For some Muslim women, taking off the hijab can be a difficult decision.
Violent family reactions and community rejection may follow.
In some countries, laws are an additional pressure.
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Iran's parliament has passed a controversial law stiffening prison and fine penalties for women and girls who violate the country's strict dress code.
Women responded with mass protests - they took to the streets and took off their hijabs.
The protests were triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in custody in 2022, after she was taken into custody by the morals police because her hijab was allegedly not fitted properly.
There are about one billion Muslim women in the world, and many choose to wear the hijab.
Women who want to take it off, sometimes struggle with the pressure for years before they decide to take such a step.
"My dream is to have one day a week when only women are allowed to go out on the streets and when we can wear whatever we want," says Ribel, whose real name is known to the editorial staff.
She was nine years old when her family, who lived in a town near Tehran, the capital of Iran, forced her to start wearing the chador.
It is one of the conservative types of hijab, which covers both the head and the body.
From the age of six, her parents prepared her to start covering herself.
"They kept telling me that I would have to start wearing the hijab, that it was my obligation to God, and that if I refused, I would be eternally punished after death - not to mention that I would bring shame on my parents and upset them." she tells the BBC.
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Ribel is now 23 years old and left Tehran to seek asylum in Turkey, where she works as a tattoo artist.
She says that as a child she dreamed of wearing shorts and T-shirts.
She remembers being terrified by what her parents were saying.
"I lived with a constant feeling of guilt. I didn't know where it came from, but it was there," she says.
Ribel envied other girls she saw in her community who wore more modest types of hijab.
Wearing the hijab in public places in Iran is mandatory, but in private gatherings and at home, many women choose not to wear it.
Ribela's family was very religious and conservative.
"My mother would tell me not to show my bare arms or legs even in front of my brothers who were teenagers, because it could lead them to sin," she says.
When Ribel was 17, her parents enrolled her in an Islamic religious school.
"Either that, or I had to get married," she says.
She hated that school, she says, and found that the school curriculum was designed against women.
It destroyed her faith in the hijab.
The day she decided to stop wearing it, she wore a coat that reached just above her knees, with a loose scarf, revealing parts of her freshly dyed bright red hair.
The principal of the religious school called her parents and told them not to let her walk down the street looking like a "prostitute," Ribel says.
Her grandmother called their home and told her parents that she hoped they would "break my legs so I wouldn't be able to leave the house".
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Ribel says her mother told her that she "wished God would take her Ribel's life so that our family wouldn't have to suffer so much."
When the abuse continued, Ribel tried to kill herself.
She woke up in the hospital with her father standing by her bed yelling at her.
In the end, she broke down that the only option for her was to leave Iran and go to Turkey, where she now lives openly without the hijab.
He is no longer in contact with his family.
Ribela's story may sound like an extreme case, but she is not the only one to whom this has happened.
Although her family was not as strict as Ribela's, it was still difficult for Mona Eltahavi, an Egyptian-American feminist activist and author, to take off her hijab.
She wore the hijab for nine years, and says that "eight of those years she spent trying to take it off."
One of the reasons it was so difficult was because her family was against it.
"When I finally gathered the courage, I left the house with the hijab half over my head. I just couldn't get it all off," Mona says, laughing.
She did not feel comfortable walking without a veil for a long period of time.
"It took me a few years to be able to tell people that I used to wear a hijab, because I was so ashamed to take it off," she says.
Mona, who wrote a book about women's rights to their bodies, Headscarves and Hymens, is closely following the protests in Iran.
At those protests, women were seen taking off their hijab, burning it or waving it in the air chanting: "Woman. Life. Freedom."
Mona says what is happening in Iran is more than just a call for political change.
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"It is true that the state oppresses both men and women," she says, "but the street, the state, and the home all together oppress women and queer people, and the fight of Iranian women against the mandatory hijab is a fight against all three."
The BBC spoke to a large number of women in Iran from religious and conservative families who say that after the recent uprising, their families have begun to support their choice to remove the hijab.
A Muslim woman who found inspiration in the protests in Iran is Bela Hasan, a journalist who works for the BBC World Service.
She was born and raised in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, and has worn the hijab for most of her life.
During the height of the protests in Iran in 2022 and after a year of living in London, she decided to take it off herself.
"I have a lot of Iranian friends and they've been letting me know how women are raising their voices for their rights to live the way they want and that really inspired me," she says.
"I thought: I'm not in Mogadishu anymore, I'm in London. I have the freedom to do what I want."
Her family in Mogadishu was not happy with her decision to ditch the hijab, but they respect her decision.
Because she works for the BBC, Bela is a recognizable face in Somalia.
The decision to remove the hijab caused a storm of reaction, and Bella wondered if maybe she should have waited a little longer.
"I no longer feel accepted in my own community and I don't feel safe," she says.
"After I took off my hijab, men started threatening me with death and rape. I was criticized for being immoral - by men I don't know."
"There is no specific punishment for women who do not wear hijab. It says in the Koran that God will deal with them, but the Muslims in my country have decided that they will deal with me, not God," he adds.
Bela says that the tradition of wearing the hijab in Somalia has very deep roots. Many women who do not want to wear hijab but never take it off.
"I hope that one day women in my country will find the courage to do what they want and not listen to what others want, especially men," says Bela.
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