Negotiating women's rights: Activism, class, and modernization in Pahlavi Iran

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 227-244

  Kia, Mana ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLASS; HUMAN RIGHTS; MODERNIZATION; WOMENS STATUS;

ASIA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; IRAN; MIDDLE EAST; WORLD;

EID: 25444526878     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-25-1-227     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. I refer to the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 as Anti-Shah because the common goal of mass participation was dethroning the shah rather than establishing an Islamic government.
2. See, for example, Azar Tabari and Nahid Yeganeh, eds., in the Shadow of Islam: The Women's Movement in Iran (London: Zed, 1982);
3. Guity Nashat, ed., Women and Revolution in Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1983);
4. Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women's Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (New York: St. Martin's, 1994).
5. See, for example, Eliz Sanasarian, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran: Mutiny, Appeasement, and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982);
6. Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
7. Janet Afary, "Steering between Scylla and Charybdis: Shifting Gender Roles in Twentieth Century Iran," NWSA Journal 8 (1996): 28-49.
8. See, for example, Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).
9. See, for example, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History, trans. Michael Joseph (New York: Stein and Day, 1980);
10. Badr ol-Moluk Bamdad, From Darkness into Light: Women's Emancipation in Iran, trans. F. R. C. Bagley (Hicksville, NY. Exposition, 1977);
11. George Lenczowski, "Political Process and institutions in Iran: The Second Pahlavi Kingship," in Iran under the Pahlavis, ed. George Lenczowski (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 433-75.
12. For the shah's views on women, see Oriana Fallaci, "Muhammad Reza Pahlavi," in Interview with History, trans. John Shepley (New York: Liveright, 1976), 264-72;
13. and R. K. Karanjia, The Mind of a Monarch (London: Allen, 1977), 178-87.
14. Geraldine Heng, "'A Great Way to Fly': Nationalism, the State, and the Varieties of Third-World Feminism," in Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, ed. M. Jaqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (New York: Routledge, 1997), 30.
15. Development refers to state policies geared toward developing industrial capitalism in Iran. Modernization refers to the state's social policies designed to create citizens and include them in this process of capitalist development.
16. For a notable exception to the tendency to strip activists of agency once they work through the state, see Afsaneh Najmabadi, "(Un)Veiling Feminism," Social Text, no. 18 (2000): 29-45.
17. Sima Bahar acknowledges women's rights activists who "had been struggling for over fifty years." However, this definition of activism does not seem to include activists working within the state, since the 1953 coup d'état resulted in an end "to the political activities of women," only to be rekindled "with the beginning of the Siahkal Movement." She dismisses the activities of the High Council of Women, claiming that it was "fully controlled by the regime." Thus the only activists with any legitimacy or agency in her analysis are women involved in the guerrilla movement ("A Historical Background to the Women's Movement in Iran," in Women of Iran: The Conflict with Fundamentalist Islam, ed. Farah Azari [London: Ithaca, 1983], 181-82).
18. Heng, "Great Way to Fly," 34.
19. Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 4. This context seems to presuppose a political atmosphere that allows for civil society independent of the state.
20. Ibid., 28.
21. For instance, she states that this established opponent "could be a government, a specific group in society, or an institution," but that social movements "work against the general stream of things" (Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 29).
22. Afary, "Steering between Scylla and Charybdis," 36.
23. See F. R. C. Bagley, "The Iranian Family Protection Law of 1967: A Milestone in the Advance of Women's Rights," in Iran and Islam: In Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky, ed. C. E. Bosworth (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1971), 47-64;
24. Behnaz Pakizegi, "Legal and Social Positions of Iranian Women," Women in the Muslim World, ed. Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 216-26;
25. Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 94-97;
26. Gholam-Reza Vatandoust, "The Status of Iranian Women during the Pahlavi Regime," Women and the Family in Iran, ed. Asghar Fathi (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 114-21.
27. Parvin Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 356.
28. Ibid., 146.
29. Anthony Parsons calls the WOI and similar organizations "quasi-independent para-statal organizations," since they were linked to the state by some member of the royal family, and government ministers often held positions on the planning committees (Anthony Parsons, The Pride and Fall: Iran 1974-1979 [London: Cape, 1984], 28).
30. To her credit, Paidar does try to acknowledge a difference between the shah and the activists within the WOI, but this statement does not restore any agency to activists, and she does not explore the notion any further, leaving us with the impression of helpless activists, penned within the shah's policies (Paidar, Women and the Political Process, 150).
31. Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 81-82.
32. Afary, "Steering between Scylla and Charybdis," 38.
33. Guity Nashat, "Women in Pre-Revolutionary Iran: A Historical Overview," in Nashat, Women and Revolution in Iran, 29.
34. Ibid., 30.
35. Heng, "Great Way to Fly," 30.
36. Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 1.
37. Joan Wallach Scott, "Introduction: Feminism and History," in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4.
38. Mrinalini Sinha, "Gender in the Critiques of Colonialism and Nationalism: Locating the Indian Woman," in Scott, Feminism and History, 483.
39. Gyanendra Pandey, "In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today," Representations 37 (1992): 47.
40. Although Chatterjee is discussing a hegemonic discourse, I find many of his examples also apply to dominant discourses (Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], 151).
41. Ibid., 137.
42. The National Development Agency was created under the joint auspices of the Iranian government and the American-sponsored Point Four program. Dolatshahi describes how the Point Four program helped make educated upper- and middle-class women's employment in offices more acceptable (Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, interview by Shahrokh Meskoob, 15 May 1984, Paris, tape 3, pages 15-16, Iranian Oral History Collection, Harvard University; translations mine).
43. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 17
44. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 17.
45. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 19.
46. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 17-18.
47. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 20.
48. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 18.
49. Although such an approach may not seem radical from a present-day feminist perspective, by her own account Dolatshahi was viewed as a radical by her well-educated uncle, who was a judge (Dolatshahi, tape 3, 19).
50. Mehrangiz Dolatshahi, interview by Shahrokh Meskoob, 15 May 1984, Paris, tape no. 4, Iranian Oral History Collection, Harvard University, 13.
51. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 14.
52. Day is an Iranian month roughly corresponding to 22 December-19 January. The Seventeenth of Day is the date that Reza Shah ordered women to unveil. Later, it became a day of celebration for various women's organizations.
53. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 15.
54. "Now this is a problematic aspect and one that I think the Federation got to thinking that should they put Princess Ashraf, who was a smart and capable person, as the head of the women's organizations on one hand she could help and on the other hand she could have [the organizations] under her control" (Dolatshahi, tape 4, 15).
55. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 15-16.
56. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 16.
57. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 17.
58. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 17.
59. See Dolatshahi, tape 7, 6-13, for an account of how activists worked through the Majlis to pass the Family Protection Law.
60. Dolatshahi describes how Pahlavi actively included Dolatshahi, who had years of experience in the international arena, in planning the High Councll's involvement with international activities. Dolatshahi and other activists encouraged Pahlavi's direct participation in these activities. This participation seemed limited to attending and speaking at the opening of a conference. Aside from this, activists were left to participate according to their own judgment (Dolatshahi, tape 4, 17-19).
61. Dolatshahi relates that Pahlavi's visit to Poland's women's organization, which claimed a membership of three million, made an impression on Pahlavi by virtue of her and the shah's "enthusiasm for everything to be big and grand" (Dolatshahi, tape 4, 21-22).
62. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 22.
63. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 23.
64. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 23.
65. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 25.
66. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 25-26.
67. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 26.
68. In a similar vein, Ozma Adl criticizes the professionalization of activists and what she perceives as undue focus on legal changes (Ozma Adl [Naficy], interview by Habib Ladjevardi, 10 February 1984, Cambridge, tape 1, Iranian Oral History Collection, Harvard University, 19-20).
69. For instance, see Mahnaz Afkhami, "Iran: A Future in the Past - The 'Prerevolutionary' Women's Movement," in Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, ed. Robin Morgan (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1984), 331-33.
70. For instance, Sanasarian points to Ashraf Pahlavi's power to appoint the majority of the WOI's Central Council. For a more detailed discussion of the WOI's organizational structure, see Sanasarian, Women's Rights Movement in Iran, 83-85.
71. Marvin Zonis, Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 122.
72. Ibid., 126.
73. For a description of Ashraf Pahlavi's close relationship with her brother and of her own autonomous power, see also Adl, tape 2, 9-10.
74. Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror, 154.
75. Afkhami, "Iran: A Future in the Past," 337.
76. Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror, 154.
77. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 148.
78. Afkhami, "Iran: A Future in the Past," 331.
79. Women's Organization of Iran, The Constitution of the Women's Organization of Iran (Iran: The Organization, 1975), 3.
80. Bamdad's activities were not always in cooperation with the state. While she gladly took advantage of the state's initiative to open Tehran University to women, in later years her newspaper, Today's Women (Zan-i Imruz), was often banned by state authorities (Bamdad, From Darkness into Light, 106;
81. and Dolatshahi, tape 3, 6).
82. Dipesh Chakrabarty also discusses the nationalist ideal of selflessness in the Indian context, which is relevant to the Iranian case: "This model of the 'modern' Bengali/Indian woman - educated enough to appreciate the modern regulations of the body and the state but yet 'modest' enough to be unselfassertive and unselfish - was tied to debates on 'freedom.' 'Freedom' in the West, several authors argued, meant jathechhachar, to do as one pleased, the right to self-indulgence. in India, it was said, freedom meant freedom from the ego, the capacity to serve and obey voluntarily" ("Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations 37 [1992]: 14).
83. Bamdad, From Darkness into Light, 25, 55-66, 126-27.
84. Ibid., 121.
85. This is an old impulse. According to Afsaneh Najmabadi, from the mid-nineteenth century, the traditional woman was the most prominent symbol of backwardness: "Correspondingly the journey into modernity was defined as one of educating and unveiling this backward subject" ("Hazards of Modernity and Morality: Women, State, and Ideology in Contemporary Iran," in Women, Islam, and the State, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991], 51).
86. Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 154.
87. Dolatshahi, tape 3, 23-24.
88. Dolatshahi, tape 4, 1.
89. The conference was presented in honor ofthe UN-sponsored International Women's Year in 1975.
90. The Women's Organization of Iran and the International Institute for Adult Literacy Methods, The Design of Educational Programmes for the Social and Economic Promotion of Rural Women: An International Seminar 19-24 April 1975 (Tehran: Women's Organization of Iran, 1975), 3.
91. For an account of how activists found cooperation and commonality at the international level with women of similar ideological and class orientations, see Dolatshahi, tape 4, 19-20.
92. Women's Organization of Iran and International Institute for Adult Literacy Methods, Design of Educational Programmes, 4.
93. Lila Abu-Lughod, "Feminist Longings and Postcolonial Conditions," in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 24.
94. Ibid., 25.
95. Teresa de Lauretis, "Displacing Hegemonic Discourses: Reflections on Feminist Theory in the 1980's," Inscriptions 3-4 (1988):136.
96. Sinha, "Gender in the Critiques of Colonialism and Nationalism," 498.