Allameh Tabatabai on the Problem of Gender

The distinction between ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ is regarded as the most basic feministic assumption. Accordingly, feminists argue that many of women’s characteristics which have been deemed as natural traits are socially constructed, so their critical and normative theories are intended to eliminate women inferiority. Some planners and scholars in the field of Iranian women studies argue that one cannot conceive the ideas of thinkers likes Allameh Tabatabaei as a rival for feminist theories or as a coherent framework for understanding, explaining, or reforming the status of women, because gender has not been a matter of interest for them. We examine the claim in details in this research. The results of this research carried out by qualitative analysis method on Allameh's works (particularly Al-Mizan), show that Allameh has sought to present coherent discussions in defending the place of women in Islamic thought and in criticizing their conditions in Islamic and modern societies, and he addresses these topics regarding most important feministic ideas. Therefore, attention to the distinction between sex and gender is one of the features of the formulation of women's problems in Allameh's thought. However, due to the rhetoricity of his speculations in Islamic and feminist teachings, one cannot regard his viewpoint as a scientific theory with the characteristics of an empirical theory.