Product Description: Blending social scientific theories about feminism, social movements, and culture with the specifics of the Iranian situation, this volume examines changes in the structure of patriarchy from the 1960s to the present by looking at domestic labor, employment, education, politics, culture, and sexuality...read more

Examining controversies that developed chiefly after the end of Iran-Iraq War and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, this study focuses on Islamic and secular feminisms, especially as they treat such issues as individuality, gender roles, sexuality, cultural authenticity, and interculturalism. Shahidian emphasizes challenges to governmental policies in daily life, Islamic reformist politics, and secular opposition. He investigates various ideological and political means that female activists employ to resist state policies and achieve legal benefits. Relying on reformist Islamic writings, oppositional literature, personal contacts with feminist authors and underground activists, Shahidian discusses how individuals experience and respond to coercive gender policies.Reformist bargaining with the patriarchy, which has secured for some women an active role in some spheres of life, diverts feminist attempts to alter gender relations in any fundamental way, Shahidian contends. In Iran, reformists have espoused an agenda that reflects the interests of middle- and upper-class, professional, gainfully employed, heterosexual (Muslim) women. Though weaker and less ideologically and organizationally consolidated than reformist women, many secular feminists have drawn attention to working women's rights, and have sought re-vision of such key issues as morality, sexuality, and the relations between individual and community. These activists and authors question the very assumptions of existing political culture and reject prioritizing socio-political objectives that relegate gender to peripheral significance.

Examining controversies that developed chiefly after the end of Iran-Iraq War and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, this study focuses on Islamic and secular feminisms, especially as they treat such issues as individuality, gender roles, sexuality, cultural authenticity, and interculturalism. Shahidian emphasizes challenges to governmental policies in daily life, Islamic reformist politics, and secular opposition. He investigates various ideological and political means that female activists employ to resist state policies and achieve legal benefits. Relying on reformist Islamic writings, oppositional literature, personal contacts with feminist authors and underground activists, Shahidian discusses how individuals experience and respond to coercive gender policies.Reformist bargaining with the patriarchy, which has secured for some women an active role in some spheres of life, diverts feminist attempts to alter gender relations in any fundamental way, Shahidian contends. In Iran, reformists have espoused an agenda that reflects the interests of middle- and upper-class, professional, gainfully employed, heterosexual (Muslim) women. Though weaker and less ideologically and organizationally consolidated than reformist women, many secular feminists have drawn attention to working women's rights, and have sought re-vision of such key issues as morality, sexuality, and the relations between individual and community. These activists and authors question the very assumptions of existing political culture and reject prioritizing socio-political objectives that relegate gender to peripheral significance.

Product Description: This book examines gender and the dynamics of social change in contemporary Iran, documenting the changes in women’s lives and showing how women have now become agents of social change rather than victims. Bringing together the detailed primary research of a number of eminent scholars working in Iran, this collection provides unique perspectives on the past decade in Iranian society...read more

Product Description: In this fascinating study examining one of the poorest urban slums in Iran, Masoumeh Velayati explores the cultural, social, and economic factors that contribute to the migration of women from rural to urban locations in Iran and the consequences of their entry into the labor market...read more

The author describes growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the group of young women who came together at her home in secret every Thursday to read and discuss great books of Western literature.

Product Description: Western women’s involvement in Persia dates from the mid-nineteenth century, when female adventurers and missionaries first encountered their veiled Muslim “sisters.” Twentieth-century Western and state-sponsored Iranian feminists continued to use the image of the veiled woman as the embodiment of backwardness...read more

The repressiveness of the Iranian regime rings loud as a female judge tells her story of demotion to court clerk, her return to public life as a human rights lawyer, her fight against arrest and assassination attempts, and her eventual embrace by the world when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Product Description: "Performing Islam" takes as its main focus the rich array of ceremonial activities that shape and inform the lives of circles of women in south Tehran. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the book describes and analyses rituals that mark religious anniversaries and life course events in Iran today...read more

Product Description: In the last two decades, under the Islamic Republic, laws affecting the status of Iranian women came in the form of different religious decrees that were justified by the argument that they all complied with the Quran and the shariah...read more

Presents the story of the author's tumultuous childhood during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, her student political activities, her escape to Canada, and her struggles with depression and bipolar disorder.

Product 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Shahidian, Hammed (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Examining controversies that developed chiefly after the end of Iran-Iraq War and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, this study focuses on Islamic and secular feminisms, especially as they treat such issues as individuality, gender roles, sexuality, cultural authenticity, and interculturalism...read more

Product Description: Fifteen Iranian women talk intimately about all aspects of their lives from domestic concerns to professional issues.

Product Description: Blending social scientific theories about feminism, social movements, and culture with the specifics of the Iranian situation, this volume examines changes in the structure of patriarchy from the 1960s to the present by looking at domestic labor, employment, education, politics, culture, and sexuality...read more

Product Description: Written by former BBC correspondent Jane Howard, whose experience took her beyond the headlines and horror stories and into the lives of everyday Iranian women, this book presents the story of struggle and change, documenting what it means to be a woman in Iran.

(view table of contents)

Describes how, in her home country of Iran, the author became trapped in a terrifying marriage of bigamy, violence, and degradation and her desperate attempt to escape a world where she was faceless and nameless. Reprint. K. AB.