“Behind the closed doors at home, prohibited from everything in life, education, training and social life, women are regarded as mindless, like infants; they are confined to the burdens of household work and childbearing and are considered the slaves and servants of their husbands,” wrote Bibi Khanum Astarabadi (1852–1920), an outspoken and prominent Qajar woman. This was not a tradition in Europe, she noted: “This is our Islamic custom.” Similarly, in describing women's absence in public, Seyyed Jamalzadeh, a noted novelist commented: “No women can be seen in this country of men, but strangely, half of the walking population in the streets is wrapped in black bags from head to the toe without even an opening to breathe.” A British orientalist, Clara Rice, observed that “most trades are in the hands of men, such as pottery-making, calico printing, felt-hat making and confectionery. All shops are kept by men. … there is no profession open to women. Art, music and literature may be said to be closed to them. All occupations followed by them [women] call for manual work rather than brainwork.”

Yet, these invisible women were capable of action, as in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11 when many women gathered in the streets of Tehran took off their veils and shouted: “Long live freedom. … We must … live the way we want!” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, Iran was economically backward, politically chaotic, predominantly Shi'i Islam, and a patriarchal society.