Gender and Revolution: A Different Approach to Women's Participation in the Islamic Revolution of Iran

The vast participation of the veiled women in the course of the Islamic Revolution of Iran caused foreign analysts to call it the revolution of the veils (chadur). The whyness and howness of this participation have not been properly discussed by those who are interested in the theoretical studies of the Islamic Revolution. The present paper is an attempt to review this issue through a method of discourse analysis. Hence the three traditional, modernization and Islamic Revolution discourses are studied at two levels: inter-discourse and intra-discourse levels. The hypothesis of this paper is that at the intra-discourse level, disconnection in the articulation of the traditional and modernization discourses and adoption of the strategy of rejection and exclusion of the other and at the inter-discourse level the grounds were prepared for their inability to preserve the former audience and attract new audience in the years before the Islamic Revolution. On the other hand the synthetic nature of the articulation of the discourse of Islamic Revolution at the intra-discourse level and adoption of a critical and positive strategy towards the other based on cultural, social and political requirements of the society, lead to the redefinition of a new political and social identity for Iranian women. This redefinition on its turn encouraged a large number of women who chose a traditional symbol, that is, hijab (veil) to joint the struggles against the Shah’s regime.