Negotiating with modernity: Young women and sexuality in Iran

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 250-259

  Sadeghi, Faterneh ^a,b  

^a TARBIAT MODARES UNIVERSITY   (Iran)

^b ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY   (Iran)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MODERNITY; SEXUALITY; WOMENS STATUS; YOUNG POPULATION;

ASIA; EURASIA; IRAN; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 50649090222     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201x-2008-003     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. The generation gap includes items such as youth self-identification, lifestyle, life expectancy, different visions toward history, collective action, familial relationships, politics, religion, and many others. See Ministry of Islamic Guidance, Data Analysis of Iranians' Values and Attitudes: Generation Gap and Continuity (Tehran: Tarh-haye Melli [National Plans], AH 1382/2003);
2. see also Results of Survey in Twenty-Eight Centers of Iranian Provinces: Iranians' Values and Attitudes (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, 2001);
3. and Results of Survey in Twenty-Eight Centers of Iranian Provinces: Iranians' Values and Attitudes (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, 2004).
4. Despite these changes, as Charles Kurzman argues, the new generation of young women cannot be called feminists. See Charles Kurzman, "A Feminist Generation in Iran?" (working paper, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005).
5. Results of Survey in Twenty-Eight Centers of Iranian Provinces (2001)
6. and Results of Survey in Twenty-Eight Centers of Iranian Provinces: Iranians' Values and Attitudes (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, 2003).
7. Norma Claire Moruzzi and Fatemeh Sadeghi, "Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire: Young Iranian Women Today," Middle East Report 241 (2006): 22-28.
8. Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations," in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), 276-322.
9. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, The Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1976).
10. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
11. Ali Shari'ati, Zan (Woman), in Momjoo'e asar (Collected Works), 2nd ed., vol. 21 (Tehran: Sabz, 1983), 78.
12. Ayatollah Khomeini, Sahifeye Nour (The Book of Light) (Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, AH 1370/1991), 134.
13. Information obtained in my interviews with Iranian women in 2005-6; all translations are mine. See also Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), xi.
14. Moruzzi and Sadeghi, "Out of the Frying Pan."
15. In June 2007, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government declared that this kind of marriage must be strongly encouraged; see Ham Mihan, 26 June 2007.
16. See Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi'i Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993).
17. The Iranian Presidency and the Management and Planning Organization, Quarter Century Report of the Islamic Republic Performance (1977-2001) (Tehran: Sazmane Modiriat va Barname Rizi, 2004).
18. However, it is very surprising that despite the huge advertising of Fatima, none of the religious interviewees in my research mentioned Fatima as their role model.
19. Golnar Mehran, "The Creation of the New Muslim Woman: Female Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Convergence 23, no. 4 (1991): 42-52.
20. Daftere Motale'ate Farhangi (Cultural Studies Bureau), "A View on Budget Bill: Situation of Youth National Organization; Women and Family" (Tehran: Markaze Pajooheshshaye Majlese Shoraye Eslami [Iranian Parliament Research Center], AH 1385/2007), 13.
21. Farzin Vahdat, "Religious Modernity in Iran: Dilemmas of Islamic Democracy in the Discourse of Mohammad Khatami," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25 (2005): 650.
22. Camron Michael Amin similarly argues that Reza Shah's unveiling was an attempt to remove the supervision of women from the men in their family and to transfer that supervision to the men of the state. See Camron Michael Amin, The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865-1946 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002).
23. Mojgan Kahen, Borrasiye tatbighiye masa'le jensi beyne Iraniha va Beyikiha (A Comparative Study on Sexual Behaviors between Iranians and Belgians) (1997), www.iranianuk.com/article.php?id=15256.
24. See Homa Hoodfar, "Iranian Women at the Intersection of Citizenship and the Family Code: The Perils of Islamic Criteria," in Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 287-313.
25. See Norma Claire Moruzzi, "Trying to Look Different: Hejab as the Self-Presentation of Social Distinctions" (paper presented at the Iranian Studies Conference, London, 2-7 August 2006).
26. Asef Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People's Movement in Iran (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1997), 7.
27. Behzad Yaghmaian, Social Change in Iran: An Eye-witness Account of Dissent, Defiance, and New Movements for Rights (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 62.
28. As Sandra Bartky argues, ideal femininity requires such radical bodily transformation that every woman is bound to fail. Thus women's material bodies are taken socially to be unnatural. This materiality should not however exist in an idealized femininity. See Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe, and Rachel Thomson, "Power and Desire: The Embodiment of Female Sexuality," Feminist Review 46 (1994): 21-38.