"Gender Equality in Iranian History"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how the book "Gender Equality in Iranian History - from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present (2006)" by Minoo Derayeh is written in a methodical, clear manner, explaining how Iranian society and women's experience altered sharply with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It looks at how the book can be considered an effective guide that promises an account of a radical departure from centuries of pre-Islamic and Muslim women's history.

From the Paper:

"The fourth chapter on modernity and tradition notes a number of issues concerning Sunni vs. Shiite Islam, how the hijab was adopted or ignored in Iranian society, as time went on, the veil in Iran explained as a custom that indicated class membership in the beginning - a reality that Western feminists often miss, in a preoccupation with covering the head as somehow indicative of oppression, even though Western women wore hats two generations ago in religious settings or as signs of respectability. On a more amusing note, such scholars need to live in warm climates without covering the head to sense the aesthetic and practical appeal of the veil, the plight of the Iranian poor woman unable to cover herself plain. Much later, the veil became attached to Islamic ideology, a pre-Islamic convention attributed to female religiosity and modesty by the regime of 1979. "

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