Women and the Islamic Republic offers an in-depth analysis of the role of non-elite Iranian women in state-formation processes both before and after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Shirin Saeidi emphasizes the importance of citizenship practices in better understanding postrevolutionary state-building in Iran. She also sheds more light on the gendered legacies of the Iran–Iraq war that significantly influenced these practices. Saeidi’s extensive research uses a multimethod approach that includes 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Iranian female activists in Iran, Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom; in-depth interviews with former prisoners; her active participation in their religious ceremonies and gatherings; and an analysis of their memoirs.
The book impressively illustrates the significant contributions of Iranian women to state-formation processes as both active citizens and state-makers in the postrevolutionary context. For the non-elite women of this study, their understandings of their own rights have been shaped by the Iranian regime’s citizenship discourses that they have equally challenged. Saeidi examines their engagement in state-building strategies in diverse spaces, including prisons, war fronts, Islamic seminaries, and hospitals. Across its seven chapters, Women and the Islamic Republic provides new insights into female acts of citizenships and national resistance. Saeidi illustrates how women transformed postrevolutionary Iran by engaging with authoritarianism and redefining activism through their various acts of citizenship.
Saeidi discusses how Iranian women questioned the regime’s definition of the “ideal” Iranian revolutionary woman, who is expected to be highly educated, successful in her career, and actively involved in society while remaining devoutly Muslim, wearing the hijab, marrying at a young age, and having numerous children. This ideal is exemplified by figures such as Marzieh Hadidchi Dabbaq (1939–2016), whom the regime presents as the epitome of an Iranian “superwoman.” In chapter 2, Saeidi explores Dabbaq’s background as an anti-Shah activist and Islamic revolutionary with close ties to Khomeini. After her training as a fighter in Lebanon, Dabbaq became the first female commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran while being a mother of eight children. The regime tends to favor women who share Dabbaq’s characteristics, such as women who are members of the Hezbollah branch in Iran. These women who are wives and daughters of martyrs who lost their lives during the Iran–Iraq war have often been viewed as loyal and ideal citizens of the regime who reinforce the state’s authority and legitimacy. However, although Hezbollah women may have been regarded as the most pious social groups in the initial postrevolutionary period, their position changed because they questioned the government’s top-down Islamization projects.
Chapter 2 illustrates how Iranian women have challenged the regime’s narrow definition of the ideal revolutionary citizen by highlighting the multifaceted roles they have played in Iranian society. This is further developed in chapter 5 where Saeidi illustrates how Hezbollah women also challenge the patriarchal and discriminatory gender discourses of the Islamic government, particularly in the exclusion of wives of martyrs from their national discourse since 2009. Rather than following the government’s approach, as explained in chapter 6, Hezbollah women promote a Muslim framework that empowers women and advances their interests and rights, demonstrating the compatibility of feminism and nationalism.
Women and the Islamic Republic demonstrates the complexity of women’s experiences in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary period, highlighting their diverse perspectives on citizenship in Iran. By comparing practices of female activists before and after the revolution in chapters 3 and 4, Saeidi effectively illustrates the various ways in which women challenged the regime’s oversimplified portrayal of their roles and identities as citizens. One way of preserving their status as a revolutionary citizen beyond the regime’s gender limitations and discrimination was to maintain a sense of spiritual and cultural continuity during and after the revolution by using various strategies. Saeidi calls these strategies “spiritual acts of citizenship” (p. 67)—interventions that emerged in response to the Islamic Revolution used by Islamic and leftist women to challenge national and international structures of power. Saeidi illustrates, in chapter 3, how women preserved their revolutionary identity through various spiritual acts of citizenship during the 1980–88 period, supporting their families and communities through the production of erudite poetry. This mirrors the strategies of leftist female activists before the revolution who were able to find solace and cope with the challenges they faced during the Shah’s reign by reading poetry written by Hafez and Rumi. This form of literature was especially important for female prisoners who used it as a survival tool to prevent mental breakdowns during the rule of the Pahlavis. As leftist female political prisoners, women practiced self-preservation and did spiritual acts of citizenship to maintain a sense of balance and control over their own subject formation. Saeidi illustrates how such spiritual acts of citizenship reinforced the bonds of community members and shared identities, regardless of religious or political affiliation and of being Islamist or leftist—a split that emerged after the revolutionary period.
Chapter 4 continues the discussion around the Islamic Republic’s gendered nation-building attempts and people’s own negotiations of their positions through affect and emotions that inspired Iranians to take action through what Saeidi calls “ethically committed ways of belonging” (p. 108). The chapter discusses how such actions redefined gendered and emotional subjectivities of individuals and communities during a time of war and revolutionary fervor. Women sought to disrupt the regime’s heteronormative conception of citizenship and nationalism during its process of nation-building. Despite being isolated by the sociopolitical context of wartime Iran, women used their bodies to rebuild polities by declaring their financial independence and demonstrating their moral commitments not only to the republic but also to themselves and others. Saeidi gives various examples of female doctors and female medical assistants during the Iran–Iraq war who had to navigate between being mothers and professionals serving their country. While separated from her own children, one nurse whom Saeidi interviewed saved patients whom she regarded as her “children,” highlighting her identity not only as a mother but also as a carer of victims of the war and savior of the republic.
Chapter 4 also allows the reader to delve into prison memoirs, particularly those of political prisoners who were deliberately separated and isolated by the regime. Leftist Iranians were accused of being collaborators with Iraq’s Baath Party because they opposed the establishment of an Islamic Republic. As a result, many were imprisoned together with Iraqis who were accused of espionage. During their imprisonment both Iranian and Iraqi women formed deeper connections and friendships that disrupted the regime’s attempt to divide them as enemies. These emotional bonds were often formed through shared experiences of womanhood, such as losing a husband and becoming a widow, or through motherhood, as some children became orphans after losing their fathers.
In conclusion, Women and the Islamic Republic makes a significant contribution to the fields of political science, Iranian studies, gender studies, and anthropology and is an essential read for students and scholars in these fields. With her interdisciplinary approach, Saeidi sheds new light on the complex relationship between women, citizenship, and the Iranian state before and after the Islamic Revolution. Within the context of ongoing civil protests in Iran that are predominantly run and led by young Iranian women, Saeidi once again illustrates the transformative role women can play in authoritarian political contexts.
