An Assessment of Women's Political Participation after the Victory of the Islamic Revolution and Its Effective Factors

Political participation is one of the pillars of democracy and it is used as an indicator for measuring the level of people's governance in determining their political destiny. This descriptive-correlational study was conducted with the aim of investigating the quantitative and qualitative changes which have been taken place in women's political participation after the victory of the Islamic revolution and its effective factors among the women aged over 17 in the city of Tehran; thus, 400 women were selected as the sample by the simple random sampling and they responded to a researcher-made questionnaire about the indicators of women's political participation. The analyses showed that women's political participation is high in elections (as the voters), but it is moderate in some cases such as membership in political parties. The victory of the Islamic revolution has increased women's political participation by four following variables: the increase of social trust, the formation of Islamic-revolutionary identity, the reinforcement of the obligatory dimension of political participation, the development of women's education at different levels which has been accompanied by an increase in their awareness of their rights and duties, and the change of political structure and the governance of a religious democracy system which has provided a ground for women's political participation by establishing election institutions.