With dedication to all freedom-seeking women, especially the free women of Iran.

“Movements without the presence of women ultimately lead to the rise of fascism, Nazism, or at best, a fanatical Islamic regime. Women, as the majority of society in terms of numbers and as a key factor in the contradiction of survival, such as being a mother and their essential role in the economy and politics, cannot be removed or rendered ineffective by any reasonable theory from the realm of social movements. Throughout history, it has been women who have played the most and best roles in the process of societal evolution. Therefore, no social movement can be complete or truly beneficial for a better society and humanity without the presence and role of women.”

Sometimes, a person enters a political, social, ethical, or religious discussion with a certain position and begins to present the subject and its theme from that same position. Ideologies, individuals, and specific movements have their own beliefs and can transform into different movements within themselves, such as left, right, center, and so on.

The perspective on women and gender is also subject to these regulations, sometimes examining women in the role of motherhood, caretaker and protector of the family, and procreation. However, the reality is that the issue of women has always been with us throughout history, especially in recent centuries. In all intellectual movements, the issue of women, gender, and women’s rights has been a serious matter. The effort that this present writing seeks to present to the public is to examine how the perspective on women’s rights and gender has been in different movements, and the main purpose of this writing is to investigate various positions on women’s rights after the Constitutional Revolution and until now. Of course, this perspective will be more general in order to critically examine the recent period and the impact of the emergence of an extremely anti-women regime such as the Islamic Republic and its effects on the women’s movement.

During the Constitutional Revolution, there was a significant difference in thinking among constitutionalist intellectuals regarding the issue of women and gender. The spectrum led by Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri was opposed to any rights for women and believed that women should be considered a small part of a man’s property, responsible for fulfilling his desires and taking care of his children and possessions. A good woman was an obedient woman, even if it meant seeking another husband for the man’s pleasure. According to this spectrum, freedom for women meant immorality and corruption in society. Whenever the issue of women’s rights was brought up among this spectrum, they would quickly turn to the Quran and extract women’s rights from its 1300-year-old laws, which was a fundamental principle for them. In the view of this backward and traditionalist movement, any kind of modernism and modernization was seen as a threat to their beliefs and a cause for the decline of society. They were afraid of any kind of progress in society