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Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women's Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement, by Haideh Moghissi. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. xii + 190 pages. Notes to p. 206. Refs. to p. 213. Index to p. 217. $19.95.
Reviewed by Ali Akbar Mahdi
This book is about the way Iranian women's individual and collective lives are affected by male attitudes towards women and sexuality. It deals with the organizational dynamics of women's groups, the religio-legal system, and the political struggle against despotism and imperial powers. The first two chapters give an overview of the emergence of women's activism in Iran and the legal and political changes in their status during the regime of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-78). The next two chapters deal with the images of women and sexuality in populist discourses of both religious and secular intellectuals and activists. Chapter Five deals with the socialist view of women's position in society as well as in social movements. The final three chapters are devoted to the politics, especially with regard to women, of the Fedayeen, a leftist organization, during and after the 1979 revolution. The detailed description of the emergence of the National Union of Women and its relationship to the Fedayeen and interviews with activists within these organizations make up the most informative part of these chapters.
Moghissi advances two theses: first, that "the dominance of populist tendencies and ideologies among the [Iranian] opposition and their preoccupation with foreign aggression made the struggle for democracy and individual liberties peripheral" (p. 2); and second, that the Iranian left's antifeminist ideas and practices were rooted in "the hegemonic influence of Shiite/Iranian concepts and perceptions of female sexuality and sexist...