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Beyond Secularism: A Framework for Women Activism in Post-Revolutionary Iran | ||
| Islamic Political Studies | ||
| مقالات آماده انتشار، پذیرفته شده، انتشار آنلاین از تاریخ 28 آذر 1404 | ||
| نوع مقاله: Original Article | ||
| شناسه دیجیتال (DOI): 10.22081/jips.2025.73740.1098 | ||
| نویسندگان | ||
| Asiye Sarabadani tfreshi* 1؛ غلام رضا بهروزی لک2؛ علی اکبر حائری2 | ||
| 1QOM | ||
| 2قم | ||
| تاریخ دریافت: 24 آذر 1404، تاریخ بازنگری: 28 آذر 1404، تاریخ پذیرش: 28 آذر 1404 | ||
| چکیده | ||
| Abstract The discourse on women’s agency in the dominant literature of social sciences and gender studies is most often framed through a simplifying and reductionist dichotomy. On the one hand, patriarchal traditionalism attributed to premodern societies and religious systems is portrayed as an obstacle to women’s agency; on the other hand, an individualistic emancipatory model grounded in Western liberal secularism is presumed to constitute the sole legitimate and universally valid pathway to women’s empowerment. This prevailing analytical framework not only overlooks the historical, cultural, and civilizational diversity of women’s modes of agency, but also structurally forecloses the recognition and understanding of alternative, non-Western, and indigenous forms of female agency. Within such a framework, any divergent articulation of women’s agency is either treated as a deviation from a presumed “global norm” or interpreted through concepts such as the reproduction of domination, ideological indoctrination, or the absence of genuine agency. Post-revolutionary Iran represents a distinctive and analytically significant case that has the capacity to challenge this dominant dichotomization and to open a new conceptual horizon for rethinking the relationship between gender, religion, and politics. In this context, the Islamic Revolution should be understood not merely as a political rupture, but as a broader identity-driven and civilizational project that facilitated the emergence of a state-centered and indigenous model of women’s agency and empowerment. This model is rooted in Shi‘i political thought and articulated through a close interconnection between social responsibility, religious identity, cultural resistance, and discursive forms of agency. Nevertheless, despite the centrality of this framework to the symbolic and discursive order of the Islamic Republic, a substantial body of international scholarship has predominantly approached it from an external, secular-liberal, and often normatively prescriptive perspective—one that judges this model according to pre-established criteria rather than seeking to understand its internal logic. Such readings have remained structurally incapable of grasping the strategic rationality, ideological linkages, and specific mechanisms of subject formation that underpin this framework. As a result, women’s agency in post-revolutionary Iran has frequently been interpreted either as imposed and devoid of autonomy or as a purely reactive phenomenon shaped by state power. Consequently, a systematic analysis of this alternative paradigm of women’s agency—particularly at the level of macro-theoretical formulation and conceptualization—continues to constitute a major unresolved gap in the contemporary literature. The present study is situated precisely in response to this lacuna and seeks to move beyond prevailing reductionist interpretations by addressing a central question: what are the conceptual, normative, and operational components of the non-secular framework of women’s agency that has developed in post-revolutionary Iran, particularly as articulated within the political thought of its leadership? Employing a qualitative approach and drawing on discourse analysis, this article undertakes a systematic examination of the speeches, messages, and writings of Ayatollah Khamenei as the principal architect of this intellectual and ideological model. The focus on this corpus is analytically significant insofar as his political thought has played a decisive role in the formation, consolidation, and reproduction of the official discourse of the Islamic Republic regarding women, family, and society, functioning as a hegemonic framework that legitimizes a specific model of women’s agency. The analytical framework of the study is structured around key concepts such as gender complementarity, cultural resistance, religious subject formation, and discursive agency—concepts that enable a nuanced understanding of the semantic, normative, and strategic dimensions of this model. The findings demonstrate that within this paradigm, women’s agency is not constructed according to the confrontational logic of “equality through sameness” or the negation of gender difference. Rather, it is redefined through a model of functional differentiation and reciprocal complementarity of roles. In this framework, gender differences are not treated as sources of inequality, but as distinct capacities through which complementary roles are performed within a broader civilizational project. Women’s agency is thus defined in an organic relationship with ethical, social, and cultural responsibilities, transcending the level of individual action and being elevated to the level of discursive and identity-based agency. The analysis further reveals that the Iranian model advances a specific form of “resistance-oriented agency.” Within this model, women are positioned not as subjects seeking liberation from religion, tradition, or the family, but as strategic actors who are empowered through a religious–ideological framework to actively participate in a civilizational and discursive confrontation with Western cultural hegemony. Accordingly, women’s agency assumes a predominantly cultural, identity-based, and symbolic character and is conceptualized as one of the principal mechanisms for the reproduction of meaning, the consolidation of religious identity, and the continuation of the “culture of resistance.” Based on the findings, the conscious social and political participation of women within this framework is understood not as a marginal, tactical, or temporary phenomenon, but as a strategic necessity for safeguarding national sovereignty, preserving cultural authenticity, and ensuring the continuity of the Islamic Revolution’s civilizational project. By offering a nuanced and multi-layered analysis of a highly influential and non-Western model of women’s empowerment, this article enables a critical re-examination of the universalist claims of secular feminism and contributes to the enrichment of theoretical debates on the diversity of women’s agency in the contemporary world. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that any meaningful understanding of the relationship between gender, religion, and politics—when divorced from indigenous logics and alternative civilizational frameworks—is inevitably prone to simplification, reductionism, and misinterpretation of social realities. | ||
| کلیدواژهها | ||
| Keywords: Women agency؛ post-Revolutionary Iran؛ political Islam؛ cultural resistance؛ cultural hegemony | ||
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