The Twofold Role of Iran's Democratic Party In Women's Political Participation

The aim of this article is to study the role and impact of the democratic party of Iran on women's political participation during the years 1941 to 1953. The results obtained by means of the descriptive-analytic method show that the Democratic Party has had a twofold and contradictory role in women's political participation. On the one hand a number of intellectuals of this party were supportive of women's movements demands and this along with the application of extensive facilities of the party for necessary cultural and social establishments for political participation in general lead to promotion of the culture of women's political activities and from there to an increase in women's political participation. On the other hand the Democratic Party, as a state party, ignoring the active role of defiant women in women's movement as well as stimulating the hostility of narrow minded religious groups caused a double effect of their and other people's sensitivity and pessimism towards women's issues. This double role has been shown in three continuous parts of the present article. In the first part, women's political rights from the viewpoint of the democratic party has been studied in order to show that, in principle this party is documented to creed and charter as well as party procedures whether political or ideological regarding women's political rights. In the second part, the positive role of the Democratic Party in women's participation in political affairs has been discussed. The third part is devoted to inhibitory role of the party in the development of women's political participation and in the concluding part the reason for this twofold role with reference to the governmental quality of the Democratic Party has been studied.