диссертация (1169135), страница 23
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After the occurrence of World War I and as a result of it, theprevalence of chaos and insecurity in Iran led to the formation of the absolute andsemi-modern government of Pahlavis that undertook women's education, thecompulsory change of the hijab, and cultural and social activities under thegovernment's supervision. With a change in the Pahlavi government in 1941,significant changes began to be made in facilitating women's education andactivities.
However, as researchers admit, despite all these changes, the majority ofwomen were culturally and socially impoverished and were denied of their socialand cultural rights and positions. After the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 andthe increasing establishment of the Islamic ideology, cultural and socialorganizations that were in agreement with religious values were reinforced, andwomen's social and cultural activities based on Western culture or Communismbegan to be marginalized, and the process continues until the present day withrelative force or lenience.
In the last three decades, although women in the Iraniansociety have witnessed remarkable changes and developments in social andcultural domains, and are above the global human development index, they do not,nonetheless, play roles in political, social and cultural structures, in proportionwith such developments. Although their social positions have been improved on adaily basis, they could not, because of their gender, achieve considerable successin significant and influential domains as well as in large-scale levels of social,political, and cultural decision-making. With respect to the gender, in many ofthese domains, they are not still much influential and may well be ineffective. Ingeneral, they are absent from significant and influential positions, such asjudgeship, jurisprudence and ijtihad, headship of the three branches of thegovernment, the Guardian Council of the Constitution, the Assembly of Experts ofLeadership, Expediency Discernment Council, and ministers of the governmental97cabinet.
It seems that all the following obstacles that have existed in all historicalperiods (discussed in this research) are still there:- The historical background and the social common sense regarding differencesand, in some cases, conflicts between the presence of men and women in socialand cultural activities.- Lack of gender equality or justice in accordance with biased beliefs againstwomen in education, employment, social and citizenship rights, and so on, and theinstitutionalization of such discriminations since a very long time.- Although the official reading of Shiism in Iran does not restrict women'ssocial, political and cultural presence in the society if jurisprudential conditions aremet, but in many cases, statements are released against the activities of womenwith appeals to religious evidence and justifications, and with cultural andideological exaggerations, their social presence is taken to lead to corruptions.- The old patriarchal tradition and culture governing the Iranian society which,in the past, reduced women to the gender roles of motherhood and wifehood, isstill generally believed by the Iranian society.- It should be admitted that while at present, after such a long time, Iranianwomen are employed for many jobs in governmental and private organizationsalong with men, their administrative ideas and their power of reasoning are nottaken seriously in group works.
Thus, women are still absent from influentialpositions.- The low level of women's education and general information as well as theirlower levels of reading in the past has obstructed their progress and their ability toachieve higher social positions.The religious discourses discussed in the preceding section had influenced theconstruction of women's identity while being influenced by women's actions.The religious approach that dominated in pre-constitutional Iranian society wasfundamentalism. Since constitutionalism, the introduction of secularized modern98culture to Iranian society threatened the stability of fundamental religiousdiscourse.
However, it maintained its authority in the traditional discourse.Confronting the modernized reforms of Reza shah, fundamentalists encouragedseclusion of traditional and religious women who included the majority.Women's participation in Islamic revolution empowered them to act as agents.This manifestation of women's potential and their desire for new identity thoughhad been structured by society, influenced changes in religious structures ofsociety. In fact, the dualist interaction of women as agents and social structurescontributed to creation of a new approach. The reproduced approach, moderatetraditionalists that valued religious women's social participation became thedominant discourse.The post-revolutionary discourse that encouraged, women's presence in social andeducational arenas produced women who were different from their mothers. Thisnew generation equipped with resources of knowledge and academic educationsought new definition of female identity.
The presidency of Khatami withreformist mottos, valued the social involvement of women with modernized ideas,appearance and dressing. Therefore, the reformist approach dominated cultureinstitutes.Globalization and the growing prevalence of media subjected women tomodernized Western more than ever. To answer women's attempt for globalizedand modernized identity, some religious elites offered the Islamic Modernistapproach.
However, since the Islamic state and the majority of religious institutesare traditional, this approach not being supported by the dominant power ismarginalized.All three approaches, though propose different significations of female sexaccording to their interpretations of Islam, they agree on heteronormativity thatIslam insists on it. Yet, the approach of modernists deconstructs heteronormativityas it removes the centrality of Islam.
Since, in this approach, Islam is no more99holding the tie between the signifier (female sex), and the signified (femininity),the meanings attributed to female sex are not necessarily within heteronormativity.Chapter 1: FindingsSince the major purpose of the thesis is to demonstrate Iranian women'straditional and modern cultural identity, this chapter presented an elaboration ofconcept of identity in its philosophical, social and cultural aspects. Planning tostudy Iranian women's identity, the author outlined gender identity definitionsthrough the lens of different feminist perspectives, mainly Judith Butler's theory ofPerformativity as the basic theoretical framework.
Structuration theory of Giddenswas also discussed as the supportive theory used to analyze the identity issue ofIranian women. An overlapping point between these two theories is establishedwhere both theories emphasize the role of performances in the agency of actors.Both Giddens and Butler address the dialectic relationship of agents and thestructure in reproduction of new identities.Applying Judith Butler's performative theory on Islamic society of Iranseems strange. While Butler, as a poststructuralist believes in decentrality, Islamhas been a center holding together the orders of language and reality. Islamicperspective constrains the meanings that one can attribute to concepts such asfemininity.
Besides, what Butler mainly challenges is to trouble hetronormativitywhich is the base of Islamic teachings. While Butler deconstructs any binary, Islamemphasizes binaries such as sky/earth or women/men.The final and a main point isthat while Islam as a religion relys on essentiality, Butler believes in theconstructed nature of both sex and gender.To apply these two opposite perspectives on Iranian society, the authorreflects on Butler's emphasize on recitionality and performativity from one handand the centrality of Islam in Iranian socity on the other. Performative theoryproves to be true considering the changes that has occurred in gender norms.However, these changes depend on the scope of agency that the subject enjoys100within the country's discourse.
Thechallenge between the way that Islamicdiscourse determines the significations of female sex before the arrival of thesesubjects to the scene, and the agency of women to transform these meanings isexamined. Women's agency is studied in performance of three aspects of theirlifestyle: body maintanance,Veiling, work and leisure.Isalm as a center, holds the relationship between signifier and signified,here, sex/gender, or female/woman. The subjects' sexed bodies perform and recitethe meanings attributed to them, hence proving themselves as viable subjects in thesociety. Being named as a female, the sexed bodies are materialized in a way thatIslamic culture defines female body within a partecular frame.
Consequently, theyperform the defined womanhood exercises. These recitations of meanings, whilepromising them social identity as Muslim Iranian women, establish and sustain thenorms of the country. The bodies as cites of power, are also imposed by otherdiscourses competing with Islam.The subjects, under the impact of new discourses, reveal their agency inreciting the imposed gender norms in difference with the originally intendedmeanings. Globalization and media have been major forces to regulate Iranianwomen's identity in variation from the intended traditional meanings.
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