Women in Iran

If you are interested in learning about the role played by women in contemporary Iranian political culture, check out the guest post by Nayereh Tohidi at Informed Comment.

One paragraph:

The international media, often unaware of the brewing women’s movement in Iran, were surprised to see women marching in the demonstrations in large numbers and braving the violent response by security forces, which dramatically illustrated the clash between a changing society and an increasingly repressive government. But the massive participation of women in the latest protests is not an unprecedented, overnight development. This has been the result of many years of rather quiet educational and organizational work carried out by many small groups of women and men focused on civil rights, especially women’s rights. Women’s social activism and participation in political movements in modern Iran has more than 100 years of recorded history, with special highlights during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911, the nationalist movement of the 1950s, the modernization and reform processes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Islamic Revolution of 1978–79.

--the BB