An explanation of the pattern of women's social participation based on three intellectual Islamic traditions in Iran.

Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979 provided new attitudes toward woman's social participation. The present paper is an attempt to investigate three intellectual traditions concerning women's social participation in the four recent decades. These three ways of thinking about women social status, which can be considered as the most important intellectual currents in the Islamic Republic of Iran include, Islamic traditionalism, Islamic modernism, and Islamic civilization approach. This paper, using documentary method, focuses on the main components of each tradition and introduces the pattern of women's participation in society according to each of them. At the end, the paper categorizes the discussed participation patterns as family-oriented, community-oriented and progressive-oriented, and draws a comprehensive model of the theoretical approach of Islamic civilization tradition. A comparative study of these traditions indicates that the Islamic civilization approach, with systemic attitude and evolutionary orientation, provides a rather complete model for women's participation in an Islamic society.