Women’s Movements in the Islamic World from the mid-19th century to the present: The case of Iran

This project aims to study Iranian women’s historical endeavour for equality and social empowerment. The project covers the period from the execution of poetess Fatemeh Baraghani in 1852 for her unveiled appearance in public to the current movement in Iran with the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’. Women's movements in Iran go back to the nationalist sentiments dominant in the Middle East of the 19^th century. Nationalists of the time struggled against the fossilized interpretation of Islam, tyranny, and colonialism. They considered women’s education, female social empowerment, and gender equality before the law necessary to overcome backwardness. Given the focus of the female activists was not on women’s rights but those of the entire nation, they gained support on behalf of male intellectuals, nationalists, and religious intelligentsia. Contemporary women’s movement in Iran includes the three main types of feminist activism in the Middle East, namely Western, Islamist, and Islamic feminism. My project comparatively studies these three types of feminist activism in the Islamic World through the analysis of the case in Iran.