The Role of Women in Promoting Soft Power from Imam Khamenei's Point of View, Emphasizing on Social Components

The Islamic Republic of Iran is equipped with various sources of soft power, including culture, history, civilization, Persian language, people-orientation characteristics, political and social participation of the people, and the like. In order to improve Iran's capabilities, these resources must be identified, and efforts must be made to convert them into soft power. Different groups of the people have to work together in order to achieve this great goal. Women, containing half of the population, can play important roles in this regard. Through content analysis, this research is intended to find out the importance of the roles of women in strengthening the soft power of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the point of view of Imam Khamenei. Having identified the social characteristics of soft power, Imam Khamenei's written statements and speeches regarding this issue were reviewed. The research is based on content analysis method, and to extract the concepts and an analysis of the texts and speeches of Imam Khamenei is conducted by referring to various and documented sources. By reviewing the material, the researchers ultimately selected 48 lectures and correspondence as the content relating to the concept of soft power resulting in the identification of 244 codes in the first phase. In the next phase, these codes were classified into 24 main concepts and six main categories, including the unit of family, moral society, social capital, social security, social unity and cohesion, and the national morale. The findings indicated that, based on Imam Khamenei’s views, women can play important roles in strengthening the soft power of the Islamic Republic of Iran by taking measures such as consolidating the foundation of the family, educating the next generation, countering cultural aggression, supporting the Islamic lifestyle, promoting national morale, helping resistive economy, consuming Iranian goods, education, activities in Basij and the like.