ABSTRACT
An overview of the Iranian women’s movement from the later 1800s to the present is necessary to contextualize the current state of the movement. This chapter examines patterns in the Iranian women’s movement from its origins to the present time, including its struggles with institutions of power, its relationship to religion and religious authority, and its dependencies on national and international institutions, as well as its innovations in the face of setbacks. The past three decades have witnessed a revival in historical studies of the early Iranian women’s movement. Scholars such as Parvin Paidar, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Ali Akbar Mahdi, Eliz Sanasarian, Hammed Shahidian, Homa Hoodfar, Nikki Keddie, Mehrangiz Kar and Shirin Ebadi, 1 to name a few, have all written on aspects of the Iranian women’s movement from historical, sociological and politico-legal perspectives covering the movement’s
1 Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Ali Akbar Mahdi, “The Iranian Women’s Movement: A Century Long Struggle,” The Muslim World 94 (2004), 427-448; E. Sanasarian, The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982); Hammed Shahidian, Women in Iran: Gender Politics in the Islamic Republic (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002); Homa Hoodfar, “Against All Odds: The Building of a Women’s Movement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in from Changing Their World 1st Edition, ed. Srilatha Batliwala, The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), (2008), 1-16, accessed online www.awid.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/changing_their_ world_-_building_of_a_womens_movement_in_the_islamic_republic_of_iran.pdf, (accessed 27 July 2016); Nikki R. Keddie; with a section by Yann Richard, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Mehrangiz Kar, Raf-e Tabeez Az Zanan, Moghayesey-e Convension-e Raf-e Tabeez Az Zanan ba Qavaneen-e Dakheliy-e Iran (End Discrimination against Women: A Comparison between the Convention of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and Iranian Laws) (Tehran: Nashr-e Qatr-e Publications, 2000); Shirin Ebadi, Huqu-e Zan Dar Ghavanin-e Jomhoriye Islamiy-e Iran (Women’s Rights, in the Laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran) (Tehran: Ganje Danesh Publication, 2002).
