Globalizing Iranian Feminism, 1910-1950

The author examines how the Women's Party (Hizb-i Zanan) used globalization to signal its departure from the tendency of women's organizations to prioritize national goals over feminist goals in Iran. In explicitly holding the Iranian government to emerging international standards of equal rights feminism, the Women's Party contributed to an enduring aspect of Iranian culture in which national conversations imagine a global audience. The thesis rests on two elements: 1) the use of recently published Iranian document sets and a previously unused press source to illustrate the party's innovation in feminist advocacy in the context of Iran's first women's suffrage campaign from 1943 to 1946, and in direct comparison with an earlier organization, the Patriotic Women's League and its hosting of the Second Eastern Women's Congress in Tehran in 1932, and 2) the development of criteria for historicizing "globalization" that may be applicable beyond this particular case.