فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی زنان
پیاپی 33 (پاییز 1385)

The increased number of women’s NGOs in recent years has received various reactions and analyses. Regarding the importance of these organizations in creating social changes, this paper studies the history of their formations in Iran, the present status of these establishments, and the conditions needed for their constructive and desirable activities. In addition, the paper explains the ways of the mutual interaction between the Iranian government and women’s NGOs to promote women’s status in the Islamic system and their effective roles, proposing some suggestions in this regard.

Embryo donation is a method for infertility treatment in which man’s sperm and woman’s ovum are artificially inseminated in the laboratory and, after the primary divisions, i.e. after four or five days, the resultant embryo is transferred to the woman applicant’s womb. There are three theses towards embryo donation: absolute prohibition, absolute permission, and differentiation (i.e. it is permitted in case the sexual cells of married couples are used and prohibited in case the man and woman are not married). First elaborating on the process, history, and nature of embryo donation, the present paper evaluates the absolute prohibition and the differentiation theses. Finally, the paper adopts the thesis of the absolute permission of embryo donation on the basis of the arguments presented.

Day 17th, 1314, the day when hijab was officially declared forbidden by Reza Shah, is among the important events in the contemporary history of Iran. Some believe this event to be a natural consequence of Iranian Women’s Movement and their struggle for attaining their lost rights. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s decision to ban hijab was the natural end and final consequence of all struggles and movements which Iranian women followed after the Constitutional Revolution in Iran. Presenting an overview of half a century of the developments of Iranian women’s social activities, the present paper is to study the impact of the Day 17th event on these developments and to historically criticize the idea that Banning Hijab was, in fact, the liberation of women and a promise of their positive and active presence in different social, political, and cultural arenas. The results of this historical study lead to the fact that Banning Hijab by Reza Shah not only did not result in the persistence of women’s movement and the increase of their social activities, but let to its historical discontinuity.

With respect to the exalted status of family in Islam and woman as the essential pillar of this institution, one would expect women and family to be one of the significant axes of the four Development Plans after the Islamic revolution. This paper, after a brief study of the types of development plans in Iran, elaborates on the amount of attention of the Islamic system to removing women’s problems in development plans. The results of the study show that, in the first and second Development plans, the major issues were the promotion the level of women’s literacy and health, leisure time activities and physical education. In the Third Development Plan, a section of the plan is devoted to the development of women’s socio-cultural participation. In the Fourth Development Plan, however, in spite of understanding the necessity of paying attention to the problems of women and family and in spite of incorporating some points in the plan, some very basic issues have been neglected.

According to Twelver Shi’ism, religious verdicts depend on expediencies [Maslehat] and corruptions, in the same way governmental verdicts are for securing the social good. Thus, “expediency” [Maslehat] as a fatwa and/or governmental verdict enjoys a significant status in Islamic jurisprudence. What this paper intends to study is the status and the role of expediency in inferring religious and governmental verdicts. The paper also focuses on a terminological study of the concept of Maslehat, the dependence of verdicts upon expediencies and corruptions, the expediencies in the conducts of the infallible households of the Prophet, a terminological study of governmental verdicts, the differences of governmental verdicts with religious verdicts, the role of expediency in governmental verdicts, and rational expediency from the viewpoint of the Sunnites. The result of the study shows that a government can solve many of the problems of women in the light of expediency.

The present paper is an overview of the sovereignty of women in the Islamic countries Iran, India, Egypt, and Iraq, who ruled during the 7th (H) to 12th (H) centuries. The sovereignty of Muslim women in the post-Islamic Iran is a clear example of the supremacy of women’s power and administration. With the ascendancy of Turk and Mongol dynasties, women found the opportunity to rule due to the then existing rules which were tolerant towards women’s rights. Raziyyeh Khatoon was the first female king of the Muslim Turk state, who ruled very authoritatively. Shajar al-Dorr, the second Muslim female king, ascended to throne through election but was forced to abandon her sultanate, not being approved by the Caliph. Torkan Khatoon, Padeshah Khatoon, Abesh Khatoon, etc. are among the other Muslim ruling women who ruled at different times. The present paper is based on the book “Ruling Women” written by Bahriye Ucok from Ankara University.

The paper is to answer the question whether it is possible to study all the feministic concerns under the rubric of feminist political thought. To answer the question, first, the key feminist concepts should be studied and their methods of understanding explained. Feminists’s concentration on concepts such as state, power, justice, peace, and security; their presentation of a gender-based interpretation of these concepts; and their adoption of a post-positivist approach to understanding phenomena is indicative of the fact that their questions and answers can be presented as a form of feminist political thought. After elaborating on the feminist method of understanding, the paper explains their most important claims in the field of political thought and finally evaluates the feminist prescriptions for the basic concepts of political thought. I believe that feminist criticisms have decisive role in revealing the forgotten arenas, but their basic shortcoming is their inconsistency. Condemning men and considering them guilty in feminist analyses is so prominent that as men were the cause of all the hardships of the world.