Road warrior: in male-dominated Iran, Laleh Seddigh proved she could drive a race car even faster than the men.

A year and a half ago, Laleh Seddigh asked Iran's national auto-racing foundation for permission to become a pioneer: A woman in this male-dominated society, Seddigh wanted to compete on the racetrack against men.

When permission was granted, she became not only the first woman in Iran to race cars against the opposite sex, but also the first woman since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 to compete against men in any sport.

"I like competition in everything," Seddigh says. "I have to move whatever is movable in the world."

Last March, at age 28, she moved her entire nation by winning Iran's national racing championship, beating the men. After her victory, Iran's state television refused to show the new champ on the victory stand elevated above the men, but photographers captured the moment. She stood quietly while receiving her medal, as she had promised the race organizers she would, with a scarf over her long black hair and a coat over her racing uniform.

TESTING BOUNDARIES

Seddigh has been a lively, energetic symbol of an entire generation of young Iranians who in recent years have increasingly tested the social rules put in place by the country's religious leaders.

Seventy percent of Iranians are under 35, and they have gently pushed for, and received, freedoms unimaginable even a few years ago. For women in the capital city of Tehran, at least, those freedoms have included wearing brightly colored head scarves loosely over their hair and tighter and shorter versions of the obligatory women's overcoat.

Seddigh, the oldest of four children, had an early desire to challenge social boundaries. When she was 13, her father, a wealthy factory owner, taught her to drive on weekends in a park on the outskirts of Tehran.

"I want to show my father that I can do anything," Seddigh says. "I've always wanted to follow him. He drove fast and careful, and I looked up to him and followed him. From the time I was 12 or 13, I wanted to have a competition with boys, and maybe that was the reason."

At 23, she began racing miniature race cars that had more in common with go-carts. She also entered three-day cross-country car rallies, in which she had to change her own tires and make her own repairs.

The opportunity to compete professionally against men came in 2004, when a new president took over at the Iranian racing federation and he was open to allowing a woman to enter the men's races. There has been a lot of jealous grumbling from many of the male drivers, Seddigh says, but others, like Saeed Arabian, Iran's previous national champion and now her driving coach, are proud of what she has achieved.

"She is brave in asking for her rights," Arabian said last year. "She will have a great future."

But Seddigh's victory in the national racing championship came just three months before Iranians elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative, as the nation's president. (See "The Problem with Iran," p. 18.) Ahmadinejad reveres Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution who ruled Iran for 10 years, made Islamic law paramount, and denied women many of the rights and freedoms they'd been accustomed to. The recent loosening of some restrictions on dress and culture had been incremental, and it's unclear what effect Ahmadinejad's election will have on women's place in Iranian society.

After winning the national championship, Seddigh was featured on the cover of Zanan, Iran's largest women's magazine. (Zanan is the Persian word for women.) Still, she is careful not to assume an activist's role.

"I'm not a feminist," she says. "But why should women be lazy and weak? If you're determined, you've got to push."

'INSIDE POWER'

Her driving has caused frequent arguments in her family. After all, she broke her neck in one accident on the racetrack, and her left leg has metal screws in it from another wreck. Her father supports and finances her racing habit but, with her neck injury, he recently forbade her to race rough-and-tumble go-carts.

"He knows I love driving but wants me to be careful," Seddigh says. Her mother worries but has learned to stay out of it. "She was just crying, praying, nothing more."

Seddigh has been pushing into traditionally male pursuits all her life. With her father's encouragement, she has devoted her academic career to preparing to succeed him in the family business. She received a bachelor's degree in industrial management and a master's in production engineering, and is now working on her Ph.D. in industrial management and production, all at Tehran University.

She enjoys her studies, she says, but driving is her first love. She is even helping to teach a training class for women who are race-car drivers, the first such program in the country. "In this society, women don't believe in themselves," Seddigh says. "They have to believe in their inside power."

Otto Pohl writes periodically for The New York Times; with additional reporting by Ian Zack.