Women's Movements in Iran at Constitutional Era

Abstract

Women, who constitute half of the society, did not go beyond the duty of taking care of the house and the children which were common at traditional societies. Parallel to the Industrial Revolution in the West, the concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity gradually reached the Eastern world through the media, and in countries such as Iran, women found the opportunity to make the necessary effort to exercise their rights and participate in society. They did not hesitate to express that they wanted to take an active role in growth, dynamism, being an individual and social change, and to make their presence felt by the political administrators of the period. For this reason, it would be useful to examine the influence of women in the Constitutional Movement in the Qajar Era in Iran, which is not much known in Islamic countries such as Turkey and even in a large part of Iran.During the Qajar era, women lived a life of imprisonment in houses called "Enderun", as in all male-centered societies, in isolation from the outside world. They were often deprived of even the most basic rights such as inheritance. There was no question of women's social life other than being wives to their husbands and mothering their children. However, with the exacerbation of the constitutionalism movement in Iran, as in the Ottoman state, Iranian women wanted to change this situation and started some social activities, founding associations and publishing magazines in almost the same years. Although the Qajar women were deprived of social life, they rebelled against their situation during the Constitutional period, and they started to use their own names by changing the terms such as "Zayife" or "Nine Hasan", which were used for women until then. At that time, women bravely followed the political events and fought for their own rights.