FEMINIST MOVEMENTS
iii. IN THE PAHLAVI PERIOD
The fundamental political, socio-cultural, and economic changes which Persia underwent in the Pahlavi era (1921-78) had drastic repercussions on the women’s rights movement and the condition of women. This article reviews the nature of these changes and the interplay between the state and the demands of the society in the course of major historical events of three distinct periods: 1921-41, under Reżā Shah; and 1941-53 and 1953-78, under Moḥammad-Reżā Shah.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS UNDER REŻĀ SHAH
Reżā Shah introduced policies that altered the lives of Persian women radically. He built an authoritarian state, promoted secular and modernizing policies, and controlled and suppressed clerical resistance to them. For the first time, some women entered into modern sectors of the economy, family laws were modified, unveiling was enforced, and public co-educational primary schools were established in 1936. The rapid development of women’s schools, in spite of bitter clerical objection, was one of the main vehicles for women’s awakening in this period. In 1910, only 2,167 girls enrolled at 47 schools. In 1918-19 the government of Mīrzā Ḥasan Khan Woṯūq-al-Dawla founded a Teachers Training School (Dār al-moʿallemāt) and ten public elementary schools for girls with the enrollment of a few hundred pupils in Tehran. The establishment of modern schools for girls increased at an accelerated pace in the 1920s-30s when the number of female students rose in the period 1926-27 from 17,000 in elementary schools and 700 in secondary schools to 47,000 and 2,000 respectively in 1936-37. The mid-1930s saw also the opening of higher education to women and enrollment of over seventy female students in 1936-37 at the University of Tehran (see education vii, xxv, and xxvi; Bāmdād, I, p. 62).
Women’s participation in the women’s rights movement during this period underwent two distinct phases: first, that of the relatively small, independent movement in the 1920s for women’s rights; and subsequently the 1930s movement from above.
The movement in the 1920s. The 1920s saw the continuation of the movement by the same generation of a small group of women mostly from privileged backgrounds who had participated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11 (see i. above). Their activities in Tehran included organizing a small association and publishing five short-lived magazines with fairly limited circulation. In the vanguard of women’s journals was the bi-monthly Women’s World (Jahān-e zanān). Faḵr Āfāq Pārsā with her husband’s assistance edited and published five issues in Mašhad and Tehran in 1921. The journal was a pioneer in its non-partisan struggle against religious prejudice and those opposing changes in women’s status (Šayḵ-al-Eslāmī, p. 104). After it was charged with being anti-Islamic by the clerical establishment and the bāzārīs, the government suspended the journal and the Pārsās were exiled to Qom (Ṣadr-Hāšemī, II, pp. 181-85). About the same time, the alumnae of the American Girl’s School published the Women’s Universe (Ālam-e neswān) which ran for 13 years (1921-33) in Tehran (Šayḵ-al-Eslāmī, pp. 120-41).
Moḥtaram Eskandarī (q.v.), the founder of the Patriotic Women’s League (Jamʿīyat-e neswān-e waṭanḵᵛāh) in 1922 was the main force behind women’s rights activists. The League purported to honor Islam and its laws. It also organized a consciousness-raising play, “The Apple and Adam and Eve in Paradise” (Sīb o Ādam o Ḥawwā dar behešt), with active support from spouses of such prominent and enlightened notables as Woṯūq-al-Dawla, Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī (q.v.), and Adīb-al-Salṭana Sardārī. It was scheduled for 15 May 1923, but the police stopped its performance after a terse ultimatum given to the powerful chief of police, Brigadier Moḥammad Dargāhī (q.v.) by a popular preacher, Mīrzā ʿAbd-Allāh Wāʿeẓ: “If you won’t disrupt the play tonight, you won’t be the chief tomorrow.” Two days later, after a rumor disseminated by the clerics insinuating that unveiled women were to congregate at the performance, a mob looted the house of Nūr-al-Hodā Mangana where the play was to take place (Šayḵ-al-Eslāmī, pp. 155-57). The League also organized adult literacy classes for women (Madrasa-ye akāber-e neswān) and published a journal, Jamʿīyat-e neswān-e waṭanḵᵛāh, ten issues of which appeared between 1923 and 1925. According to Ṣadr Hāšemī (II, p. 170), with the untimely death of Eskandarī in 1925, the League lost its impetus and terminated publication of the journal (Šayḵ-al-Eslāmī, p. 146). Mastūra Afšār succeeded Eskandarī as the League’s president and with the help of such activists as Nūr-al-Hodā Mangana, Homā Maḥmūdī, Faḵr-ʿOẓmā Arḡūn, Ṣadīqa Dawlatābādī (q.v.), and Faḵr Āfāq Pārsā, attempted to continue Eskandarī’s tradition of activism (Bāmdād I, pp. 48, 152-162; Ṣadr Hāšemī, II, pp. 169-70). The League’s roster for the year 1925 shows the names of 74 members, who paid total membership dues of 302 tomans (personal communication from Mehrangīz Dawlatšāhī). In November 1932, the League accepted an invitation from the government to assist in organizing the Second Congress of Eastern Women in Tehran. The League stopped its activities after this meeting and later its members joined the government sponsored Ladies’ Center (Kānūn-e bānovān, see below). This was in conformity with the general trend of the 1930s when small independent women’s rights movements were coopted and absorbed by the state.
The movement from above in the 1930s. In the 1930s, the state took a more active role in addressing gender issues. From 27 November to 2 December 1932, the Second Congress of Eastern Women (Dovvomīn Kongera-ye zanān-e šarq) was organized in Tehran with strong encouragement by the government. Šayḵ-al-Molk Owrang was its organizer and Nūr Ḥammāda (the president of the First Congress of Eastern Women) from Lebanon, Fāṭema Saʿīd Merād from Syria, Ḥonayna Ḵūrīya from Egypt, and Mastūra Afšār from Persia were members of the organizing committee. There were also representatives from Afghanistan, Australia, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Lebanon, Persia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Zanzibar. The participants discussed their movements and condemned the backward situation of Persian and Arab women, including female illiteracy and the tyrannical domination of husbands over their wives and the abuse of women in general. The Congress passed a resolution with 22 articles concerning, inter alia, women’s suffrage, equal opportunity in education, occupation and wages, reform in family law, and abolition of polygamy and prostitution (Sāl-nāma-ye Pārs, 1311 Š./1932, pp. 86-89).
Reẓā Shah formulated his policy of banning the veil (čādor, q.v.) after his state visit to Turkey in the Summer of 1934. A year later, ʿAlī-Aṣḡar Ḥekmat, the minister of education (wazīr-e maʿāref), called on his own initiative a number of leading women educators, veterans of the women’s movement from the 1920s and 1930s, to form the Ladies’ Center on 14 October 1935. Ḥājar Tarbīat was appointed as its director, and such women’s rights activists as Afšār, Dawlatābādī, Pārsā, Arḡūn, Parvīn Eʿteṣāmī (q.v.), Aḵtar Kāmbaḵš, Tāj-al-Molūk Ḥekmat, Eṣmat-al-Molūk Dawlatdād, Šams-al-Molūk Jawāher-kalām, Faḵr-al-Zamān Ḡaffārī Bāyandor, Parī Ḥosām Šahīdī, and Badr-al-Molūk Bāmdād served as its board members. The Center campaigned against “the black shroud” (kafan-e sīāh, a pejorative reference to the čādor) and encouraged all participants to attend its meetings unveiled. Four months later Reżā Shah proclaimed the measures against the veil at the Tehran Teachers College (Dānešsarā-ye Tehrān) on 17 Dey 1314 Š./7 January 1936. The opposition from clerical and conservative forces was suppressed and unveiling became official policy enforced through coercive measures. Whereas the masses remained attached to the veil, the educated elite and many middle-class women welcomed unveiling (Bāmdād I, pp. 88-91). Soon after the enforcement of unveiling the Center was transformed in 1937 from a women’s association to an adult and young women’s educational and welfare center with Dawlatābādī as its director (Ḥekmat, pp. 85-102; Bāmdād, I, pp. 52, 58, 94; Pahlavi, 1980, pp. 24-27). Finally, in the words of a recent study, “although the establishment of the Ladies Center signaled the end of an era of women’s independent activities, nevertheless it provided much needed security to the movement of women’s emancipation” (Paidar, p. 105).
WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENTS FROM 1941 to 1953
After Reżā Shah’s abdication in 1941, women’s rights and, more specifically, women’s appearance and clothing became a major source of controversy between the conservative and modernist forces. The main reaction to women’s rights came from conservative clerical establishment and the newly formed fundamentalist organization of the Devotees of Islam (Fedāʾīān-e Eslām; q.v.) who demanded a return to the veil in public and attempted to bloc women’s suffrage as initiated by left-wing groups and liberal nationalist elements in the National Front (Jabha-ye mellī; Akhavi, pp. 60-72). On the other hand, the veterans of independent women’s rights movement of the previous period as well as recently released leftist groups began to publish several newspapers and organize a number of diverse organizations and charitable and professional associations. Similar to their predecessors, these groups expressed concerns regarding women’s education and literacy, legal inequalities and suffrage. The Women’s party of Iran (Ḥezb-e zanān-e Īrān), a more active organization, was founded in 1942 by Ṣafīya Fīrūz with Fāṭema Sayyāḥ, as its secretary and editor of its organ, Zanān-e Īrān. The goal of the party was to promote women’s education, social status and awareness. In 1944, when the issue of electoral reform was discussed in the Majles, the party lobbied for women’s suffrage. In 1946, under Sayyāḥ’s leadership, the party was transformed into the Iranian Women’s Council (Šūrā-ye zanān-e Īrān) to attract women of different political views (Paidar, pp. 126-27).
In order to articulate women’s concerns, these organizations merged with other women’s associations, including the Women’s Relief Association of Tehran (Anjoman-e moʿāwanat-e zanān-e šahr), Women Teachers’ Association, (Anjoman-e bānovān-e farhangī), and the Women Medical Practitioners Center (Kānūn-e bānovān-e pezešk). Together, they issued a joint statement in mid-1940s and declared that “educated and progressive Persian women of today cannot consider themselves isolated from the rest of the society. Women must go forward and struggle for their own rights” (Bāmdād, I, pp. 103-5).
The most active organization of women in this decade was the Democratic Society of Women (Jāmeʿa-ye demokrāt-e zanān), the women’s branch of the Tudeh party. The party began focusing on women in 1943, and established two groups, one for female party members and another for sympathizers. The two groups merged in the Tudeh Democratic Society of Women in 1949. Most members were upper and middle-class women associated with party leaders, including Zahrā and Tāj Eskandarī, Maryam Fīrūz, Ḵadīja Kešāvarz, Aḵtar Kāmbaḵš, and Badr-monīr ʿAlawī. The Democratic Society published a feminist journal, Bīdārī-e mā (Our awakening), edited by Homā Hūšmand. It linked class inequalities with gender, and campaigned on such issues as women’s education, mobilization of women for political activities, prostitution, female exploitation in factories, day care centers, workshops to train women and formation of women’s journals. However, its apparent control by the male leadership may help explain its silence on such gender-specific issues as marriage, polygamy and divorce. In 1944 the Society succeeded in placing a woman suffrage bill before the Majles but the bill was defeated because of clerical opposition who considered women’s place to be at home and their duties bound by motherhood and child-bearing (Abrahamian, pp. 276-323-26; Royanian, pp. 18-28; Akhavi, pp. 60-72).
WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENTS FROM 1953 TO 1979
From the Coup d’état of 1953to the 1963 White Revolution. This period saw the continuation of activities by a number of women’s welfare organizations and professional associations and magazines. Also active were some new organizations, including the New Path Society (Jamʿīyat-e rāh-e now) founded in 1955 by Mehrangīz Dawlatšāhī who, later in the mid-1970s, became the first ever female Persian ambassador. The Society’s main contribution was its active participation in the drafting of the Family Protection Law of 1967 as well as in providing some welfare and educational services for women in low income groups (Bāmdād, tr. pp. 109-10). In 1956 the Society along with the Association of Women Lawyers (Anjoman-e zanān-e ḥoqūqdān), founded by Mehrangīz Manūčehrīān, and the League of Women Supporters of Human Rights (Jamʿīyat-e zanān-e ṭarafdār-e ḥoqūq-e bašar), founded by Badr-al-Molūk Bāmdād, launched a campaign for women’s suffrage (Paidar, pp. 136-37).
The first major event of this period came in 1959 when a federation called the High Council of Women’s Societies of Iran (Šūrā-ye ʿālī-e jamʿīyathā-ye zanān-e Īrān), bringing together eighteen existing women’s organizations, was formed, with Princess Ašraf Pahlavī (the shah’s twin sister) as its president (Pahlavi, pp. 154-55; Woodsmall, 1960, p. 83; Paidar, pp. 138-39). Although the federation was independent, the royal patronage marked the beginning of the state-sponsored women’s rights movement which culminated in the mid-1960s with the formation of the Women’s Organization of Iran or WOI (Sāzmān-e zanān-e Īrān; see below).
From the 1963 White Revolution to the Revolution of 1978-79. The six-point program of the White Revolution, announced on 9 January 1963, included land redistribution and women’s enfranchisement. Both measures had already been denounced in 1959 by the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ḥosayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī Borūjerdī (q.v.), the source of emulation for the Shiʿite community, and Sayyed Moḥammad Behbahānī (q.v.), an influential ayatollah in Tehran (Akhavi, pp. 63-65, 95, 101). Almost two weeks after the proclamation of women’s enfranchisement, demonstrations broke out in the bāzār and in the southern neighborhoods of Tehran. In response to these reactions, women also protested and went on strike. On 26 January 1963, a referendum on the White Revolution was held. While women’s votes were counted separately from men’s, the referendum approved and passed women’s suffrage without difficulties. But the above measures combined with the overall discontent of the traditional forces met with severe resistance from the religious establishment leading to major urban riots on 5 June 1963 in Tehran and a number of major provincial cities (Akhavi, pp. 117-29; Farmayan, pp. 104-6, 109). The riots were crushed by military force whose apparent success in suppressing the resistance to these reforms paved the way for more drastic changes in women’s conditions in the following years.
Women’s rights activists of the period from 1963 to 1979 were divided into two opposing groups. One group, which supported the establishment, had entered the public arena by participating in political, bureaucratic and social institutions. These women were active in the government sponsored WOI and in the two officially backed political parties. On the other hand, women opposed to the regime attempted to challenge the state, but were denied participation. But there were occasions when in spite of ideological and partisan differences, common concerns and interests pertaining to women overlapped.
Women’s Organization of Iran. As noted before, the main driving force behind the official women’s movement in the sixties and seventies was Princess Ašraf Pahlavī. Prior to this new role, she had been actively engaged in behind the scene political maneuvers from the beginning of her brother’s reign in 1941 to the coup d’état of 1332 Š./1953 (q.v.). But with the shah’s tightening grip on political affairs, the princess found a new niche for herself in women’s rights activities as well as in the United Nations. She chaired Persia’s delegation to the UN General Assembly, Persia’s Human Rights Commission, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and Persia’s delegation to the 1975 International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico. She also provided vital support to a group of upper and middle-class women who fostered and shaped state gender policy as embodied in the WOI (Pahlavi 1980, pp. XV, 14, 43, 135-36, 153).
The Women’s Organization of Iran was formed in November 1966, when 55 existing women’s associations affiliated themselves to the newly created body, with the princess as its president. Others, among them Association of Women Lawyers and University Women’s Association chose to remain autonomous. Following Homā Rūḥī, Sīmīn Rejālī, and Hešmat Yūsofī, Mahnāz Afḵamī was appointed by Princess Ašraf as the Secretary General of the WOI in 1970 and remained in that post until the 1979 Revolution. She led the organization in its most active years and later, as the minister for women’s affairs (Wazīr-e mošāwer dar omūr-e zanān, 1975-78), she became the second woman ever to enter the cabinet. The first woman cabinet minister, Farroḵ-rū Pārsā, served as the minister of education (1968-74), and was executed by a revolutionary tribunal in 1979.
The WOI’s avowed aim was to provide a framework for women’s movements in Persia, and Princess Ašraf stated her intention to create equality between the sexes (Pahlavi,1980, p. 154; Sāzmān-e zanān, Sāl-nāma, pp. 41-42 and pp. 141-42). Its constitution expressed six areas of interest: women’s welfare, legal matters, publications, social concerns, international publicity and organizational activities (Sāl-nāma, pp. 100-101). The WOI organized literacy classes, vocational training and subsidiary programs in child care, family planning and job counseling in urban centers and some provincial towns and its research organs sponsored various studies on women’s lives (Afkhami, 1984, n. 23, p. 192; Sāzmān-e zanān, Gozāreš-e faʿʿālīyathā, p. 104).
The WOI also influenced the enactment of the 1975 Family Protection Laws (FPL) which buttressed some aspects of the 1967 Family Protection Laws. The 1975 FPL set a minimum age for marriage at 15 to 18 for women and at 18 to 20 for men (see FAMILY LAW iii; Pākīzagī, pp. 217-25). Furthermore, the law granted women equal rights to submit valid divorce requests to the Family Courts (Kamankar, p. 175; Bagley, p. 58 and pp. 60-64). Additionally, the FPL permitted mothers to have child custody and transferred such jurisdiction to the Family Protection Courts. Moreover, it attempted to restrict polygamy by requiring the first wife’s agreement. The FPL also helped to loosen certain traditional and legal barriers against women’s employment (Moʿīnī ʿErāqī, p. 36 and p. 46). It should be noted that in 1973, in an effort to address the rapid rise of population, the government legalized abortion (Mossavar -Rahmani, p. 255).
The seventies, when the WOI was at its most active years, coincided with a time when Persia was bent on making its influence felt in international affairs. The WOI was instrumental in helping to improve the international image of the Persian government abroad by publicizing improvements in women’s rights and status. Afḵamī acknowledged the WOI’s success in “channeling substantial financial aid to UN programs for International Women’s Year” in 1975 (Afkhami, 1984, p. 336). Princess Ašraf presented a check for two million dollars and pledged greater support for future UN women’s initiatives (Pahlavi, 1984, p. 173).
Finally, it should be noted that the WOI functioned primarily as a government agency for promoting women’s rights and welfare, not as an independent women’s association or federation of women’s organizations. Therefore, it remained a hierarchical bureaucratic organization to conduct reform from above (Paidar, p. 159; and Sedghi, 1996, p. 121).
Anti-establishment women’s movements. Anti-establishment women have not left as complete a record as the mainstream women. With the exception of a few references, opposition women have been largely ignored in Persian political and feminist studies. Not embracing a monolithic critical and feminist stance, anti-government women sharply disagreed on women’s oppression, women’s emancipation, gender relations, and women’s role in the family. As members of revolutionary and or guerrilla organizations, they represented the objectives and interests of their different organizations. As independent individuals and feminists, they expressed themselves in tracts and poetry, however, in a symbolic and abstract way. The anti-establishment women included members of the secular left and religious opposition groups, as well as individual and independent secular women. Here the role of individual women, particularly writers and poets like Forūḡ Farrroḵzād (q.v.), Sīmīn Danešvar, Sīmīn Behbahānī and many others should be emphasized. Forūḡ Farrroḵzād’s contribution in challenging gender boundaries and changing attitudes and perceptions of many of her readers through her daring and powerful voice has been the subject of several inter-disciplinary studies.
Organizations of the secular left operated clandestinely since they were banned politically. The activity and impact of women in these organizations were indirect and went largely unnoticed until the Revolution of 1978-79. The participation of women in opposition politics involved a parallel struggle against male domination and traditional gender inequalities in the household and society. In this respect, women in opposition shared an interest, without recognizing or honoring it, with their pro-government counterparts. Yet women’s membership in left-wing organizations did not confer an equal status with their male counterparts, and many women obtained respect in their organizations in part because of their nourishing and nurturing role (Moghissi, pp. 114-38; several issues of Zanān mobāreza mīkonand, n.d.). Some of the noted women in the underground movement included Ašraf Dehqānī, a member of the Central Committee of the Iranian People’s Guerrillas (Čerīkhā-ye fedāʾī-e ḵalq-e Īrān); Šīrīn Moʿāżed; ʿĀṭefa Gorgīn; Sīmīn Ṣāleḥī; Ṭāhera Sajjādī Tehrānī; Manīža Ašrafzāda; Vīdā Ḥājebī Tabrīzī; and Roqayya Dānešgar (see communism III; Dehqānī, pp. 30-31, 126-28; Moghissi, pp. 127-28; CAIFI, 1974 and 1975).
As newcomers to direct political opposition in the late 1960s and 1970s, activist women with a Muslim orientation set forth a position that overlapped with other anti-government women: both groups attempted to challenge the state and subvert the old world of gender order by refusing to stay at home and by taking an active part in the 1979 revolution. They did so, despite vastly different gender perspectives. Once the 1979 revolution erupted and succeeded in replacing the secularizing ancienregime, many formerly anti-government Muslim women abandoned their opposition posture and became supporters of the new state. Some maintained their strict adherence to sexual codes, the will of the father or husband, and the home and the household, while some took a reformist position but upheld the return of family values, gender differences, and the čādor as the national costume for women (Betteridge, pp. 112-13; Yeganeh and Keddie, 1986, pp. 108-36; Ramazani, 1993; Tabari and Yeganeh, pp. 91-131).
An overview. The above survey of the women’s rights movement and condition of the period of 1963-78 shows a number of achievements and shortcomings. It demonstrates that the reform from above improved the condition of women in Persia, and most of the demands made by the radical groups in the earlier periods were partially achieved, including women’s suffrage and an increase in literacy and employment among women, as well as women’s legal rights in the family and welfare programs for women. Women’s education played a crucial part in promoting the awakening of women and improving conditions for women in the period from 1946 to 1976 when the number of female students leapt from 94,000 to 1,800,000 at the primary level, from 7,000 to 824,000 at the secondary level, and from 500 to 43,000 at higher education (see education xxvi, Table 1). There were also 12,403 Literacy Corps women working in the villages in the mid-1970s. By the late 1970s women were entering many fields of study, including medicine, law, engineering, education, liberal arts, etc. The educational progress made during this period, combined with rapid economic growth, led to employment opportunities which facilitated the participation of Persian women in the labor market, from high skilled professional positions to all levels of governmental bureaucracy (Moghadam, 1994, pp. 80-97). They were being employed in universities, in the army and police forces, and as judges, pilots, engineers, and they participated in public sports. In addition, a number of women were appointed or elected to governmental positions. For example, in the late 1970s, 22 women were in the Majles and 2 in the senate; 333 women (20 percent of the total) were elected to local councils, and 5 became mayors. Moreover, one woman was a cabinet minister, three were deputy ministers, one was an ambassador, and another one was a governor (Najmabadi, 1991, p. 61; Pīrnīā, passim). Yet the primary beneficiaries of all these achievements were the urban middle-class women: the changes in living conditions for the masses of working class and peasant women were sluggish.
The institutional changes that various educational and developmental projects brought about left an indelible impression and undoubtedly widened the horizons of expectation for women. Much credit can be given to individual women and their energy and determination to improve conditions in spite of bureaucratic obstacles, traditional conservative objections, and deeper, perhaps even more important, psychological barriers which meant that they were often held in contempt for being part of an autocratic establishment and, at the same time, not taken at all seriously, even by their own male colleagues, whether high up in the cabinet or lower down in the literacy corps and the army. These cultural barriers were also at work in revolutionary groups and guerrilla organizations.
A widening gap between the rise of women’s education, combined with rapid social mobilization, and the tightening of channels of political participation led to increasing discontent among educated women of the middle and lower-middle classes who, similar to their male counterparts, aspired for freedom of expression and participation in autonomous associations and political organizations. When the Pahlavi regime in its last few years and under external pressure began to accord more freedom, and the revolutionary coalition found an unprecedented opportunity for mass mobilization, a large number of women joined the demonstrations and strikes which were mobilized during the later stages of revolution in the fall and winter of 1978-79 (see further iv. below).
Plate II. Board of Directors of the Patriotic Women’s League (Jamʿīyat-e ne swān-e waṭanḵᵛāh). Seated (left to right) : Faḵr-Āfāq Pārsā, Molūk Eskandarī, Kobrā Čanānī, Mastūra Afšār, Noṣ ;rat Mošīrī, Ṣafyīa Eskandarī, ʿEṣmat-al-Mol 8;k Šarīfī. Standing: Mehrangīz Eskandarī, Bānū &Ugra ve;anānī, Hāʾīda Afšār, ʿAbbāsa, Qo dsīya Mošīrī. After Bāmdād, I, p. 53.
Plate III. The first women students at the University of Tehran (September 1936). Front row (left to right): Batūl Samīʿī, Zahrā Eska ndarī, Mehrangīz Manūčehrīān, Serāj-al-Nesā& #247;, Badr-al-Molūk Bāmdād, Šams-al-Molūk Mo ṣāḥeb, Ḵānom Šāhzāda K 5;vūsī. Second row (left to right): Zahrā Kīā Ḵ ānlarī, Forūḡ Kīā, Tāj-al-Molūk Naḵa& #191;ī, Šāyesta Ṣādeq, Ṭūsī Ḥ 155;ʾerī. After Bāmdād, I, p. 99.
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(Hamideh Sedghi)
Originally Published: December 15, 1999
Last Updated: January 26, 2012
This article is available in print.
Vol. IX, Fasc. 5, pp .492-498
Hamideh Sedghi, “FEMINIST MOVEMENTS iii. IN THE PAHLAVI PERIOD,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, IX/5, pp. 492-498, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/feminist-movements-iii (accessed on 30 December 2012).
