Representation of Women in the Discourse of Women’s Rights Activists in Iran

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing the main competing discourses among the opponents and proponents of women’s labor and sports. Through a quantitative and qualitative descriptive-analytical method, it studies how women are represented in different discourses in competition, and among male and female speakers. The data consist of a corpus gathered through library method including 16 lecture texts of the female and male opponents and proponents during the past 5 years, selected through random sampling. The results show that the two main discourses, the modernist discourse and the traditional discourse (including the traditional family-centered, patriarchal, traditional religious and revolutionary approaches) are in competition. Opponents mostly refer to the traditional discourse, and proponents to the modernist. In traditional discourse of the opponents, women are represented by stereotypical roles such as mother, wife, kadbanu (a good housewife), homemaker, child bearer, parent, responsible for the raising of the children, and dependent on their husbands. The importance of the role of women in the family is common among the traditional and modernist viewpoints. However, proponents emphasize the role of woman in the society too. Taboo words such as adultery, rape, prostitution, sex dealers, etc., and ideological words such as chastity, purity, revolution and referring to woman’s age for marriage are just used in men’s speeches, and they used Islam/Muslim more than women.