Introduction

The imagery of the Iranian Revolution is indelibly marked by the figure of the veiled woman. Photographs from 1978-79 show countless women, clad in chadors, marching in the streets, confronting soldiers, and shouting slogans against the Shah. To a Western audience, this iconography presented a profound paradox: why would women actively participate in a movement that would ultimately seek to restrict their rights and mandate their veiling? This question has fueled a contentious and evolving scholarship that seeks to move beyond orientalist tropes and simplistic explanations to understand the multifaceted agency of women in one of the twentieth century’s most significant upheavals.

This article argues that women’s involvement was not a monolithic phenomenon but a complex interplay of political, class-based, and religious motivations. The revolution was not a singular event but a process in which women’s political subjectivity was asserted, instrumentalized, and ultimately disciplined by the emerging Islamic state. The Shah’s state-feminist project, while expanding legal rights, was experienced by many as an alienating, top-down imposition that disrupted traditional social structures without offering genuine political liberation. The revolutionary movement, in its oppositional phase, provided a powerful language of protest that resonated across gender lines. However, the ascendancy of a clerical vision for the state, encapsulated by the 1979 mandatory hijab law, initiated a rapid and systematic reversal of women’s legal status. By examining the historical context of Pahlavi modernization, the diversity of women’s revolutionary participation, and the post-revolutionary backlash, this analysis posits that the revolution was a critical juncture that simultaneously unleashed and sought to contain female political agency. The enduring legacy is not merely one of oppression but of a continuous, vibrant, and resilient struggle for rights that has defined the contours of Iranian civil society for over four decades.

The Pahlavi Era: Authoritarian Modernization and State Feminism

To understand women’s role in the revolution, one must first appraise the contested nature of gender reforms under the Pahlavis. Under Reza Shah (1925-1941), the state embarked on a project of forced unveiling (kashf-e hijab) in 1936, a decree that was experienced by many religious and traditional women not as liberation but as a violent act of state intrusion into the private sphere. While a minority of elite, Western-educated women welcomed the change, for many, the ban on the chador meant effective house arrest, as venturing into public spaces without it risked humiliation and violence by state authorities.

Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979) continued this project of state-led feminism, but in a less coercive manner. The core of his gender policy was the Family Protection Law (FPL), enacted in 1967 and strengthened in 1975. This legislation was, in many ways, progressive. It raised the minimum age of marriage, restricted polygyny by making it contingent on court approval, and granted women the right to file for divorce and gain child custody under specific circumstances. Women gained the right to vote and run for office in 1963.

However, these reforms suffered from a critical flaw: they were decreed from above by an authoritarian regime that tolerated no independent women’s movement. The official women’s organization, led by the Shah’s sister, was a top-down, state-controlled entity. As scholars like Parvin Paidar (1995) argue, this created a form of “authentic feminism” that was deeply alienating. For secular, middle-class women, the reforms were insufficient and lacked genuine autonomy. For religious and traditional women, particularly in the lower-middle classes and the bazaar, these laws were perceived as an attack on Islamic values and family integrity, undermining male authority and promoting Western moral decay. The state’s presentation of the unveiled, modern woman as the ideal national subject implicitly denigrated the values and identities of a huge segment of the female population. Thus, the Pahlavi state, while expanding women’s legal rights, successfully managed to alienate women across the ideological spectrum, creating a fertile ground for a counter-movement that would weaponize gender traditionalism as a symbol of anti-regime resistance.

Mobilizing the Feminine: Women in the Revolutionary Crucible (1977-1979)

The revolutionary movement that began in 1977 provided an outlet for these accumulated grievances. Women participated en masse, but their motivations and affiliations were strikingly diverse, reflecting the broader coalition against the Shah.

· Secular and Leftist Women: Students, intellectuals, and professionals affiliated with the National Front, the Tudeh Party, and various Marxist guerrilla groups (e.g., the Fedayeen-e Khalq) participated in demonstrations. Their aim was not an Islamic state but a democratic or socialist one. They opposed the Shah’s dictatorship and saw the revolution as a path to genuine political emancipation, building on the legal foundations of the Pahlavi era. For them, the chador was often a practical garment of protest, providing anonymity from SAVAK and expressing solidarity with more traditional demonstrators.
· Islamist Women: For religious women, often from traditional bazaari and clerical families or the urban poor, the revolution was a spiritual and communal imperative. Influenced by the teachings of Ali Shariati and Morteza Motahhari, a new generation of Islamist intellectuals articulated a vision of revolutionary womanhood that was neither Western nor passive. Figures like Shariati reimagined iconic Shi’a women like Fatima and Zaynab not as submissive figures but as models of political resistance and strength. For these women, wearing the chador in public was an act of defiance—a rejection of the Shah’s imposed Westernization and a reclamation of authentic Islamic identity. Their mobilization was orchestrated through mosque networks and religious associations (hey’ats), which provided a safe and socially sanctioned space for political organization.

This period demonstrates what historian Nayereh Tohidi (1994) describes as the “instrumentalization of gender.” The anti-Shah opposition, particularly its Islamist wing, successfully mobilized women by appealing to their roles as mothers and guardians of cultural and religious authenticity. The crowd dynamics of the revolution were profoundly gendered: the presence of women, particularly older women in chadors, often deterred the Shah’s troops from opening fire, providing a strategic advantage to the demonstrations. Women acted as couriers, organizers, fundraisers, and medics, their participation essential to the revolution’s success.

The Betrayal: Re-IslamizationIslamization Full Description:The state-led process of bringing Pakistan’s legal, educational, and social systems into conformity with a specific interpretation of Islamic law. This was most aggressively pursued under the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq to consolidate power. Islamization transformed the identity of the state. Originally founded as a homeland for Muslims (a nationalist project), the state shifted toward becoming a theocratic fortress. Laws regarding evidence, banking, and social conduct were rewritten to align with strict Sharia interpretations, and the education system was overhauled to emphasize religious ideology over secular subjects. Critical Perspective:This process was primarily a tool of political legitimacy. Lacking a democratic mandate, the military regime used religion to sanitize its rule and silence opposition, labelling dissent as anti-Islamic. The structural legacy has been the marginalization of religious minorities and women, and the empowerment of hard-line clerical groups that now challenge the authority of the state itself.
Read more and the Institutionalization of Patriarchy

The triumph of the revolution in February 1979 marked the beginning of a rapid and stark reversal for women’s rights. The provisional government under Mehdi Bazargan was weak, and power quickly flowed to the revolutionary committees and Ayatollah Khomeini’s clerical circle. The new regime moved swiftly to dismantle the symbolic and legal architecture of the ancien régime, and women’s bodies became the primary site for this ideological project.

The pivotal moment was Khomeini’s decree on March 8, 1979—International Women’s Day—mandating compulsory hijab for female government employees. This act triggered immediate and massive protests by tens of thousands of women, both secular and religious, who saw it as a betrayal of the revolution’s promise of freedom. Despite this show of force, the protests were crushed, a clear signal that the new regime would not tolerate dissent on this issue. The mandatory hijab law was soon extended to all women in public.

This was followed by a systematic legal rollback:

· The Family Protection Law was suspended and later replaced by Islamic civil code, lowering the age of marriage, reinstating easy polygyny and temporary marriage (sigheh), and stripping women of the right to divorce and custody.
· Sex-segregation was enforced in schools, beaches, and public transportation.
· Women were barred from becoming judges and discouraged from certain fields of study.

The ideology underpinning these changes was articulated by clerics like Motahhari, who argued that gender equality was a Western concept that destroyed the natural, complementary order of the sexes. Women’s primary role was redefined as that of mother and wife, the foundational unit of the Islamic umma. The state’s new purpose was to protect the moral sanctity of society, and controlling women’s appearance and behavior was central to this mission.

Historiographical Perspectives: Agency, Victimhood, and Paradox

The scholarship on women and the revolution reflects evolving interpretive frameworks:

· The Victimization Paradigm: Early Western feminist analyses often portrayed Iranian women as helpless victims of a patriarchal Islamic backlash. This view rightly highlighted the severe loss of legal rights but often failed to account for the agency of women who supported the Islamist project and obscured the diversity of women’s experiences.
· The Agency and Resistance Framework: Later scholarship, such as the work of Haleh Afshar (1985) and Valentine Moghadam (1993), complicated this picture. They emphasized women’s active participation in the revolution and, later, their strategies of resistance and negotiation within the constraints of the Islamic RepublicIslamic Republic Short Description (Excerpt):The unique form of government established after the revolution. It is a hybrid system combining elements of a modern parliamentary democracy (elections, president, parliament) with a theocratic guardianship (Supreme Leader, Guardian Council). Full Description:The Islamic Republic was the outcome of the referendum in 1979. While it has the trappings of a republic, ultimate power resides with the unelected religious leadership. The constitution explicitly subordinates the will of the people to the principles of Islam as interpreted by the Supreme Leader. Critical Perspective:This dual structure creates a permanent institutional conflict. The tension between the “republican” mandate (popular sovereignty) and the “Islamic” mandate (divine sovereignty) results in a system where elected officials are often powerless to implement change if it contradicts the interests of the clerical elite. It represents an experiment in “religious democracy” that critics argue is inherently contradictory.
Read more. This includes pursuing education, entering the workforce, and lobbying for legal reforms within an Islamic framework.
· The Paradoxical Synthesis: Contemporary historians like Afsaneh Najmabadi (2000) and Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi (2008) focus on the inherent paradoxes. They argue that the Pahlavi state’s top-down modernization created the educational and professional opportunities that produced a generation of women who could then lead a revolution against it. Furthermore, the Islamic Republic’s policies, while restrictive, had unintended consequences. By promoting female literacy and education to create “ideal Muslim mothers,” the state inadvertently created a vast, educated female populace that would later demand a greater share of public life and challenge the very restrictions placed upon them.

This scholarship reveals that the narrative is not linear. It is a story of participation and backlash, of loss and resilience, where gains are often made through indirect and paradoxical routes.

An Enduring Legacy: Contested Terrain and Continuous Resistance

The imposition of mandatory hijab and Islamic law did not mark the end of women’s struggle but the beginning of a new phase. The Iran-Iraq WarIran-Iraq War Short Description (Excerpt):A brutal eight-year conflict (1980–1988) initiated by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran. While devastating, the war inadvertently strengthened the Islamic Republic, allowing it to suppress internal dissent under the guise of wartime patriotism. Full Description:The Iran-Iraq War was one of the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts, featuring trench warfare and the use of chemical weapons. Saddam aimed to seize oil-rich territory and crush the revolutionary threat next door. Instead, Iran mobilized a massive volunteer force (“human waves”) fueled by religious fervor to defend the revolution. Critical Perspective:Khomeini famously called the war a “divine blessing.” It allowed the regime to militarize society and label any political opposition as treason. The war forged the identity of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and entrenched the narrative of Iran as a besieged fortress of Islam fighting against a corrupt world, a narrative that sustains the state to this day.
Read more (1980-88) created new necessities and opportunities, drawing women into the public sphere as nurses, factory workers, and even propagandists, complicating the regime’s ideology of domesticity.

In the decades since, women have been at the forefront of challenging the state’s authority. Their tactics have ranged from quiet, everyday resistance (“bad hijab” or wearing loose headscarves and makeup) to public, audacious acts of defiance. The Green Movement of 2009 and the nationwide protests of 2017, 2019, and 2022 have consistently featured women as leading figures. The recurring motif of burning headscarves or waving them on sticks has become a powerful symbol of resistance against state-mandated morality.

This continuous struggle demonstrates that the revolution did not silence women; rather, it politicized them in new and profound ways. The initial bargain of the revolution—rights in exchange for submission to a patriarchal state—has been relentlessly questioned. The women’s movement in Iran, though fragmented and facing severe repression, remains one of the most dynamic and persistent forces for change, a direct and living legacy of the revolutionary mobilization of 1979.

Conclusion

The story of women and the Iranian Revolution is one of profound irony and contradiction. Women were indispensable to the success of a movement that would subsequently seek to marginalize them legally and socially. Their mobilization was facilitated by a modernizing state whose gender policies alienated the very constituencies that would ultimately overthrow it. The revolution itself was a broad coalition that included women fighting for starkly different visions of Iran’s future.

The ultimate victory of the Islamist faction under Khomeini led to a systematic project of re-Islamization that targeted women’s rights as a cornerstone of the new political order. Yet, this very project of control has been met with decades of continuous resistance, negotiation, and protest. The Iranian woman is neither simply a victim nor a mindless adherent; she is an active agent navigating, challenging, and shaping the political and social constraints of her society. The revolution of 1979, therefore, is not a closed chapter on women’s rights but an ongoing process. It serves as a powerful reminder that in revolutions, the question of gender is never peripheral; it is central to the projects of both state power and social resistance. The battle over the veil, the law, and the female body continues to define the political landscape of Iran, proving that the agency unleashed in 1979 has never been fully subdued.

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References (Illustrative)

· Paidar, P. (1995). Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran. Cambridge University Press.
· Najmabadi, A. (2000). The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History. Syracuse University Press.
· Afshar, H. (1985). Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil. Macmillan.
· Moghadam, V. M. (1993). Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
· Tohidi, N. (1994). Modernity, Islamization, and Women in Iran. In V. M. Moghadam (Ed.), Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies. Zed Books.
· Rostam-Kolayi, J. (2008). The Iranian Women’s Movement in the Twentieth Century: A Case Study of Volatility, Victory, and Futility. Duke University Press.
· Milani, F. (1992). Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers. Syracuse University Press.