Feminist Protests in Iran: The Longest Revolution

• In Event: Political Economy of the World-System Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable I: Class, Culture, and Economic Inequality in the Contemporary World System

Abstract

In 1966, British socialist-feminist Juliet Mitchell penned an essay in the New Left Review called “Women – The Longest Revolution,” where she outlined the continued problems of women’s socio-political status and the long movement for change. I use Mitchell’s essay title to refer to the enduring case of the Iranian women’s movement, from the late 19th century to the Woman-Life-Freedom protests of 2022. In the process, I draw attention to the diversity of strategies and tactics deployed: the formation of charities and benevolent societies, participation in national struggles, promotion of schooling, the embrace of modernization, engagement in radical left-wing politics at home and abroad. Following the historical overview, I focus on the women’s protest cycles over the past 45 years of the Islamic Republic, drawing attention to the profound socio-cultural changes they have generated, responses by state entities (accommodation and coercion alike), and the increasing radicalization of women’s repertoires of contention. Throughout, I seek to show that the dynamics of Iran’s long feminist revolution are situated not only in the specificities of Iranian political and social history, but also in the global feminist wave(s) and in the consequences of globalization processes - both the positive, as in norm diffusion and transnational solidarities, and the negative, as in neoliberalism’s effects and the hegemon’s impositions.

Author

• Valentine M. Moghadam, Northeastern University