Description
Book SynopsisIn a challenging and authoritative analysis of the role of Iranian women in the political process, Parvin Paidar considers the ways they have been affected by the evolutionary and revolutionary transformations of twentieth-century Iran. In so doing, she demonstrates how political reorganisation has of necessity redefined the position of women, and that, contrary to the view of conventional scholarship, gender issues are fundamental to the political process in contemporary Iran. The implications of the study bear on the broader issues of women in the Middle East and the developing countries generally.
Trade Review'Histories of modern Iran and the 1979 revolution in particular have dealt with gender marginally. Parvin Paidar's lucid study successfully demonstrates the centrality of women in the political process.' Shusha Guppy, The Times Higher Education Supplement
'Paidar is a scholarly and thorough academic whose research covers an extensive range of Iranian and Western sources.' Haleh Afshar, Development and Change
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Marginalisation of gender and approaches to women in Middle Eastern studies; Part I. The Discourse of Modernity: 1. Social diversity on women's issues in nineteenth-century Iran; 2. Women and the ear of constitutionalism; 3. Women and the era of nation building; 4. Women and the era of nationalism; 5. Women and the era of modernisation; Part II. The Discourse of Revolution: 6. Gender as a revolutionary discourse; 7. Women and the political transition from modernisation to Islamisation; Part III. The Discourse of Islamisation: 8. The Islamic construction of family; 9. Women and national participation in the Islamic Republic; 10. Policing the family; Conclusion.
