For years, Mahnoor Omer didn't talk about it. Every time the topic arose, her school friends in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, flushed with embarrassment, Omer recalled.

Masih Alinejad, 49, is a U. S. -based Iranian campaigner for political freedom and equality for women. After working as a journalist for reformist newspapers in Iran until 2009 -- in the course of which she acquired a national profile -- she went into exile in the West.