Iranian Women's Movement
Currently women's rights groups are among the most active social rights groups in Iran and are mostly involved in an effort to gain equal rights for women in the Iranian legal system by opposing specific discriminatory laws. However, under the Presidential regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected President in 2005, women's rights advocates have been beaten, jailed and persecuted.
The presence of women in Iranian intellectual movements (science, modern literature, cinema, human-rights activism, etc.) has been remarkable throughout the history of modern Iran. According to the research ministry of Iran, women accounted for 56% of all university students in the natural sciences, including one in five Ph.D. students. Such education and social trends are increasingly viewed with alarm by the Iranian government.
In cinema and the visual arts, Tahmineh Milani, Rakhshan Bani Etemad, and Samira Makhmalbaf created new cinematic styles which have attracted many from all over the world and in international festivals. Persian poet and literary figure Simin Behbahani was nominated for 1997 Nobel Prize for literature. The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize went to Shirin Ebadi for her efforts for democracy and human rights, especially for the rights of women and children. Simin Daneshvar's Savushun is a novel about the Iranian experience of modernity during the 20th century.
Iranian writer and satirist, Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi was perhaps the first professional female satirist, critic and one of the notable figures involved in Persian constitutional revolution. In early 20th century, Persian music enjoyed the emergence of Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri, the "Lady of Iranian music".
Read more about this topic: Intellectual Movements In Iran
Famous quotes containing the words women and/or movement:
“More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)