Embodied Knowledge, Collective Healing: Iranian Kurdish Women's Educational Experiences as Sites of Resistance and Wellbeing

• In Event: Wellbeing for whom and how? Addressing educational inequities in a divided world

Proposal

This paper examines how Iranian Kurdish women’s experiences of higher education become sites of both resistance and collective well-being, extending findings from ethnographic research with 26 university-educated Kurdish women in Kermanshah, Iran. While Iranian higher education policies promote a nationalist discourse of gender equity, the lived experiences of Kurdish women reveal complex negotiations between state-imposed identities and their intersectional ethnic, religious, gender, and linguistic identities (AleAhmad, 2023). Drawing on embodied feminist pedagogy theory (hooks, 1994; Morris, 2022) and intersectional frameworks (Crenshaw, 1991), this study explores how Kurdish women transform educational spaces into resistance sites, cultivating sociopolitical wellbeing through solidarity and collective healing practices.
Iranian educational nationalism operates through what Najmabadi (2005) describes as the “modernizing woman” discourse, positioning women’s education as serving national development while constraining agency within patriarchal frameworks. For Kurdish women, this is compounded by ethnic marginalization, as state policies suppress Kurdish language and cultural knowledge while promoting Persian supremacy (Vali, 2011; Romano, 2006). They thus face double discrimination in institutions that promise liberation yet enforce conformity to Persian-Islamic norms, creating what Doherty and Forés Miravalles (2019) identify as embodied sites of tension.
This paper uses intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1991) and embodied feminist pedagogy to analyze how Kurdish women’s lived experiences generate knowledge that challenges official discourse. It draws on hooks’ (1994) “engaged pedagogy,” Ahmed’s (2017) “willful subjects,” and Collins’ (2000) work on marginalized epistemologies, incorporating recent scholarship on embodied knowledge in higher education (Morris, 2022).
Interview analysis reveals three interconnected processes. First, participants show how their bodies become pedagogical sites where ethnic and gender identities intersect with institutional power. Navigating dress codes suppressing cultural expression, language restrictions silencing mother tongues, and curricula erasing Kurdish history, these women develop what Anzaldúa (1987) terms “mestiza consciousness”—the ability to hold multiple identities simultaneously.
Second, informal educational networks emerge within and beyond university settings, where participants engage in consciousness-raising that centers marginalized knowledge. They describe creating informal study spaces or “counter-publics” (Fraser, 1990), incorporating ethnic literature absent from curricula and mentorship relationships transmitting resistance strategies. Counter-publics serve as alternative arenas where marginalized groups formulate oppositional visions.
Third, collective healing practices develop through shared storytelling and mutual support, addressing collective oppression. Discussing experiences of linguistic discrimination and gender-based violence within trusted educational circles transforms personal pain into political consciousness, showing how well-being is collectively constructed rather than individually pursued.
The research demonstrates how Kurdish women strategically appropriate higher education credentials to challenge patriarchal and ethno-nationalist constraints while maintaining cultural authenticity. This strategic navigation illustrates what Scott (1985) terms “weapons of the weak”—subtle forms of resistance that appear to comply with dominant systems while subverting their intended effects.
This study contributes to the scholarship of Comparative International Education by demonstrating how marginalized women with intersectional identities create counter-pedagogies that foster both individual critical consciousness and collective well-being, thereby challenging frameworks that position well-being as universal and individual.

Author

• Nikoo Nikoonazari, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities