Kosk: Women as part of the political process is something that you can't put back into the bottle once it's out. The social programs enacted by the islamic republic including continued sort of emphasis on social welfare health access to health care access to literacy these are programs that help some women improve their quality of life even as the government is otherwise repressing them, she says. Kosk: We see Kurdish demands very much calling for a cultural autonomy reviving many of the demands which we saw in the mahabad republic of 1946.