The suffragettes have been an inspiration for countless women around the world. This month it will be exactly 80 years since their momentous struggle led to the Bill for full women's suffrage being presented to Parliament.

Women in modern Britain may not live in a discrimination-free utopia, but the law, at least, is mostly on their side. This is what we need in Iran - laws that protect and empower women. Instead, we have laws for men that institutionalise prejudice. The law looks disfavourably on Iranian women - literally with a male face. Since the 1979 Revolution Iranian women have been forbidden from serving as judges. In Iran a woman's evidence in court is worth half that of a man. Men can have multiple wives, while young girls can be married off to older men by their fathers. Sentences of stoning to death for adultery are still imposed, disproportionately on women, a practice denounced as grotesque and horrific by Amnesty International.

Well, what are the 35 million women and girls in Iran able to do about this? Like the suffragettes, one thing they can do is simply go out into the streets and proclaim what they want. Since 2006 the grassroots “Campaign for Equality” has galvanised women (and some men) into a tremendously courageous movement. Peacefully mobilising enough support to get a million signatures on a petition calling for an end to discriminatory laws, these equality campaigners include people such as Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a brave writer, who in 2005 had a leg broken by security guards when she defied the ban on women attending football matches.

Iran should be proud of such women. Instead, the authorities are out to get them. She has already spent time in solitary confinement in Tehran's Evin Prison, where I myself have been imprisoned in the past. Now she is facing a charge of “illegal assembly” and a possible prison sentence. She is not alone. Dozens of equality campaigners in Iran are either already behind bars or facing imprisonment in what Amnesty calls an “acute” campaign of harassment from the Iranian authorities.

I have a question for President Ahmadinejad. How is this unlocking the fantastic potential of the Iranian people? A hundred years ago women in Iran battled to establish girls' schools in a fight that preceded even Emmeline Pankhurst and her redoubtable sister campaigners.

A century later, with educated young Iranian women making up two thirds of university students, we are a nation bursting with female ability but one hobbled by legalised prejudice and social bigotry.

Now more than ever the women of Iran deserve our support.

Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003

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