To read this content please select one of the options below:

The Women’s Movement and Neo-Liberalism in Iran: Between Accommodation and Resistance

Gender and Race Matter: Global Perspectives on Being a Woman

ISBN: 978-1-78635-038-1, eISBN: 978-1-78635-037-4

Publication date: 24 August 2016

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter analyses the strategies employed by women and youth political activists in Iran in the context of changes engendered by the neo-liberal policies pursued by successive governments since the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis in this chapter is based on semi-structured interviews conducted by the author with women and youth activists in Iran in 2015. This qualitative data is contextualised within a theoretical discussion of the nature of the Iranian state, the impact of neo-liberal policies, and debates surrounding gender and neo-liberalism.

Findings

Contrary to the view of politics in Iran as a battle between hard-line religious fundamentalists and moderates, this chapter argues that it is not the religious nature of the state but its neo-liberal policies that have made it more difficult for women and youth activists to mobilise against the exclusionary policies of the state. In response activists in Iran have developed and articulated strategies of resistance to and accommodation with the Islamic Republic’s neo-liberal project.

Originality/value

The chapter breaks with prevailing socio-cultural analyses of women’s rights in Iran and provides a critique of prevalent ideas of women’s rights as innately connected to liberal and specifically neo-liberal forms of politics and governance.

Keywords

Citation

Povey, T. (2016), "The Women’s Movement and Neo-Liberalism in Iran: Between Accommodation and Resistance", Gender and Race Matter: Global Perspectives on Being a Woman (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 23-40. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620160000021003

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited