Women And Politics In The Islamic Republic Of Iran

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Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran looks at the rise and role of female activism in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Since 1979 women have played a decisive role in elections and assumed political posts. This study assesses this role as well as the impact of domestic and international policies on women's activism, highlighting the contradictions between politics and religion within the Islamic Republic. It also seeks to evaluate political and economic developments and the transformations in civil society, including the development of a gender conscious society. Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran features original research by Sanam Vakil, an Iranian-American scholar, who conducted interviews with women activists, politicians, journalists, clerics and students in Iran, Europe and the U.S. and used primary sources to specifically links women's activism to the domestic political changes in Iran. The book will be an essential resource for anyone studying Iranian politics and seeking to understand better the internal political and social dynamics in Iran and the critical role that women play.

A study of citizenship formation in post-1979 Iran, examining the centrality of non-elite women's participation in the process.

Blending social scientific theories about feminism, social movements, and culture with the specifics of the Iranian situation, this volume examines changes in the structure of patriarchy from the 1960s to the present by looking at domestic labor, employment, education, politics, culture, and sexuality. Combining personal narratives and socio-philosophical discussion, Shahidian focuses on policies that shape gender relations, primarily on the Islamic government's strategies to re-strengthen patriarchal practices. A nascent secular feminism in Iran opts for far-reaching changes in gender relations, but faces serious internal and external constraints. This book studies gender discourses in Iran as the interplay of ideologies and socio-historical conditions. Iranian gender and cultural politics have emerged through lively, often brutally fierce, battles over symbols, meanings, and practices--battles involving Islamist, reformist, and secular women activists. Such conflicts have produced a damaging dual society of public and private forums. This bifurcation yields not peaceful coexistence, but subjugation to the Islamic state's plans. Only by rejecting so-called reformist measures, which, the author contends, merely continue the subordination of women, can equality between the sexes be achieved.

Osanloo Arzoo presents an ethnographic study that explores how conceptions of liberal entitlements fused with a discourse of equality in Islam in the post-revolutionary era to inform & shape women's perceptions of rights.

This book examines the women's movement in Iran and its role in contesting gender relations since the 1979 revolution. Looking at examples from politics, law, employment, environment, media and religion and the struggle for democracy, this book demonstrates how material conditions have important social and political consequences for the lives of women in Iran and exposes the need to challenge the dominant theoretical perspectives on gender and Islam. A truly fascinating insider's look at the experiences of Iranian women as academics, political and civil society activists, this book counters the often inaccurate and misleading stereotyping of Iranian women to present a vibrant and diverse picture of these women's lives. A welcome and unique addition to the vibrant and growing literature on women, Islam, development, democracy and feminisms.

This study explores the links between religion, gender, and nation in the context of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Contrary to popular perception, state, gender, and religion-particularly in Islam-are not monolithic categories; the relationship among them is one of dynamic interactive processes without any fixed pattern. Author Jyotika Teckchandani shows how gender, religion, class, and ideologies interplay for negotiating the privileges and rights of women within the existing polity and power structure of Iran. Contrary to the dominant Western narrative about the perpetual marginalization of women in Iran, the present work claims that contraction or expansion of women's rights and privileges depend upon the nature of the political regime, the strength of the women's movement, and socio-economic dynamics of Iranian society. [Subject: Middle East Studies, Islamic Studies, Gender Studies, Iranian Studies]

Through an intersectional feminist re-reading of the Habermasian theoretical framework, this book analyses how women's activism has developed and operated in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Chapters look at three key areas of women's activism in Iran: how women deliberately engaged with media activism despite the government's controlling and repressive policies; women's involvement in civil society organisations, institutions and communities, and cooperation through multilevel activism; and women's activism in the political sphere and its connection with media and civil society activism despite the theocratic system. Drawing upon interviews, analyses of journal and newspaper articles and documentary/non-documentary films, as well as personal experiences, observations and communications, the book examines to what extent Iranian women's rights' groups and activists have collaborated not only with each other but with other social groups and activists to help facilitate the formation of a pluralist civil society capable of engaging in deliberative processes of democratic reform. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, particularly those who study women's and other social movements in Iran.