Maria Karimi

News Center-The Iranian authorities have long sought to place the blame for the country’s corruption and other crises on women. Yet such policies strip values of their true meaning, turning women’s bodies and clothing into tools to beautify the regime’s image and grant it false legitimacy.

In recent days, a billboard was installed along one of Tehran’s highways reading:
"Dear sisters, if you adhere to Islamic hijab, we promise to do our utmost to eliminate embezzlement and profiteering and the like in the country within less than a year."
The image of the billboard spread widely across social media, provoking public outrage and criticism from media outlets, who saw it as a symbol of the deep contradictions in Iran’s official rhetoric.

The billboard serves as a clear example of the authorities’ attempts to shift responsibility away from the ruling power. It links the structural and institutional roots of corruption—stemming from weak oversight, rent-seeking networks, and flawed economic and political systems—to the personal behavior of women. Critics have described this approach as illogical and demeaning, portraying women as culprits or scapegoats for economic and administrative failures, and as part of broader social control tactics meant to distract from government shortcomings.

At its core, the regime appears—according to observers—to be using the symbolism of the hijab to purify its image tainted by corruption and repression, through rhetoric cloaked in “morality” but driven by political motives and the will to control women.

From a political and social perspective, the message carries three significant implications:

It undermines public awareness of the real causes of corruption.

It turns women into “political scapegoats,” unjustly held accountable.

It deepens the divide between society and state institutions, which, instead of pursuing reform and transparency, focus on managing appearances and shifting blame.

Social media reactions echoed these sentiments. Many users wrote that if authorities truly intended to combat corruption, they would strengthen enforcement, transparency, and accountability—not accuse women.

The billboard also reflects the government’s fear of women’s social agency. By making hijab a precondition for reducing corruption, it signals a refusal to confront administrative failure and economic mismanagement. Instead, the regime seeks to transfer responsibility to citizens—especially women—through moral and symbolic messaging. Such narratives not only fail to solve problems but also poison public space with gendered stereotypes and symbolic violence.

Critical analysis shows that genuine anti-corruption efforts require steps entirely unrelated to personal behavior or dress—such as enhancing financial transparency, ensuring the independence of regulatory institutions, enforcing conflict-of-interest laws, protecting freedom of information and the press, and dismantling entrenched rent networks. Any discourse reducing these issues to “covering women” merely distracts society from necessary structural reforms.

Ultimately, this billboard represents a political strategy—an attempt to mask incompetence and redistribute social blame onto already pressured groups. Public reactions and news reports reveal that such messaging not only fails but intensifies public anger and distrust.

The logical and just path to fighting corruption does not lie in moralizing or cultural scapegoating, but in institutional reform, transparent accountability, and justice.

The lesson from this incident is clear: society has the right to know the true causes of economic crises and corruption, and to demand structural reforms—without allowing women’s rights and dignity to be exploited as an escape from responsibility