Women's Employment Model in Iran’s Islamic Revolution Discourse: Examining and Drawing the Discourse Nuclei from Ayatollah Khamenei’s Perspective

Women’s employment, its possibility or subordination, has been a serious and questionable issue for women within the discourse of the revolution as well as for its external critics after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. This paper, with a central focus on   Ayatollah Khamenei's books, positions, and speeches, aims at enumerating the discourse nuclei for permissibility or impermissibility of women’s employment  as well as its perceived limits. As far as women’s employment is concerned, Islamic Revolution discourse from Ayatollah Khamenei's standpoint, specifically its framework, is in some ways in line with modern discourse; however, it is in some other ways different from or even in some aspects in sharp contrast with the latter. Accordingly, Islamic revolution discourse paves the way for a quite different life style. This study— theoretically on the basis of Ayatollah Khamenei's third model of womanhood and methodologically using the discourse analysis approach of Laclau and Moff (2001) and library data collection — introduces the relevant discourse nuclei .The results indicate that in Ayatollah Khamenei's view, women's employment and social action are not only irreprehensible but also necessary for the development of the Islamic society. Five major reidentified nuclei in this regard  show his concern for the simultaneous development of women at the individual, family, and social levels. These discourse nuclei are as follows: employment as an example of human rights, agreement as well as the need for women's employment without any harm to their health and dignity, maintaining the proper spiritual status of women in employment including their chastity and dignity, balance of family roles including spousehood, motherhood, child -rearing, their social imaginary , and finally  avoiding any kind of mixing and masculinity in women's employment.The enumerated discourse reflects the lack of the originality of the modern logic and its being merely individualistic and believing in gender equality, i.e., absolute similarity of men and women in the field of employment, which form the basis of feminist and Western views.