Armenian schools
Education of girls often depended on availability
of schools and fear for the safety of girls who might
have to travel long distances to the nearest school,
but also on the family’s or community’s belief sys-
tem, which often ran counter to efforts to educate
women, charging that education corrupted them
(Villa and Matossian 1982, 71). Armenian schools
opened soon after missionary schools in an effort
to offset the influence of missionaries and assimila-
tion or acculturation; these were experienced espe-
cially by communities where, as in the case of
Iranian-Armenians in Urmieh, many Armenians
communicated with each other only in Turkish or
Kurdish rather than Armenian (Berberian 2000,
78–9). Proponents of education placed their argu-
ments in the context of national progress, empha-
sizing that women’s education would better serve
the Armenian people or nation (Berberian 2000,
82–3).
A major force behind the expansion of the edu-
cation of both boys and girls were Ottoman- and
Iranian-Armenian women who formed charitable
organizations, helped to establish new schools and
often provided students with tuition, clothing, and
school supplies (Berberian 2000, 83–5, Kalaidjian
2000, 165, Adanalyan 1979, 255–9).
Women in theater
Women also began to make appearances on stage
starting in the late nineteenth century in Iranian
and Ottoman cities (Berberian 2000, 86). In
Istanbul, women’s roles may have been played by
women actors possibly earlier in the Aramian
Theater, established in 1846, and later the Eastern
Theater or Armenian Theater Society, established
in 1861 (Navasargian 1999, 33, 35). Starting in the
1880s, women also began to establish their own
theatrical groups, traveling and performing in
Istanbul and parts of Iran and Egypt (Navasargian
1999, 43).
Armenian diaspora: feminist
issues
The twentieth century saw the influx of Arme-
nian refugees from Ottoman Anatolia into Arab
lands and Iran. We have little insight into the every-
day lives of women in the newer diasporas. Much
of the very limited studies on Armenian women in
the twentieth century focuses on women victims of
the genocidal process of the First World War and on
women’s feminist and nationalist writings. Women’s
activism extended to nationalist and feminist
spheres as they became involved in political activ-
overview 13ity, in membership or even as founders of political
parties, in the case of Maro Vardanian, in support
of the nationalist movement.
During the Iranian Constitutional Revolution,
1905–11, Iranian-Armenian women of the upper-
middle and upper classes began to be involved in
the women’s movement in Iran, especially in the
attempt to bring women’s issues to the attention of
Iranian women and raise their consciousness. Their
organizations tried to educate women in politics,
Ottoman and Iranian constitutionalism, as well as
inheritance rights, hygiene, and so forth (Berberian
2000, 91). Similar organizations existed among
Ottoman-Armenian women (Adanalyan 1979,
255–9). Especially significant were feminist writers
Srpuhi Dussap, Sibyl (Zabel Asatur), and Zabel
Esayian, whose writings promoted justice and
equity for women in the public and private spheres
and educational and employment opportunities
(Rowe 2000, 69). Beginning in the late nineteenth
century and later in the twentieth century, women’s
journals, some with a feminist agenda, began to
appear in Istanbul, Cairo, and Beirut. Journals such
as Marie Beylerian’s Artemis, which appeared in
Cairo in 1901–3, Hayganush Topuzian-Toshigian’s
Dzaghig Ganants(Women’s flower), published in
Istanbul in 1905–7, and Hay Guin(Armenian
woman), published in Istanbul in 1919–32, focused
on women’s issues and concerns. They encouraged
girls’ education and women’s full participation
in public life as a crucial part of national devel-
opment. Of the women’s journals, Seza’s (Siran
Zarifian-Kupelian) Yeridasart Hayuhi (Young
Armenian woman), which appeared in Beirut inter-
mittently from 1932 to 1968, made an especially
important contribution as a proponent of women’s
rights, education, and empowerment (Zeitlian 2000,
119–41).Conclusion
A large segment of Ottoman- and Iranian-
Armenian women began to be educated and politi-
cized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, although the majority of both popula-
tions shared similar status, roles, and customs and
remained traditional in interpersonal relations,
social structure, and world-view. Their lives were
not very much different from those of Muslim
women. While the influence of religion cannot be
denied, class and exposure to Westernization, espe-
cially through missionaries and Caucasian Arme-
nian immigrants in the case of Iran, were more
significant than religion in determining these
women’s lives.