3 - Reproduction, Patronage, and Readership

Summary

In a continuation of the previous chapter, Chapter 3, which seals the book’s first section, explores how Iranian women’s magazines of the late Pahlavi era sought to co-opt new readership—culturally, socially and economically—and how circumstances of their production, cultural trends, technological innovations, and ensuing developments in the media industry affected their efforts. Understanding the circumstances under which these magazines developed and operated contributes to the assessment not only of their content, but also their approach to various categorizations of the woman of modernity. It reveals the complex structure and process of the magazines’ representation of women, the cultural and economic formations that supported it, and the social relations involved in the production of the gendered discourse and identity in the late Pahlavi era.