Gender aspect in the ideology and practice of Iranian nationalism in the early 20th c.

Abstract

Iranian history is one of those rare cases when the topic of women’s social status was raised by the ruling regimes twice - in the1920-1930s and 1970s. This fact shows firm connection of nationalist and gender discourses. Since gender issues were not only declared on behalf of the state, but were also widely discussed in the public sphere, the study uses sources of an artistic and journalistic origin, that traditionally in Iran play the role of ideological indicators. These include materials from the Iranian, mainly women’s press as well as the works of the literary corpus. The examples of poster genre, which propagandizes for the position of the state and visualizes the ideology, also serve as a valuable source for the research. The undertaken study shows that, starting from the end of the 19th century, Iranian nationalism has been intensively exploiting gender issue to proclaim its own positions, using family metaphors and a system of female symbols for political purposes. As an ideology of a modernizing society, nationalism in Iran actively used the image of the “progressive Iranian woman” as a link between the present day and the great pre-Islamic past.