Women in the Constitutional Revolution

Women took part in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911) from its first street protests to its last stand against the Russian ultimatum of 1911. Although the constitution gave them no vote, the revolution saw the first women’s political societies in Iran, the first Muslim girls’ schools in Tehran and the first journals written for women, the starting point of the modern Iranian women’s movement.

Before the revolution

Women were not newcomers to protest. In towns they had long joined, and sometimes led, riots over the price of bread, since they bought food for their households and could gather in public under the veil without being easily identified. During the Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892, women in Tehran joined the boycott and crowds, and contemporary accounts say even the women of the royal harem stopped smoking. In the 1890s Bibi Khanom Astarabadi wrote Ma’ayeb al-Rejal (“The Vices of Men”), a sharp reply to a pamphlet that advised wives on obedience, one of the earliest pieces of women’s social criticism in Persian.

In the streets, 1905–1906

When merchants and clerics began the protests that led to the constitution, women took part in the crowds that supported them. Reports from Tehran in 1905 and 1906 describe women gathering in the streets and mosques, surrounding the carriages of officials to present petitions and protecting clerical leaders from arrest. Their role was usually described in the language of religion and the nation, as defenders of the faith and of the homeland, rather than as a demand for women’s rights. The main events of these years are told on the page on the Constitutional Revolution.

After the first مجلس (Majlis) opened in October 1906, it planned a national bank to free the government from foreign loans. The press reported that women in Tehran and other cities offered their jewellery and savings to buy shares, which was hailed as proof that the whole nation, women included, stood behind the new parliament (see the First Majlis).

Secret societies and anjomans

The revolution filled Iran’s cities with انجمن (anjoman), local political societies. Women formed their own, at first in secret. One of the first, often called the Anjoman-e Horriyat-e Nesvan (Society for Women’s Freedom), met in Tehran around 1907; its members reportedly included the princess Taj al-Saltaneh. Other groups met in private houses to read newspapers, hear speeches and discuss education. In 1910 a society called the Anjoman-e Mokhadderat-e Vatan (Society of the Ladies of the Homeland) organised meetings and campaigns against foreign loans and for the use of Iranian-made goods.

These societies were small and often met with hostility. Some clerics and deputies saw them as a threat to morality, and crowds sometimes broke up their meetings. Their members were mostly from educated, well-off families in Tehran and Tabriz.

The first girls’ schools

The most lasting work of these years was in education. Missionary schools for girls had existed for decades, mainly for Christian and Jewish pupils. In 1907 Bibi Khanom Astarabadi opened the دبستان دوشیزگان (Dabestân-e Dushizegân, “School for Girls”) in her house in Tehran, and in the same period Tuba Azmudeh opened the Namus school. Clerical critics condemned the new schools, and some were forced to close or move, but more opened in the following years, and in 1918 the government began to fund girls’ primary schools.

Women’s voices in print

The new freedom of the press gave women a place to write. Letters signed by women appeared in constitutionalist papers such as Habl al-Matin and Iran-e Now, demanding schools and defending women’s patriotism. In 1910 Dânesh (“Knowledge”), the first Persian journal edited by a woman for women, began publication in Tehran, and in 1913 Maryam Amid, known as Mozayyen al-Saltaneh, founded Shokufeh (“Blossom”), which wrote about education, health and the rights of women.

Fighters in Tabriz

During the siege of Tabriz in 1908–1909, women supported the defenders with food, nursing and messages. Several contemporary reports also say that the bodies of women dressed as men were found among the fallen fighters after battles with royalist forces. These stories, retold by the historian Ahmad Kasravi and others, cannot be checked in detail but show that women’s role in the fighting was widely recognised at the time.

1911: the vote and the ultimatum

In August 1911, during a debate in the second Majlis on a new electoral law, the deputy for Hamadan, Hajj Shaykh Mohammad Taqi, known by his title Vakil al-Ro’aya (“the people’s deputy”), proposed that women should also have the right to vote. The proposal was rejected, with clerical deputies among its strongest opponents. The electoral law of 1911 expressly excluded women, alongside minors and others, and Iranian women did not vote until 1963 (see women in Pahlavi Iran).

A few months later, when Russia demanded the dismissal of Morgan Shuster, women’s societies joined the boycott of Russian goods and the protests in Tehran. Shuster later described some three hundred veiled women entering the Majlis with pistols hidden in their clothes to urge the deputies not to give way, a story told on the page on Morgan Shuster and the Russian ultimatum. Iranian women’s groups also sent appeals to women’s organisations in Britain, asking them to press their government; they had little effect.

How historians see it

Early histories of the revolution said little about women. Later work, especially by Badr ol-Moluk Bamdad, Janet Afary and Afsaneh Najmabadi, has shown that women’s activism was larger and more organised than once thought. Afary describes these years as the origins of Iranian feminism; Najmabadi emphasises how women’s demands were framed through the idea of women as mothers and educators of the nation. Both stress the limits: the movement was urban and elite, and its gains were in schooling and the press rather than in law. The women of this generation, among them Sedigheh Dowlatabadi and Mohtaram Eskandari, went on to lead the women’s associations of the 1910s and 1920s.