2024 Theses Master's

From Students to Rebels: The Effect of Education on the Women’s Movement in Iran

Zabihzadeh, Monique

After Iranian women spent years fighting for the right to education, Iran is now home to highly educated and successful women who still struggle to exercise equal rights to men. The fight for equality has taken different shapes through the years and under different regimes. The Women, Life, Freedom Movement that began in 2022 revealed a contradiction. For years, the Iranian government has used schools as a mechanism of control. Although the state is using education to censor, restrict, and control girls, schools are often the site where girls launch a critique of the society they are meant to be learning to obey and ultimately replicate.

This study uses qualitative interviews to collect stories and experiences of Iranian women who were educated in Iran, no longer live in Iran, and participated in some capacity in the Women, Life, Freedom movement. It aims to understand what the role of education is in shaping women’s rights activists in Iran and in diaspora. This study found that schools are often the first site of restriction and control of Iranian girls by the government thus contributing to the desire for students to rebel against authoritarianism and gender inequality.