CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION, IMPACT ON WOMEN

the effect of iran's constitutional revolution of the nineteenth century on the status of women in that country.

During the early stages of the revolution and during the entire period of the first majles (councils; 1906–1908), women's roles were minimal and their participation kept under control, restricted to staging street demonstrations in support of the constitutionalist religious and social welfare causes. But they also demanded the right for a public, and not just private, education, and many began to attend what were then the only available institutions, the American and the French girls' schools. Here they won the intelligentsia's full support. Since the late nineteenth century, poets and journalists had championed this cause, arguing that it would benefit the fatherland to have educated women raise future generations of Iranians and, by the same token, pleading for the abolition of polygamy. Neither the hijab (wearing of the veil) nor the right to vote was addressed. Nonetheless, the ulama (community of learned men), led by Ayatollah Fazlollah Nuri, proclaimed their demands to be part of a Babi conspiracy to eradicate Islam in the country.

Following the royalist coup of June 1908, in the period of national resistance to the restored autocracy and throughout the second majles (1909–1912), small organizations of women, the close relatives of prominent secular constitutionalist leaders, began to express publicly their aspirations for the right to vote. A few even dared to manifest their revolt against the hijab in public. Fearful of the ulama 's onslaught, constitutionalist politicians and journalists dismissed these "extremists" as unrepresentative of women's constitutional interests. The Fundamental Law then guaranteed women's right to education, but nothing else. Nonetheless, women's organizations continued to play a role in support of the constitution, increasing pressure on court officials and majles deputies in their resistance to the Russian ultimatum that threatened the very existence of the constitutional government. By January 1912, the battle was lost, the majles suspended, and women gained no public recognition for their political participation.

see also gender: gender and education; gender: gender and law; gender: gender and politics; iran; qajar dynasty; tobacco revolt.

Bibliography

Afary, Janet. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Bayat-Philipp, Mangol. "Women and Revolution in Iran." In Women in the Muslim World, edited by Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Mangol Bayat