Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:08:24.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Motherhood to Equal Rights Advocates: The Weakening of Patriarchal Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut*
Affiliation:
Political Science at the University of Paris 8 Monde Iranien, CNRS

Extract

This paper is largely based on my field works in Iran from 1994 to 2004 and combines qualitative and quantitative methods. I conducted my first qualitative survey (open-ended interviews with a sample of a hundred mothers) in Tehran, Isfahan and their poor suburbs from 1994 to 2000. The quantitative survey, which is a result of the collaboration between Monde Iranien (CNRS), the French Research Institute in Iran and the Statistical Center of Iran was conducted in 2002 with a sample of 6,960 urban and rural households in all twenty-eight provinces. The sample was composed of 30,714 individuals, including 7,633 women 15 years and older married at least once, and 6,154 single youth, 15–29 years old, who lived with their parents: 3,437 boys and 2,717 girls.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The results of this survey are published in Kian-Thiébaut, Azadeh, Les femmes iraniennes entre islam, Etat et famille, Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2002Google Scholar

2 The sampling frame used was adopted from the one resulted from the 1996 National Census of Population and Housing conducted by Statistical Center of Iran. Each statistical unit is a cluster composed of almost 30 households drawn randomly. A total of 232 urban and rural clusters were thus selected as the sample.

3 According to general findings of our survey, average size of the household is 4.4 members, literacy rate of the population 6 years and over is 81 percent: 86.5 percent for men and 76 for women, average age at the first marriage is 26 for men and 23 for women, rate of arranged marriage is 55,6 percent for women and 42 percent for men, and 19.5 percent of mothers are active. The tables are available on the web site of the research group Monde Iranien, CNRS: http://www.ivry.cnrs.fr/iran.

4 See among others; Kian-Thiébaut, Azadeh, Les femmes iraniennes entre islam, Etat et famille, “Women and the Making of Civil Society in Post-Islamist Iran” in Hoogland, Eric (ed), Twenty Years of Islamic Revolution Political and Social Transition in Iran Since 1979 (Syracuse, 2002), pp. 5673Google Scholar; Women and Politics in Post-Islamist Iran: The Gender Conscious Drive to Change”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 24 (1) 1997: 7596CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Vizhegiha-ye ejtema'i va eqtesadi-ye zanan dar iran 1365–1375 (The Social and Economic Features of Women in Iran, 1986-1996), Statistical Center of Iran, Tehran, 2000, pp. 155–9.

6 According to Article 30 of the Constitution, the government should provide people with free education up to the end of high-school and even university.

7 I would like to express my deep gratitude to Soghra Hajiseyyed Javadi, Nasrin Eftekhari, Mir Fallah Nasiri and Susan Rafi'i of the Statistical Center of Iran, Mr. Sotoudehniya, Forouzan Marzouqi, Mr. Akbari, Mr Jalali, Mr. Malekzayi, Mr. Garshâsbi, Esmail Hâchemi, Mr. Asgari of the Organization of Planning and Budget in Hormozgan, Sistan-Balouchistan, Golestan and Tehran provinces, Jean During, Dominique Torabi and Bâbak Pourassadollah of the French Research Institute in Iran, and Mahnâz Yazdani.

8 From Ayatollah Khameneh'i's sermon on December 16, 1992. In Cheshmeh-ye Nur, Tehran, 1995, p. 269.

9 Mostafavi, Seyyed Javad, Behesht-i Khanevadeh, Qom, Qods, tenth edition, 1995, Vol. I, p. 117Google Scholar.

10 For a discussion see Blumberg, R. L.,. “A General Theory of Gender Stratification”, Sociological Theory, 1984, p. 23-101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See among others Abdi's, Abbas interview “Religious Intellectualism and More Urgent Questions than the Women's Questions” (Rawshanfikri-yi dini va masa'il-i fawritar az masa'il-i zanan), in Zanan, n°. 58 (2000), p. 38Google Scholar.

12 Khatami's interview with Zanan, n°. 34, April–May 1997, pp. 2–5.

13 See Jamileh kadivar's interview with Siyasat-i-Ruz, n°. 115, 4 September 2001.

14 See Akram Mansurimaneh's interview in Zanan, n°.79, September 2001, p. 12.

15 Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh's interview with Zahra Shoja'i, Tehran, Spring 2001. I am grateful to Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh who provided me with the text of this interview.

16 Ebadi, Shirin, Hoquq-i Kudak (The Rights of the Child), Tehran, third edition, 1992, pp. 58–9, 190, 194–5Google Scholar.