Overview

Historically, Iranian women were not as veiled, secluded, and withdrawn as often imagined by the outsiders. With more research on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets it is revealed that Iranian women had equal rights as men, and were significantly contributing to the society. The recent account of their movements dates back to the early 1900s when they actively participated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and contributed to social transformations.

Today, the Islamic regime in Iran is rejected by the majority of the population as evidenced by street demonstrations, strikes in universities and schools, factories and petrochemical industries, despite the repression of protesters, including children. For the first time in Iran’s contemporary history, educated young women are at the forefront of protests. Their anger accumulated for many years is expressed against the political Islam in power, its advocates, precepts, institutions and laws. The gap between the modern social, political, or cultural behaviour of Iranian women and the Islamic regime’s increasingly fundamentalist laws and institutions, is one of the crucial explaining factors of young women’s rebellion today.

Biography

Azadeh Kian is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, former Director of the Social Science Department, Director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies and Research (https://cedref.u-paris.fr/) and its journal Les Cahiers du CEDREF (https://journals.openedition.org/cedref) at the université Paris Cité. She earned her B.A. in Paris, and obtained her M.A and Ph.D at University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).

Her teachings and research include Politics and Society in Iran and the Middle East, Gender and Postcolonial and Intersectional perspectives, Gender and Islam, Gender in the Middle East.

She has published 6 single-authored books, edited 12 books and journals, and authored over 120 scientific articles in English and French.

Source: http://lettre.ehess.fr/index.php?9290

Among her recent publications:

Rethinking Gender, Ethnicity and Religion in Iran: An Intersectional Approach to National Identity, London & New York, I. B. Tauris. Bloomsbury (forthcoming) 2023.

Femmes et pouvoir en islam (Women and Power in Islam), Paris, Editions Michalon, 2019.

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ocT2RuQpTBiwAEPUEeKa0g