From misogyny to security: women and the state in Iran

Abstract

Within the context of a misogynistic political establishment, the Iranian state’s approach to women has become increasingly securitised in recent years. The Islamic Republic state, in fact, sees women as one of its biggest security threats, further deepening its securitisation of women and women’s issues. This is most evident in relation to the official imposition of mandatory hijab, which vividly symbolises state ideology. The securitisation of women has occurred within the context of pervasive state misogyny and other officially sanctioned cultural notions that have accorded women second-class positions in the Islamic Republic’s society. Despite its expansive system of state-sanctioned legal, political, ideological and cultural misogyny, however, the Islamic Republic has been unable to counter women’s nonconformity to its dictates. Developments concerning and led by women themselves have challenged the official misogyny and its supporting ideological narrative. The state’s inability and unwillingness to show ideological flexibility in this regard, and women’s determined refusal to comply with the state, have combined to transform Iranian women into a national security threat to the state, one that it has so far been unable to effectively counter.