Regardless of whether their preferred candidate ends up winning Friday's enthusiastic presidential election in Iran, women have emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the country's politics.

Women have long been a potent force in Iran, and have come out to vote for other candidates in the past – in 1997, for example, 40 per cent of the voters who supported another reform candidate, Mohammad Khatami, were women – but observers this year say that never before have women played such a major part in an election.