Women, Islam and Education in Iran


Book Description

Drawing on the complexities and nuances in women’s education in relation to the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, this edited collection examines implications of religious-based policies on gender relations as well as the unanticipated outcomes of increasing participation of women in education. With a focus on the impact of the Islamic Republic’s Islamicization endeavor on Iranian society, specifically gender relations and education, this volume offers insight into the paradox of increasing educational opportunities despite discriminatory laws and restrictions that have been imposed on women.




Women in Iran from the Rise of Islam to 1800


Book Description

Combining scholarship from a range of disciplines, this collection of essays is a comprehensive examination of the role of women in Iranian society and culture, from pre-Islamic times to 1800. The contributors challenge common assumptions about women in Iran and Islam. Sweeping away modern myths, these essays show that women have had significant influence in almost every area of Iranian life. Focusing on a region wider than today's nation-state of Iran, this book explores developments in the spheres that most affect women: gender constructs, family structure, community roles, education, economic participation, Islamic practices and institutions, politics, and artistic representations. The contributors to this volume are prominent international scholars working in this field, and each draws on decades of research to address the history of Iranian women within the context of his or her area of expertise. This broad framework allows for a thorough and nuanced examination of the history of a complex society.




Reconstructed Lives


Book Description

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.




Women and the Islamic Republic


Book Description

A study of citizenship formation in post-1979 Iran, examining the centrality of non-elite women's participation in the process.




Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling and Reveiling


Book Description

Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.




Women and Gender in Islam


Book Description

A classic, pioneering account of the lives of women in Islamic history, republished for a new generation This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book is now reissued as a Veritas paperback, with a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining its enduring influence. “Ahmed’s book is a serious and independent-minded analysis of its subject, the best-informed, most sympathetic and reliable one that exists today.”—Edward W. Said “Destined to become a classic. . . . It gives [Muslim women] back our rightful place, at the center of our histories.”—Rana Kabbani, The Guardian




Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century Iran


Book Description

This book examines the women's movement in Iran and its role in contesting gender relations since the 1979 revolution. Looking at examples from politics, law, employment, environment, media and religion and the struggle for democracy, this book demonstrates how material conditions have important social and political consequences for the lives of women in Iran and exposes the need to challenge the dominant theoretical perspectives on gender and Islam. A truly fascinating insider's look at the experiences of Iranian women as academics, political and civil society activists, this book counters the often inaccurate and misleading stereotyping of Iranian women to present a vibrant and diverse picture of these women's lives. A welcome and unique addition to the vibrant and growing literature on women, Islam, development, democracy and feminisms.




Access to Justice in Iran


Book Description

A critical and in-depth analysis of access to justice from international and Islamic perspectives, with a specific focus on access by women.




Women in the Middle East


Book Description

Written by a pioneer in the field of Middle Eastern women's history, Women in the Middle East is a concise, comprehensive, and authoritative history of the lives of the region's women since the rise of Islam. Nikki Keddie shows why hostile or apologetic responses are completely inadequate to the diversity and richness of the lives of Middle Eastern women, and she provides a unique overview of their past and rapidly changing present. The book also includes a brief autobiography that recounts Keddie's political activism as one of the first women in Middle East Studies. Positioning women within their individual economic situations, identities, families, and geographies, Women in the Middle East examines the experiences of women in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, in Iran, and in all the Arab countries. Keddie discusses the interaction of a changing Islam with political, cultural, and socioeconomic developments. In doing so, she shows that, like other major religions, Islam incorporated ideas and practices of male superiority but also provoked challenges to them. Keddie breaks with notions of Middle Eastern women as faceless victims, and assesses their involvement in the rise of modern nationalist, socialist, and Islamist movements. While acknowledging that conservative trends are strong, she notes that there have been significant improvements in Middle Eastern women's suffrage, education, marital choice, and health.




Do Muslim Women Need Saving?


Book Description

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam. It offers a detailed, moving portrait of the actual experiences of ordinary Muslim women, and of the contingencies with which they live.




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