Iran and AfghanistanDemocracy ideologies are based on gendered
concepts of citizenship. They define a citizen as a
free and autonomous contract-making individual,
a property owner, the male citizen. Democracy ide-
ologies exclude women from the state. This exclu-
sion is accentuated by the attempts to separate state
and civil society, civil society and the private
sphere, and the state and the private sphere. The
works of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59), the French
philosopher and historian, present an example of
the gendered character of democracy ideologies. In
his much acclaimed work De la démocratie en
Amérique(1835–40), he makes an ideological dis-
tinction between state and civil society, considers
women as custodians of religion and mores, advo-
cates sex segregation and women’s exclusion from
the public sphere, argues that women’s social and
political inequality is a natural fact, and maintains
that democracy is guaranteed through women’s
exclusion from the state, or what he calls women’s
political powerlessness.
By marginalizing women and excluding women
from the state and the public sphere democracy ide-
ologies deny women individuality, autonomy, and
independence. Indeed, they do not perceive women
as individuals but as family members whose rights
and obligations are defined in relation to male rel-
atives, leaders, and protectors of women.
In Iran and Afghanistan, modern centralizing
states, although antidemocratic, more or less in-
cluded women in their general program of modern-
ization and national development, but did not
challenge gendered distinction between public and
private spheres. Women obtained the right to edu-
cation and to work and were later granted political
rights. But with their institutionalization of gen-
dered relations, these states did not challenge gen-
dered systems of social stratification or gendered
relations within the family and did not remove from
family and religion their social functions. These
modernizing states submitted women to the control
of the men of their community and privileged
women mothers and wives over women citizens.
The reformer Afghan King Amàn Allàh (1921–9)
promoted women’s education and introduced a
family code in 1921 outlawing child marriage as
contrary to Islamic principles, followed by other
measures in 1924, including the right of Afghan
girls to choose their husbands. Although the intro-
duction of a civil legal code went against tradition-
alist values of the tribal society and customs, it did
not, however, intend to question patriarchy and
male domination. In Iran under Reza Shah (1925–94 democracy ideologies
41), the number of girls’ schools increased sharply
in urban areas and the foundation of Tehran Uni-
versity in 1936 allowed women access to higher
education and to work mainly in the administra-
tion. The veil was outlawed in 1936 but the new
family code promulgated in 1933 was entirely
founded on Islamic law.
Patriarchal system and gender inequality per-
sisted in the 1960s and 1970s despite the grant
of voting rights to women (1963 in Iran, 1964
in Afghanistan), statutory changes, and urban
women’s increasing presence in the public sphere.
Women mothers and wives were still privileged
over women citizens. The application of Islamic
laws in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and
following the downfall of the communist govern-
ment in Afghanistan reinforced patriarchy and
denied women their citizenship rights.
In Iran and Afghanistan the Western liberal
notion of the citizen, which implies a masculinized
construct, has been predominant in democratic dis-
courses that also shared the Western construct of
nation-state. As a consequence, attempts to ensure
women’s legal and citizenship rights, as major fac-
tors in the building of democracy, have been largely
absent from democratic discourses. Anti-clerical,
reformist, and Jacobin-minded Iranian intellectuals
such as A™mad Kasravì(assassinated in 1945 by the
Fidà±iyìn-i Islàm, a fundamentalist group), £asan
Taqi≠zàda, and Mu™ammad ≠AlìJamàlzàda shared
the principle of patriarchy and male domination.
Despite their different viewpoints on the question
of women’s emancipation, like de Tocqueville and
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), they considered domes-
tic work, and child-bearing and rearing as women’s
main social function and natural role. Kasravìeven
argued that women’s political participation was
in contradiction to their natural characteristics.
Several religious reformist intellectuals in post-rev-
olutionary Iran, including ≠Abd al-Karìm Surùsh
(known as the standard-bearer of religious intellec-
tualism in post-revolutionary Iran) and ≠Abbàs
≠Abdì, who are against political Islam and advocate
democracy, also largely share a gendered concept of
citizenship. Surùsh’s lack of interest in the Woman
Question is paramount when we compare his writ-
ings on women to the vast corpus of his published
work. He has so far devoted only two paragraphs
to women. His discussion of gender issues is lim-
ited to some lectures and interviews where he criti-
cizes both traditional understandings of women’s
status in Islam and equal rights advocates. In
≠Abdì’s view, the question of women and their legal
and citizenship rights is not intertwined with the
building of democracy and therefore does not