Women and the Islamic Republic provides an ethnographic study of women’s status in postrevolutionary Iran (following the 1979 revolution). With a combination of qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, archival research, and participant observation, Saeidi examines how various groups of non-elite Iranian women—ranging from Islamist women to leftist political prisoners—have developed diverse forms of “acts of citizenship.” Not only do these acts remake cultural and legal norms concerning women’s rights, roles, and responsibilities; they also work to condition the processes of state formation in different historical moments of contemporary Iranian history.
Saeidi’s book can be seen as a map tracing women’s acts of citizenship across a thirty-year period, beginning with the 1979 revolution and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), extending through the postwar reconstruction period of the 1990s, and culminating in the sociopolitical transformations following the contested 2009 presidential election. These include former political prisoners now living in exile in Europe, ordinary civilians from southern Iran who worked as volunteers and medical assistants during the Iran–Iraq War, wives and daughters of war martyrs, and even Islamist women who, after 2009, were actively engaged in cultural institutions affiliated with the state. The book places women’s experiences at the intersection of historical upheaval, political conflicts, and state formation.
From a historical perspective, the book emphasizes the legacy of the Iran–Iraq War as a pivotal moment in postrevolutionary Iranian politics, shaping state policies and governance. By providing detailed accounts of women’s roles during the eight-year war, the book makes a valuable contribution not only to feminist political theory and current scholarship on state formation, but also to war studies, conflict studies, and security studies. Saeidi argues that the unexpected nature of the war and the state’s lack of preparation necessitated the mobilization of civilians, including women. As a result, Iranian women found opportunities to participate in the war, taking on emotional, financial, and physical responsibilities, such as providing medical services, supporting male soldiers, and even marrying war veterans to offer emotional stability.
Challenging dominant Eurocentric theories in political science, Saeidi critiques binaries such as democratization versus authoritarianism, Western versus non-Western, and Orientalist approaches to Muslim women. She demonstrates how the participation of various groups of Iranian women in remaking their rights, responsibilities, and status during everyday life intersected with broader processes of state-making and governance in Iran. The book offers a broad and inclusive perspective by examining the experiences of diverse groups of Iranian women, rather than centering on a singular category.
Drawing on and integrating two key theoretical frameworks—Engin Isin’s notion of “acts of citizenship” and Michel Foucault’s concept of “political spirituality”—Saeidi challenges dominant assumptions about citizenship, particularly those that frame it as a passive legal status granted by the state or a top-down structure imposed on individuals. Based on these frameworks, her argument rests on several critical premises.
First, contrary to prevailing theories about authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, which often characterize them as entirely repressive and totalitarian, Saeidi contends that the political structure of the Islamic Republic is neither entirely rigid nor wholly authoritarian. Instead, she demonstrates how various groups—including women—have continually contested, reshaped, and negotiated this structure to carve out spaces for their rights and demands. Women, in particular, have engaged in ongoing acts of resistance, reconfiguring and challenging the state’s limitations in ways that reflect their agency.
Second, despite the state’s efforts to impose a gendered citizenry agenda, structural ambiguities within the political and legal framework of the Islamic Republic, the urgencies of wartime, and the Islamic and Shiʿi cultural veneration of sacred female figures created unexpected openings for women’s participation. These factors enabled women to develop what Saeidi terms “irregular” or “unruly” acts of citizenship, subverting gendered restrictions and asserting themselves in ways that the state had neither fully anticipated nor entirely controlled.
Finally, the concept of spiritual acts of citizenship, as theorized by Saeidi, highlights how women’s engagement with the state was not always framed through explicit demands for rights but was often rooted in a deeper struggle for self-preservation, dignity, and ethical care for self and others. This interpretation challenges reductive readings of Foucault’s notion of political spirituality, particularly critiques that equate it with a mere fascination with martyrdom and death. Instead, Saeidi underscores the centrality of life, dignity, and survival in Iranian women’s political participation. For Islamist women, spiritual acts of citizenship were often expressed through care work and the propagation of revolutionary ideals. For leftist political prisoners, self-care, the recollection of poetry and literature, and the preservation of their ideological identities in the face of repression became acts of defiance that allowed them to sustain a sense of selfhood despite the state’s attempts to erase their political subjectivity.
By revisiting and reinterpreting historical accounts and oral histories, Women and the Islamic Republic presents a dynamic and multifaceted account of citizenship, illustrating how women’s acts of resistance actively shaped and conditioned state formation in postrevolutionary Iran. Ultimately, the author expands the discourse on citizenship beyond traditional legal and institutional frameworks, highlighting the everyday lived experiences of non-elite women who continuously redefined their roles within a rapidly shifting political landscape. The book not only documents the diverse ways in which women navigated and contested state-imposed narratives but also underscores their crucial role in shaping contemporary Iranian society.
In advancing this new conceptualization of citizenship, Saeidi employs a reflexive and inquisitive methodological approach. The author challenges her own assumptions as a researcher, engaging in moments of self-dialogue that raise fundamental questions about the nature of research and the importance of centering participants’ voices. For instance, in the first chapter, Saeidi discusses the inconsistencies and contradictions in her findings regarding sexual violence and rape in Iranian prisons during the 1980s. Although the existing literature and many former prisoners’ memoirs suggest that rape was widespread in prisons at that time, Saeidi’s interviews with fifty former female prisoners living in Europe revealed a resistance to this narrative, with participants emphasizing that such incidents were not prevalent. Saeidi’s subsequent attempts to explore this issue further proved unsuccessful and even led to tensions with some participants. Eventually, she acknowledges that her positionality as an outsider may have influenced these dynamics. Saeidi’s honest reflection on these methodological challenges, including the acknowledgment of inconsistencies in her findings, is commendable and highlights the complexities of conducting qualitative research in sensitive contexts.
The book does not claim to represent all Iranian women, nor does it attempt to provide a comprehensive account of every perspective. However, there are moments in which a deeper consideration of certain experiences would have further strengthened the analysis, such as a deeper engagement with the experiences and acts of citizenship among leftist women in postrevolutionary prisons and the perspectives of younger generations of Iranian women who played active roles in reformist movements and human rights activism throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Nevertheless, this book is a timely contribution on Iranian women’s activism and negotiation of power, and will be an essential read for courses in gender studies, Middle East studies, political science, feminist theory, resistance, and war and conflict studies.
