ABSTRACT

Contemporary forms of gender activism in Iran can look back on a history of a women's movement that is more than 100 years old; the “woman question” has played an important and often divisive role in the making of modern Iran (Paidar 1995; Sanasarian 1982; Hoodfar 1999; Hoodfar 2000). While in Egypt, as in other countries of the region, the 1980s marked the beginning of the development of advocacy NGOs as a new central organizational form of gender and human rights activism, comparable developments in Iran in this sector were delayed due to the repercussions of the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), which marked the first decade of the newly established Islamic Republic (Arjomand 1988; Keddie 2006: 214–39; Paidar 1995: 190–220; Zubaida 1989; Foran 1994). However, with the emergence of a vocal women's press in the early 1990s and a rapidly expanding network of women's advocacy NGOs from the mid-1990s onward, the women's movement has developed into one of the key actors of Iran's contemporary civil society, which has steadily continued to develop its organizational forms and strategies to adapt to the changing overall political situation in the country.