Salaam! Please join us for a Persian Circle talk on Tuesday, April 18 with Alex Shams (Uchicago, Anthropology). We will have an introductory session for students in English at 4:30 pm, the talk in Persian will begin at 5 pm.

دختران انقلاب: دسترسی زنان ایرانی‌ به تحصيلات در دهه شصت

Daughters of the Revolution: Iranian Women’s Access to Education in Khomeini’s Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9, women’s access to education increased dramatically amidst a broader transformation of gender norms unprecedented in modern Iranian history. In just the first decade after the Revolution, women’s literacy rates doubled as a result of revolutionary mass education campaigns. By the 2000s, higher education had gone from being a privilege afforded to a tiny minority of women to a social norm and a right for the majority. Whereas in 1979 less than a quarter of one percent of Iranian women attended university, by the 2000s the figures were around 60%.

Scholars of modern Iran have often overlooked the reasons for these dramatic changes in gender politics, ignoring the mobilization of the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, as well as revolutionary programs that specifically sought to improve women’s access to education as part of revolutionary ideology. This presentation is based on ethnographic research in Iran and analyzes the reasons for these dramatic changes by exploring the oral histories of Iranian women who were the first in their families to access higher education.

Tuesday, April 18
4:30 pm: Introductory session in English
5:00 pm: Persian Circle talk
Pick Hall, 218
(5828 S. University Ave, Chicago, IL 60637)

There will be tea & sweets!
See you there,
Alexandra