Iran

Citation:

Molyneux, Maxine, and Shahra Razavi, eds. 2002. Gender Justice, Development, and Rights. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Authors: Maxine Molyneux, Shahra Razavi

Annotation:

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Education, Governance, Indigenous, Political Participation, Privatization, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Chile, India, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Uganda

Year: 2002

Citation:

Moghadam, Valentine M., and Fatemeh Haghighatjoo. 2016. “Women and Political Leadership in an Authoritarian Context: A Case Study of the Sixth Parliament in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Politics & Gender 12 (01): 168–97. doi:10.1017/S1743923X15000598.

Authors: Valentine M. Moghadam, Fatemeh Haghighatjoo

Abstract:

When Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, presented his proposed Cabinet to the Majles (parliament) in August 2013, one issue brought up in social media was the strange silence of the women members throughout the intensive four-day sessions to assess the ministerial nominees' programs before the vote of confidence. None of the nine women parliamentary members (MPs) used the podium to object that the president had not nominated any woman as minister. Only on social media and Persian language television was there criticism for the absence of women ministers. Eventually, Rouhani promised to include a woman in his Cabinet and to promote women in middle managerial positions. Not only was this tokenism evidence of gender-blindness, but it also evinced historical amnesia, as it overlooked the intense campaigning for women's greater participation and rights on the part of the 13 women members of Iran's Sixth Majles during the reform era coinciding with President Mohammad Khatami's two terms (1997–2005). That parliament is notable for its commitment to political and cultural reform and for the caucus that agitated for women's greater presence. Among its accomplishments were passage of the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); raising the minimum age of marriage for girls from puberty to 13; and removing the ban on single young women traveling abroad on state scholarships.

Topics: Gender, Women, Governance, Elections, International Law, Political Participation Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran

Year: 2016

Citation:

Gill, Aisha K., Nazand Begikhani, and Gill Hague. 2012. “‘Honour’-Based Violence in Kurdish Communities.” Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (2): 75–85. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2012.02.001.

Authors: Aisha K. Gill, Nazand Begikhani, Gill Hague

Abstract:

While there is a considerable body of literature dealing with various forms of violence against women, comparatively little research has explored the phenomenon of ‘honour’-based violence (HBV) within the Kurdish diaspora. This paper seeks to challenge both dominant understandings of HBV and the institutional structures that underpin its context-specific practice as a method for controlling and subjugating women. In doing so, the paper draws on original research involving thirty-four in-depth interviews with stakeholders working to address HBV in Kurdish communities in Britain: the interviewees included police officers, prosecutors, staff from government bodies and staff from women's non-governmental organisations. After exploring the role of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’ in Kurdish communities, and how value-systems predicated on gendered understandings of these concepts give rise to HBV, the paper offers a number of recommendations for improving policy and practice, especially in relation to police responses.

Topics: Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Post-Conflict, Torture, Violence Regions: Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey

Year: 2012

Citation:

Bouatta, C. 1994. “Feminine Militancy: Moudjahidates During and After the Algerian War.” In Gender and National Identity, edited by Valentine Moghadam, 192. London: Zed Books.

Author: C. Bouatta

Abstract:

Gender politics exist inevitably in all Islamist movements that expect women to assume the burden of a largely male-defined tradition. Even in secular political movements in the Muslim world - notably those anti-colonial national liberation movements where women were actively involved- women have experiences since independence a general reversal of the gains made. This collection written by women from the countries concerned explores the gender dynamics of a variety of political movements with very different trajectories to reveal how nationalism, revolution and Islamization are all gendered processes.  The authors explore women's experiences in the Algerian national liberation movement and more recently the fundamentalist FIS; similarly their involvement in the struggle to construct a Bengali national identity and independent Bangladeshi state; the events leading to the overthrow of the Shah and subsequent Islamization of Iran; revolution and civil war in Afghanistan; and the Palestinian Intifada.  This book argues that in periods of rapid political change, women in Muslim societies are in reality central to efforts to construct a national identity. (Zed Books)

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, DDR, Gender, Women, Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Iran, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 1994

Citation:

Hattersley, Michael. 2002. “Prospects for Progress in Arab Lands.” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 8 (6): 20.

Author: Michael Hattersley

Abstract:

The fate of sexual minorities is closely tied to the fate of women in Muslim countries, as it has been elsewhere. But liberating women poses a much more fundamental challenge to Islam than it does to Christianity or Judaism. The three "religions of the Book," in fact, have radically different attitudes toward war, human rights, and sexuality. It's somewhat speculative but not irrelevant to relate these differences to the characters and historical eras of their founders. Abraham, the figure claimed as the father of all three faiths, led a clan out of Ur, a relatively sophisticated Mesopotamian city, into Palestine circa 1800 BCE. Anxious to be fruitful and multiply, but married to a barren woman, Sarah, he agreed at her request to have a child by her handmaiden Hagar. God later rewarded Sarah with a miraculous son. According to the Old Testament, Sarah's son Isaac became the progenitor of the Hebrews, while Hagar's son Ishmael became the progenitor of the Arabs. 3. American foreign policy over the last twenty years has often rewarded Arab terrorism. We can trace the growth of terrorist organizations to America's turn-tail evacuations in Somalia in the 1990's and Lebanon in the 80's. Bin Laden himself was reportedly encouraged by the fact that the U.S. reduced its naval presence in the Persian Gulf after the attack on the Cole. Pulling out at the first sign of American casualties sent the message that the U.S. was a paper tiger. Bin Laden, like Hitler, thrives on his ability to convince people that the Western democracies are unwilling to fight back on a broad front. Recent developments, of course, have sent a very different -- and salutary -- message 4. The U.S. is partially responsible for the fact that the Middle Eastern countries have not evolved politically in the second half of the 20th century. Iran, while not an Arab country, provides a case in point. In 1954 Iran elected a democratic, left-wing regime headed by Mossadegh, who intended either to depose the Shah or turn him into a constitutional monarch. CIA intervention restored the "Westernizing" Shah Pahlevi as dictator. As a result, Iran was denied the opportunity to liberalize from the bottom. Its political development was postponed for thirty years, and the resulting fundamentalist reaction in 1979 was all the more violent. Similarly, the ever-accommodating U.S. State department has coddled, financed, and pretended to negotiate with cynical regimes in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. (Still, it should be noted that in recent years the U.S. has intervened repeatedly in the Muslim world to help prevent ethnic cleansing, starvation, or conquest -- in Bosnia, Somalia, East Timor, and Kuwait. These efforts have been at least partial successes, and not all have been motivated by a desire for cheap oil. But they have gained us no real friends.)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Roles, LGBTQ Regions: Africa, MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, United States of America

Year: 2002

Citation:

Sohrabizadeh, Sanaz, Sogand Tourani, and Hamid Reza Khankeh. 2016. “Women and Health Consequences of Natural Disasters: Challenge or Opportunity?” Women & Health (May 2, 2016): 1–17. doi:10.1080/03630242.2016.1176101.

Authors: Sanaz Sohrabizadeh, Sogand Tourani, Hamid Reza Khankeh

Abstract:

Disasters do not affect people equally; the impact of disasters on the lives of women is different from other groups of a community. Women’s fundamental rights to health and safety are violated after disasters. The authors of this study aimed to explore various factors of women’s health with reference to previous natural disasters in Iran. A qualitative approach using in-depth unstructured interviews and field observations was employed to explore women’s health factors in the affected regions. A total of 22 participants affected by disasters, as well as key informants, were interviewed applying the purposeful sampling method. Data were collected in 2014 in three provinces, including East Azerbaijan, Bushehr, and Mazandaran. A content analysis using the Graneheim approach was performed for analyzing the transcribed interviews. Two themes and four categories were extracted from the data. The themes that emerged included psycho-physical effects and women’s health status. Physical and psycho-emotional effects and reproductive and environmental health effects were the four emergent categories. The findings implied that managing women’s health challenges may result in reducing the distressing effects of disaster. These findings support identification and application of the mechanisms by which women’s well-being in physical, mental, reproductive, and environmental aspects can be protected after disasters.

Keywords: disasters, gender, health, iran, women

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, Reproductive Health Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran

Year: 2016

Citation:

Mortazavi, Shahrnaz, Nisreen Pedhiwala, Maggie Shafiro, and Leslie Hammer. 2009. “Work-Family Conflict Related to Culture and Gender.” Community, Work & Family 12 (2): 251–73.

Authors: Shahrnaz Mortazavi, Nisreen Pedhiwala, Maggie Shafiro, Leslie Hammer

Abstract:

In recent years, the growing number of multinational companies and a more diversified workforce on both national and international levels has contributed to increased investigation of work and family across cultures (e.g., Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005). The purpose of this study is to further the understanding of individual experiences of work-family conflict across three different countries and cultures (Ukraine, Iran, and the US). One hundred thirty employees from Ukraine, 154 from Iran, and 192 from the US constitute the research sample. The relationship between gender, nationality, and cultural values of horizontal individualism and collectivism measured at the national and individual levels (idiocentrism and allocentrism), with work and family demands and work-family conflict are examined. We found no difference in the amount of conflict experienced across Ukraine, Iran, and the US. This research showed that there is a negative relationship between work-to-family conflict and horizontal allocentrism (collectivism) at work and family. Idiocentric (Individualistic) employees reported less family-to-work conflict at work.

Keywords: individualism, collectivism, gender, cross-cultural, horizontal idiocentrism, allocentrism, work, family, conflict

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Households, Multi-National Corporations, Nationalism Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Iran, Ukraine, United States of America

Year: 2009

Citation:

Eisenstein, Zilliah. 2002. Feminisms In The Aftermath Of September 11. Social Text 20 (3): 79-99.

Author: Zilliah Eisenstein

Abstract:

This essay is about how women's rights as a complicated discourse, and the burkha as a complex symbolic, are the sites from which to understand the complexity of global power struggles at this moment. But first a note of context is necessary to clear some space for thinking—openly, critically, historically—in terms of a before and after of September 11. September 11 has not changed everything. It has just made clear how much context and perspective and location matter. Ask the people of Chile about September 11—when their beloved president, Salvador Allende, was gunned down in a coup d'état supported by the United States. Ask them the meaning of trauma and grief. Think back to the Gulf War and U.S. militarist terrorism of its smart bombs. Think across and beyond to the children of Iraq, today, this minute, who need cancer drugs or textbooks for their schools and cannot have them because of the economic sanctions imposed on their country. Do what women always do—multitask, so that you are not simply concentrated on yourself, or the United States, or this moment.

Keywords: gender analysis, gender and conflict, middle east, iran, September 11, constructivism and gender, feminism, Iraq, MENA

Topics: Development, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Health, PTSD, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Religion, Security, Human Security, Sexuality, Violence, Weapons /Arms Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, Iraq

Year: 2002