott)

Creative Alternatives of New York, "CANY Seminar Series: Leading to Change: Eliminating Violence Against Women", New York, NY (November 1, 2013)

Women Deliver Conference 2013, Presidential Session: Ending Violence Against Women, Kualalumpur, Malaysia (May 29, 2013) (Moderated by Shereen El Feki with Gary Barker, Lakshmi Puri, Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau)

Afkhami's life and work in the women's movement in Iran, breaking with tradition, and living in exile are the topics of the 2012 Voice of America Persian biopic.

Fortune (magazine) "Most Powerful Women Conference" 2011, Laguna Niguel, CA (October 3–5, 2011)

Afkhami and her sister Farah Abrahimi were featured in the PBS series Destination America in 2005. At the time Afkhami became Minister of Women's Affairs, her sister was a leader in the students' movement demanding the overthrow of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In 2001, Afkhami published Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women to encourage women to be leaders in their families, communities, and countries. It has been translated into 20 languages. In 2010, she published Leading to Action: A Political Participation Handbook for Women. The manuals have been used for training around the world, reaching thousands.

Afkhami has served on a number of boards and committees of international organizations including the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy (1999–2010), the International League for Human Rights (2000–2006), the Global Fund for Women (1998–2007), Gender At Work (2003–2008), Women Leaders Intercultural Forum (2010) and Global Women's Action Network for Children (2006–2009)., Global Fund for Women (1998–2007), International Museum of Women (2000–2014), Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative (2002–2010), and Women's Human Rights Net (2000–2004).

In 1994, she published Women in Exile, a collection of portraits of activist women in political exile.

She contributed the piece "A future in the past, the prerevolutionary women's movement" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.

When Iran's Islamic Revolution began in 1979, Afkhami was at the United Nations in New York negotiating the establishment of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW). She was charged in absentia with "Corruption on Earth and warring with God." She has never returned to Iran, living instead in exile, although she has said she would like to return to help rebuild Iran if its political system changed.

In 1975, Afkhami was asked to join the cabinet of the Iranian government and became Minister of Women's Affairs. The post had not existed in Iran before and the only other person holding such a position was Françoise Giroud in France.

Afkhami has been an advocate for women's rights since the 1970s. She has founded and headed several international non-governmental organizations focused on advancing the status of women in Iran and later around the world. She has lectured and published extensively on the international women's movement, women's human rights, women in leadership, women and technology, the status of women in Muslim-majority societies and on women's participation in civil society-building and democratization. Her books have been translated into multiple languages and distributed internationally.

In 1969, two years after returning to Iran as a professor of literature and Chair of the Department of English at the National University of Iran, Afkhami was drawn into Iran's women's movement and founded the Association of University Women. In 1970, she became the secretary general of the Women's Organization of Iran (WOI). She remained there for ten years, during which time she worked for Iranian women's rights.

While Afkhami was Minister of Women's Affairs, Iran's legislation granted women equal rights as regards divorce; raised the minimum age of marriage; supported women's employment with maternity leave and childcare provision; and built upon the family laws of 1967.

In 1967, Mahnaz returned to Iran as a professor of literature at the National University of Iran. She worked there until 1978. Since then, she has lived in the United States, residing in Maryland with her husband, Gholam Reza Afkhami. They have a son and two grandchildren.

Mahnaz Afkhami (Persian: مهناز افخمی; born January 14, 1941) is an Iranian women's rights activist who served in the Cabinet of Iran from 1976 to 1978. She is founder and president of Women's Learning Partnership (WLP), executive director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies and former Minister of Women's Affairs in Iran's pre-Revolution government. She has lived in exile in the United States since 1979.

Mahnaz Afkhami was born in Kerman, Iran in 1941, the eldest of three children. Her early childhood was spent in Kerman, Iran in a complex that housed a large extended family of Sheikhi Shi'ite Muslims. When she was 11, her mother divorced her father and they moved to the United States. She later attended the University of San Francisco and the University of Colorado in Boulder.