feminists, such as Mehrangiz Kar, are active in the
women’s periodical press, as legal advocates, and
in promoting feminist education and awareness.
Roshangaran, the first independent publisher of
mostly women writers, was founded by Shahla
Lahiji, who also established a research institute
devoted to women’s studies.BibliographyPrimary Sources
B. Bàmdàd, From darkness into light. Women’s emanci-
pation in Iran, trans. F. R. C. Bagley, Hicksville, N.Y.
1977.
M. Dolatshahi, Interview recorded by Shahrokh Mes-
koob, 15 May 1984, Paris, tape no. 4, Iranian Oral
History Collection, Harvard University.
Women’s Organization of Iran and International Institute
for Adult Literacy Methods, The design of educational
programs for the social and economic promotion of
rural women. An international seminar 19–24 April
1975 , Tehran 1975.Secondary Sources
M. Afkhami, Iran. A future in the past – the “prerevolu-
tionary” women’s movement, in R. Morgan (ed.),
Sisterhood is global, Garden City, N.Y. 1984, 330–38.
M. Amin, The making of the modern Iranian woman.
Gender, state policy and popular culture, 1865–1946,
Gainesville, Fla. 2002.
A. Kian-Thiébaut, From Islamization to the individual-
ization of women in post-revolutionary Iran, in S.
Ansari and V. Martin (eds.), Women, religion and cul-
ture in Iran, Richmond, Surrey 2002, 127–42.
A. Najmabadi, (Un)veiling feminism, in Social Text18:3
(2000), 29–45.
G. Nashat, Women in pre-revolutionary Iran. A historical
overview, in G. Nashat (ed.), Women and revolution in
Iran, Boulder, Colo. 1983, 5–35.
E. Sanasarian, The women’s rights movement in Iran.
Mutiny, appeasement, and repression from 1900 to
Khomeini, New York 1982.Mana KiaTurkeyThe history of women’s issues in Turkey goes
back to the nineteenth-century Ottoman period,
but more organized women’s movements emerged
in the context of the atmosphere of relative free-
dom created by the revolution of 1908. Following
this revolution women were permitted to found
associations pertaining to their own interests. The
most outstanding of these was the Ottoman
Association for Defense of Women’s Rights, estab-
lished in 1913. It sought to reform existing family
law with the aim of creating an egalitarian family
and to encourage women to take part in public life
(Çakır 1996).
At the beginning of the republican regime (1923),
those women who joined the feminist movement790 women’s unions and national organizations
defined enfranchisement as their basic demand.
Serving this aim, they established the first political
party in republican Turkey, the Kadınlar Halk
Fırkası (Women’s People Party) in 1923 as soon as
the republican regime was declared. Since the party
was officially not allowed, members of the party
established the Türk Kadınlar Birli©i (Union of
Turkish Women) in 1924, which struggled for vot-
ing rights until 1935.
The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk, and his associates advocated that
women should have equal rights with men in every
respect. They made substantial reforms toward
promoting women’s status. Women were given
rights in three main areas: new rights that came
with the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code in 1926;
education for females alongside males; and enfran-
chisement in 1934. Polygamy was forbidden and
women gained equal status in legal and political
areas. In the election of 1934, the first election in
which women participated, 18 women (4.5 per-
cent) were elected to the parliament.
Having gained these rights, the leaders of the
women’s movement decided that there was no
longer any need for a women’s movement. In 1935,
some leaders of the Union of Turkish Women, par-
ticularly those who were in sympathy with the
regime, abolished the union. Thus from 1935
onward, women came to serve as the vanguard of
the Kemalist regime rather than to seek to improve
their status (Göle 1992). This continued at least
until the 1980s.
From 1980, the women’s movement was revived
in Turkey as a direct consequence of the liberal poli-
cies pursued by civilian governments. Women who
sought prestige under the banner of official ideol-
ogy started to shift their attention to struggle for
self-realization in the public sphere. Feminist
women started to raise their voice first in Somut
(Concrete), a weekly magazine, in 1983 and then in
many other feminist journals through the 1990s
and 2000s. Different women’s groups have brought
to light local problems by means of these journals
and have taken many actions. They have mainly
concentrated on such issues as the right to abortion,
divorce on demand, equality in family life, elimina-
tion of legal norms detrimental to women, and
elimination of assault on women in the public
sphere (Tekeli 1990).
Under the influence of the women’s movement
women’s issues are among the hottest topics dis-
cussed in the media, in cinema, and in politics since
the 1980s. Women’s issues have continued to occupy
the agenda of different social groups ranging from
ethnic to traditional and modern (Çaha 1995).