A GLOBE-TROTTING Iranian motorcyclist has made it on to BBC’s list of 100 most influential women.
Maral Yazarloo-Pattrick rode solo around the world on a mission to change attitudes towards women in Iran. She set off from India in 2017 and crossed 7 continents and 64 countries in 17 months, before arriving home last month, soon after giving birth to a baby girl, with whom she had fallen pregnant on the trip.
As a female motorcyclist in a country which actively discourages women on two wheels, Yazarloo-Pattrick was aiming to “Support Iranian girls who love riding motorbikes”, in order for them to “experience the joy of riding a motorbike and the sense of freedom.”
According to the BBC, in 2018 she became the first Iranian woman to openly enter Iran on a motorbike without being arrested. However, social media users have pointed out that there are a number of other Iranian women breaking Iranian boundaries on two wheels, including Noora Naraghi and Behnaz Shafiei.
Speaking in the BBC’s video, Yazarloo-Pattrick said: “The only message I want to send out is that if an Iranian woman, or any woman, thinks that she can’t do something, she just needs to close her eyes and say ‘I can, if I really want to’. And she definitely can.”
