As our editorial team follows the final developments in the lead-up to the 68th GRAMMY® Awards in Los Angeles, during the closing weeks of voting, attention increasingly turns toward Special Merit Award recognitions, including the Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change Award. These distinctions foreground artistic contribution, cultural relevance, and long-term impact beyond conventional commercial metrics, inviting careful listening and sustained reflection across the current For Your Consideration landscape.
Within this context, I Am a Woman, a spoken word song by Italian-American artist, composer, and executive producer Veronica Vitale, has emerged as a work of particular note within the current listening cycle, resonating amid ongoing global developments, including the sustained civil resistance led by women in Iran.
Composed on February 20, 2022, months before the death of Mahsa Amini following her detention by Iran’s morality police later that year, I Am a Woman stands in solidarity with Iranian women and the ongoing “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, amid a growing wave of women in Iran who continue to defy mandatory hijab laws through daily acts of civil resistance.
While not written in response to a single event, the song emerged from the same global atmosphere of pressure, silencing, and resistanc. In this sense, the work echoes a central truth: womanhood is not a crime, identity is not negotiable, and freedom is not granted. It is lived.
Veronica Vitale herself has recently shared a strong public position, stating that I Am a Woman / IMAW Movement stands with Iranian women who assert bodily autonomy through presence and refusal, and aligns with women such as Ahoo Daryaei, as well as with women who appear unveiled in public as an act of self-determination.
Her music does not claim or reproduce their voices, nor does it speak on their behalf. Instead, it seeks to amplify awareness so that their actions, courage, and memory are not erased.
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW:
In Iran, music is subject to strict regulation, and women face significant limitations on vocal performance. Women are effectively prohibited from singing solo in public before mixed-gender audiences. Solo female vocals are not officially permitted on stage, and women may perform only as part of choirs or in settings restricted to all-female audiences. Recording or releasing solo female vocals publicly inside the country can result in censorship, denied permits, fines, or arrest. As a consequence, many Iranian women singers are compelled to release music anonymously, publish work online without authorization, perform exclusively outside Iran, or remain entirely silenced.
Within this context, music created beyond national borders can assume heightened significance. When women are denied the ability to sing freely, art and music released elsewhere that affirm womanhood and bodily autonomy can function as an anthem or a manifesto in sound, carrying solidarity across borders when direct expression is suppressed.
As Iran continues to enforce mandatory hijab laws amid widespread civil defiance, the role of cultural expression remains critical. When direct speech is punished, art becomes a vessel for remembrance and recognition. I Am a Woman contributes to this effort by offering a space of solidarity grounded in shared human rights and bodily autonomy.
The work resonates with the present moment not symbolically, but structurally. It is built on refusal. It is not about permission, approval, or negotiation, but about existence without authorization. When women appear unveiled in public, they are not staging a performance. They are declaring that their bodies are not negotiable surfaces. Unveiled, in this context, means unowned.
“This song stands with women whose bodies are not free, but whose voices already are,” says Veronica Vitale, also known as IVEE. She adds that “real testimony often arrives early; the song does not follow history, and yet, it meets it.”
