The struggle of the women's rights movement in Iran after the Islamic revolution

This paper discusses the Iranian women's rights movement and the struggle it has endured since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The women's rights movement in Iran achieved small advances under the rule of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled Iran from 1941 to 1979. Once the theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini gained power the rights of women were erased almost overnight. The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran used the male-dominated translations of the Quran as a basis for its hard-line stance against women. This paper examines the Islamic reformists approach to modernizing Islam by reinterpreting the Quran and applying the teachings from it in a modern context. The successes and failures of the Iranian women's rights movement over the last century is a key point to the future progress that may be made. The women's rights movement now is able to use new technology to carry its fight for equal rights to audiences that it previously could not reach. The rule of political Islam has contradicted the realities of modern Iran by oppressing half of its society to second-rate citizens with very little rights. If the quiet revolution of the women's right movement can stay unified and continue to work together as a group of women, secular and non-secular, then they will be successful in the future by re-interpreting the Quran from a feminists view and applying the teachings to a modern law that allows for equality of all its citizens.