Rethinking Gender, Ethnicity and Religion in Iran

Abstract

Covering the Pahlavi modern nation-state as well as the Islamic regime, this book examines the crucial shifts that affected Sunnite and subaltern women after Shi’ism became the state religion after the Iranian Revolution. Focusing on women in the Baluchistan and Golestan provinces of Iran, Azadeh Kian analyses and explores issues of racism, linguicism, ethno-centrism, Shi’a centrism, and patriarchal and chauvinistic ideologies in Iranian society. Based on quantitative and qualitative surveys taken throughout Iran, comprised of over 7000 married women and 100 interviews with a sample of Sunnite and subaltern Persian women, Kian reveals how social hierarchy and power relations based on gender, class, ethnicity and religion operate. She argues that women have been at the heart of the process of national and ethnic re-construction as women as potential mothers are expected to reproduce national and ethnic boundaries. By examining the family institution as a site of power and analysing family dynamics and women’s everyday lives, Kian argues the politics of ordinary Iranians and the relationship between state and society can be better understood.