implement, Muslim women have retaken center stage in the conversations regarding gender relations in Iran. Working within such a framework has allowed a larger number of Muslim women to challenge the gender rules of their societies. A coalition of secular and Islamic feminists from the press, film, and academia– including Faezeh Hashemi, Shahla Sherkat, Tahmineh Milani, and Jaleh Shaditalab – have begun to work with reformist male parliamentarians to “contest the codified and institutionalized privileges of men over women.” The female agency rooted in the mobilization of women during the Iranian Revolution and the unintended widespread empowerment of women through policies of Islamization have been integral components to the increasing political participation of women in Iran. The popular Western notions which label Muslim women – and Iranian women especially since Islam if the official state ideology – as submissive, veiled, and voiceless entities are subverted by the growing women’s movement in Iran. The irony is in the fact that “many women today owe their education, their jobs, their economic autonomy, and their public persona, to compulsory hejab” mandated by the Islamic Republic in order to restrict women. The issue of veiling undoubtedly restricts some, but it is pertinent to acknowledge its emancipatory effects within a society which, like all others in their own ways, still struggling with patriarchy. The public sphere remains a male domain and veiling legitimizes the female presence in that domain. Iranian women have then utilized compulsory veiling as a key instrument in taking for
actively and assertively voice egalitarian attitudes and are now striving to pursue greater gender equality within the Islamic framework. This Islamic feminism, though complex, appears to be a formidable force within Iran. The generalizations which deem Iranian women submissive, voiceless, and homogenous thus prove to require a greater and more nuanced analysis of the Islamic Republic of Iran and of the Muslim world as a whole. Bibliography Abbasi, Mohammad Jalal; Mehryar, Amir; Jones, Gavin; McDonald, Peter, “Revolution, War and Modernization: Population Policy and Fertility Change in Iran,” Journal of Population Research. Vol. 19. 1 Nov. 2002: 22-46. Print. Abrahamian, Ervand, A History of Modern Iran, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Abu-Lughod, Lila, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 104, Iss. 3, Sept. 2002: 783-790, Print. Afary, Janet, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Arjomand, Saïd Amir, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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