Through an intersectional feminist re-reading of the Habermasian theoretical framework, this book analyses how women's activism has developed and operated in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Chapters look at three key areas of women's activism in Iran: how women deliberately engaged with media activism despite the government's controlling and repressive policies; women's involvement in civil society organisations, institutions and communities, and cooperation through multilevel activism; and women's activism in the political sphere and its connection with media and civil society activism despite the theocratic system. Drawing upon interviews, analyses of journal and newspaper articles and documentary/non-documentary films, as well as personal experiences, observations and communications, the book examines to what extent Iranian women's rights' groups and activists have collaborated not only with each other but with other social groups and activists to help facilitate the formation of a pluralist civil society capable of engaging in deliberative processes of democratic reform. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, particularly those who study women's and other social movements in Iran.

State policies can enormously influence gender equity. They cvan mitigate cultural constraints on women's autonomy (as in China and India) or slow the pace of change in gender equity (as in the Republic of Korea). Policies to provide opportunities for women's empowerment should be accompanied by communication efforts to alter cultural values that limit women's access to those opportunities.

Globally, women are disproportionately impacted by climate change and disasters due to gender inequalities and limited participation in decision-making processes. Addressing this imbalance will involve integrating gender equality in laws and policies on climate change and disaster risk management and ensuring gender equality outcomes in building social and economic resilience. This report presents findings of a gender analysis of national legal and policy frameworks of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) and discusses whether laws, policies, and strategies consider gender inequalities as they relate to climate and disaster risk management. It includes recommendations to address gaps in sector laws and policies affecting women’s resilience to climate change and disasters in the Lao PDR.

Expanding the discussion of religious participation of women in ancient Rome, Celia E. Schultz demonstrates that in addition to observances of marriage, fertility, and childbirth, there were more--and more important--religious opportunities available to R

In Third Republic France (1870-1940), the directrice of a normal school (école normale) for training women teachers was the most important woman representative of public primary education in each department. Her role was central to the republican educational project designed to bolster the establishment of a stable democracy after the Franco-Prussian War. The laicization of public education figured prominently in republican efforts to combat the old alliance of "throne and altar" favoring monarchy and religious instruction in public schools. Although laymen taught most boys in public schools by 1870, many nuns staffed separate girls' public schools. Thus an 1879 law mandated new departmental normal schools to train lay women teachers. This study of 313 normal school directrices between 1879 and 1940, an important group of professional women not previously studied, explores the challenges they encountered and their responses. Often the target of political hostility, they defended republican schooling as they interacted with local notables and authorities. In an educational system divided by social class as well as by gender, they trained teachers for "children of the people" attending free primary schools, separate from the elite and less numerous secondary schools. Directrices were expected to be role models for women teachers and to emphasize women's duties as wives and mothers, yet their careers exemplified an alternative to domesticity at a time of much debate about women's appropriate roles. Eventually some pushed against the boundaries of prevailing gender norms as they also joined professional, philanthropic, and feminist associations and sometimes publicly supported women's suffrage. Women and the Politics of Education in Third Republic France deftly examines the history of these women and the nature of their contributions to French society.

Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran looks at the rise and role of female activism in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Since 1979 women have played a decisive role in elections and assumed political posts. This study assesses this role as well as the impact of domestic and international policies on women's activism, highlighting the contradictions between politics and religion within the Islamic Republic. It also seeks to evaluate political and economic developments and the transformations in civil society, including the development of a gender conscious society. Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran features original research by Sanam Vakil, an Iranian-American scholar, who conducted interviews with women activists, politicians, journalists, clerics and students in Iran, Europe and the U.S. and used primary sources to specifically links women's activism to the domestic political changes in Iran. The book will be an essential resource for anyone studying Iranian politics and seeking to understand better the internal political and social dynamics in Iran and the critical role that women play.

Women in Turkish Society: Seljuks, Ottoman Empire, and Turkish Republic, Livre de Lyon

Women of the Republic views the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The "women of the army" toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, suppliers of food and clothing. Recruiters, whether patriot or tory, found men more willing to join the army when their wives and daughters could be counted on to keep the farms in operation and to resist enchroachment from squatters. "I have Don as much to Carrey on the warr as maney that Sett Now at the healm of government," wrote one impoverished woman, and she was right. Women of the Republic is the result of a seven-year search for women's diaries, letters, and legal records. Achieving a remarkable comprehensiveness, it describes women's participation in the war, evaluates changes in their education in the late eighteenth century, describes the novels and histories women read and wrote, and analyzes their status in law and society. The rhetoric of the Revolution, full of insistence on rights and freedom in opposition to dictatorial masters, posed questions about the position of women in marriage as well as in the polity, but few of the implications of this rhetoric were recognized. How much liberty and equality for women? How much pursuit of happiness? How much justice? When American political theory failed to define a program for the participation of women in the public arena, women themselves had to develop an ideology of female patriotism. They promoted the notion that women could guarantee the continuing health of the republic by nurturing public-spirited sons and husbands. This limited ideology of "Republican Motherhood" is a measure of the political and social conservatism of the Revolution. The subsequent history of women in America is the story of women's efforts to accomplish for themselves what the Revolution did not.

A study of citizenship formation in post-1979 Iran, examining the centrality of non-elite women's participation in the process.

The role of women in Iran has often been downplayed or obscured, particularly in the modern era. This volume demonstrates that women have long played important roles in different facets of Iranian society. Together with its companion, Women in Iran from the Rise of Islam to 1800, this volume completes a two-book project on the central importance of Iranian women from pre-Islamic times through the creation and establishment of the Islamic Republic. It includes essays from various disciplines by prominent scholars who examine women's roles in politics, society, and culture and the rise and development of the women's movement before and during the Islamic Republic. Several contributors address the issue of regional, ethnic, linguistic, and tribal diversity in Iran, which has long contained complex, heterogenous societies.