Women and Development: Iranian women's roles under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties

Several approaches have emerged in recent decades to illustrate how development concerns impacted women and men. Furthermore, women's development models have attempted to explain why women have not progressed at the same level as men, particularly in developing countries.

This article discusses the involvement of Iranian women in the development process during the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties in the education, work, political and legal rights area. Therefore, in this regard, the most important questions to consider are: what impact did development have on women in Iran throughout the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, and how did women participate in the development process? The theoretical framework has based on the six approaches in the field of women and development, including Women in Development (WID), Women and Development (WAD), Gender and Development (GAD), Gender Mainstreaming (GMS), Women, Culture, and Development (WCD), and Gender, Law, and Development (GLD).

Based on qualitative and documentary research, this study has a historical perspective.

The findings show that women's progress during the Qajar period had greatly enhanced by their active participation in the formation of the Constitutional Revolution. However, Women were marginalized after the revolution and deprived of education and the right to vote. Women's activists began spontaneously organizing schools and even giving jobs to convince men in the National Consultative Assembly that women could have the right to study by highlighting the importance of motherhood and marriage. During the Pahlavi era, particularly the second, women were primarily involved in the development of Iran since providing education and jobs for women was a government strategy to modernize and build the state.

 Thus, the Constitutional Revolution changed attention to gender policies during the Qajar era, while modernization and nationalization signified a turning point in gender policies during the Pahlavi dynasty.