Women and Class in Landlord Villages of the Tehran Plain, Iran

Abstract

This paper explores the presence of women in the landlord villages of the Tehran Plain, Iran, drawing on recent fieldwork in the form of spatial analysis of the built environment, ethnographic interviews, excavation, and analysis of material culture assemblages. The visibility of women in the buildings and material culture of the villages is assessed and compared to the evidence gained through interview. Given the acknowledged importance of class as a social structure, analysis and discussion is extended to consider whether it is possible to distinguish women of different classes in the villages. Although largely ignored in many previous historical and ethnographic accounts, it is clear that women have played a key role in these villages, and that they can be detected in the material culture. While the ethnographic evidence and spatial analysis indicate the presence of different classes of women, determining this from the artifactual assemblages alone is very difficult. q ]My story is about ordinary women like myself, whose lives were transformed by events in the late twentieth century. My story is about Iran, or Persia, and the women of Iran whose popular history barely exists. We have had thousands of poets, writers and historians who across the centuries have left a rich cultural heritage. None the less, women are rarely mentioned as creators and mentors of the society. They are hidden behind curtains and high walls (Shafii 1997:xii–xiii).