Laleh Seddigh enraged the establishment when she beat all the men to win a national motor-racing competition - perhaps because that nation is Iran, where male superiority is enshrined in law.
Her first name means tulip in Farsi, tulip being the flower adopted by Iran's Islamic rulers as a revolutionary emblem, symbolising martyrs' blood. But somehow it's hard to imagine Seddigh as the poster child whom the mullahs, renowned for rigid views on female modesty and separation of the sexes, had in mind when they tried to mould the country into a strict religious state after the 1979 revolution.
She has not so much circumvented Iran's gender barrier as blasted her way through it. She did it by surpassing a host of male competitors in a discipline at which large numbers of Iranian men excel - driving at breakneck speed with apparent disregard for danger.
Earlier this year, Seddigh, a 28-year-old PhD student in production management, was crowned the first woman champion in an otherwise all-male field in a national speed race championship at Tehran's Azadi stadium. To win, she careered round the track in a souped-up Proton saloon in lap times as fast as 68 seconds.
She went on to an equally impressive triumph in a national rally competition. Doing her own wheel changes and engine repairs, Seddigh and her female navigator raced across a mix of desert and frozen roads in rough-hewn terrain to finish ahead of a mixed-sex field.
Showing a field of boy racers a clean set of wheels may seem an unusual, even unfeminine, preoccupation for an educated young woman in a strictly Islamic country. For anyone who knows the mayhem that passes for driving in Tehran's traffic-clogged streets, however, it begins to make sense.
Women drivers play a prominent role in the potentially lethal mosaic of cars weaving about without thought of lane discipline or the possibility of collision.
"I learned to drive when I was 13," Seddigh says by way of explanation. "I loved speed and driving fast. For a while I was driving without a licence. I was a teenage rebel."
One high-speed accident resulted in injuries requiring a metal plate to be inserted in her leg. In another, she broke her neck.
As she sits in one of north Tehran's small but growing number of chic coffee shops, Seddigh could easily pass for a self-confident young woman in any western capital - except for the royal blue, exquisitely patterned head-scarf that only partially conceals her hair, in cursory accordance with Iran's Islamic dress code. Otherwise, she is a picture of glamour - dark rouge lipstick , eye shadow, silver fingernails and toenails.
Surprising, this is a common enough look in Tehran's prosperous northern side. In recent years, the conservative cleric-based regime has come to accept a certain limited flaunting of female sexuality as one of the accommodations necessary to retain power.
What is more striking about Seddigh is her determination to tackle men at their own game and win. "I've always liked to do those things that traditionally belonged to men, or which are supposed to be beyond the physical capabilities of a woman," she says. "When I was a kid, I always played with boys. I suppose I was a bit of a tomboy. My father used to introduce me to people as his son, joking that it was only by accident that I was a girl. I enjoy competing against men.
"I've been competing with men in my education. Through my BSc in industrial engineering and my masters and PhD, I have always been the only woman in the class. So I'm used to it psychologically."
Her success has drawn hostility from male competitors. When she won the rally, some suggested there had been collusion with the male driver in second place. It took an intervention from a woman member of the government sports body to silence the innuendoes.
Seddigh has seen herself hailed as a sign of hope that women in Iran can attain equality with men. In a country where a woman's testimony in court is worth only half that of a man, and where a wife must have her husband's permission to travel abroad, that may be stretching things. Yet she believes that, even in Iran, women have it within themselves to compete and succeed. ... -