Looking for Democracy: Voices of Iranian American Women in the United States

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Gender, Social Justice, and the Intersections

Abstract

Gagged by the theocratic Iranian Islamic regime, Iranian women in the US are an important group for research into the significance of education as they emigrate in search of democracy. This research investigates the academic, social, and personal experiences of Iranian women in various sociocultural spaces, seeking to understand how the pursuit of higher education, a dominant factor in the emigration of Iranians to other countries, shapes their paths to universities in the US and forms their identities as Iranian-American women. This paper addresses the question: How do Iranian women negotiate their identities through ascribing to and/or rising against sociocultural pressures that construct their identities as they cross numerous conceptual and national borders searching for democracy and social equity?

Author

• Bita H Zakeri, Indiana University - Bloomington