CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Habibi, Elaheh |
|---|---|
| Title | The Women's Association of the Tudeh Party of Iran, 1944-1948: The National and Transnational Struggles of a Left Feminist Group |
| Summary | This thesis explores the domestic and international activities of the biggest Iranian left-feminist organization of the 1940s era: Tashkilat-e Zanan (Women’s Association). Based on archival materials from the National Library and Archive Organization of Iran, and the Archives of Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran, periodical press, memoirs, and a congress report of the Women’s International Democratic Federation of which the WA was a member organization, this thesis tried to answer three questions: 1) What assumptions have shaped the leftist and feminist historiography of the Women’s Association? 2) What were the origins, agenda and strategy of the WA in its struggle for women’s rights? 3) How did Iranian women struggle for women’s rights through their fight against imperialism? Through a critical review of the Iranian leftist and women’s movement literature, I identified three assumptions stemming from the Cold War paradigm, which have led feminist historians to exclude the WA from the mainstream narratives. These assumptions were: 1) the independent women’s rights movement ended in 1932, when the last “independent” women’s organization, the Patriotic Women’s League (PWL), was banned by the Iranian government 2) The women’s organizations of the post-1940 era, were ‘subservient’ to the parties to which they were affiliated 3) Women’s rights issues became ‘secondary’ and ‘subordinate’ to the issues emphasized by the WA. I argue that my findings allow me to challenge these assumptions and to posit instead that the WA was a left-feminist organization that consistently fought for women’s rights, that it did so with an emphasis on anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, and that the WIDF provided an important platform and support for the WA and its political struggle regarding the interrelated fields of women’s rights and anti-imperialism. |
| Supervisor | de Haan, Francisca |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/habibi_elaheh.pdf |
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