the veil or chador was no longer an offence, and women were able to dress as they wished. However, under his regime, the chador became a hindrance to climbing the social ladder, as it was considered a badge of backwardness and an indicator of being a member of the lower class. Veiled women were assumed to be from conservative religious families with limited education, while unveiled women were assumed to be from the educated and professional upper- or middle class. The veil became a class marker; while the lower classes started to wear the veil again, the upper classes no longer wore the veil at all, while professional middle class women such as teachers and nurses appeared unveiled in their work place, but sometimes veiled when they returned home to their families. A few years prior to the Iranian revolution, a tendency towards questioning the relevance of Eurocentric gender roles as the model for Iranian society gained ground among university students, and this sentiment was manifested in street demonstrations where many women from the non-veiled middle classes put on the veil and symbolically rejected the gender ideology of Pahlavi regime and its aggressive deculturalization. Many argued that veiling should be restored to stop further dissolution of the Iranian identity and culture, as from an Iranian point of view the unveiled women are seen as exploited by Western materialism and consumerism. Wearing of headscarf and chador was one of main symbols of the revolution along with the resurgence and wearing of other traditional Iranian dresses. Headscarves and chadors were worn by all women as a religious and/or nationalistic symbols, and even many secular and Westernized women, who did not believe in wearing them before the revolution, began wearing them, in solidarity with the vast majority of women who always wore them. Wearing headscarves and chadors was used as a significant populist tool and Iranian veiled women played an important rule in the revolution's victory. Mandatory veiling under Islamic Republic After the Islamic Revolution, the policy inherited from the Kashf-e hijab was turned around. Instead of being forced to remove their veil, women were now subjected to the reversed ban against unveiling, and the veil were now enforced upon all women. The non-conservative women, who had worn the veil as a symbol of opposition during the revolution, had not expected veiling to become mandatory, and when the veil was first made mandatory