Second Eastern Women's Congress, also known as Second General Congress of Oriental Women and Second Oriental Women's Congress was an international women's conference which took place in Tehran in Iran in between 27 November and 2 December 1932. [1] It was the second international conference to unite women's organizations of the Middle East, following the First Eastern Women's Congress. [2]
The conference was arranged with royal support by Iran's leading women's rights organisation Jam'iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah, under the leadership of Ashraf Pahlavi, with participants from the Arab World and Eastern Asia. [3] Ashraf Pahlavi served as the honorary president of the Congress and Sediqeh Dowlatabadi as its secretary. Šayḵ-al-Molk Owrang of Lebanon served as its President, and Fāṭema Saʿīd Merād of Syria, Ḥonayna Ḵūrīya of Egypt and Mastūra Afšār of Persia belonged to the organization committee.
Representatives from Afghanistan, Australia, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Lebanon, Persia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Zanzibar participated in the Congress. The congress discussed the situation of women in their respective countries, and debated issues were the particularly bad situation of women in the Muslim world, specifically the illiteracy and the oppression within marriage of women. [4]
The congress approved of a resolution with 22 subjects, recommending reforms family law, Islamic law, women's suffrage, a ban against polygamy and prostitution and access to education, work and equal salary for women and the eradication of illiteracy among female adults. [5] [6]
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
Zahra Rahnavard is an Iranian academic, artist and politician. Rahnavard is a university professor, artist, and intellectual who was under house arrest from February 2011 to May 2018. In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine named her one of the world's most distinguished thinkers. She is the wife of former Iran Prime Minister Mir Hussein Musavi. In part of her work, she has underlined the need for men to respect the laws of the hijab in the same way as women, as well as a general activist for women's rights in the Middle East.
Rakhshandeh E'tesami, better known as Parvin E'tesami, was an Iranian 20th-century Persian poet.
In the Western world, Persia was historically the common name used for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah officially asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran, the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence. Subsequently, the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" could be used interchangeably, in formal correspondence. However, the issue is still debated among Iranians.
Ashraf Dehghani is an Iranian communist revolutionary, best known as the leader of the Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (IPFG). Exposed to progressive politics from an early age, along with her brother, Dehghani joined the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG), becoming the only woman on its central committee.
Ashraf ol-Molouk Pahlavi was the twin sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran (Persia), and a member of the Pahlavi dynasty. She was considered the "power behind her brother" and was instrumental in the 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah. She served her brother as a palace adviser and was a strong advocate for women's rights. Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she lived in exile in France, New York, Paris and Monte Carlo and remained outspoken against the Iranian Islamic Republic.
Alireza Shapour Shahbazi was a prominent Persian archaeologist, Iranologist and a world expert on Achaemenid archaeology. Shahbazi got a BA degree in and an MA degree in East Asian archaeology from SOAS. Shahbazi had a doctorate degree in Achaemenid archaeology from University of London. Alireza Shapour Shahbazi was a lecturer in Achaemenid archaeology and Iranology at Harvard University. He was also a full professor of archaeology at Shiraz University and founded at Persepolis the Institute of Achaemenid Research in 1974. After the Islamic revolution, he moved to the US, firstly teaching at Columbia University and then later becoming a full professor of history in Eastern Oregon University.
The Amardians, widely referred to as the Amardi, were an ancient Iranian tribe living along the mountainous region bordering the Caspian Sea to the north, to whom the Iron Age culture at Marlik is attributed. They are said to be related to, or the same tribe as, the Dahae and Sacae. That is to say, they were Scythian. Herodotus mentions a tribe with a similar name as one of the ten to fifteen Persian tribes in Persis.
Haleh Esfandiari is an Iranian-American academic and former Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was detained in solitary confinement at Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran for more than 110 days from May 8 to August 21, 2007.
Jam'iyat-e Nesvân-e Vatankhâh active from 1922 to 1933, was one of the most effective organizations in the Women's rights movement in Iran that formed after the Persian Constitutional Revolution.
On 8 January 1936, Reza Shah of Iran (Persia) issued a decree known as Kashf-e hijab banning all Islamic veils, an edict that was swiftly and forcefully implemented. The government also banned many types of male traditional clothing. The ban was only enforced for a period of five (5) years (1936-1941), however, since then, the hijab in Iran has been a mandatory hallmark of the Islamic Republic for 44 years. One of the enduring legacies of Reza Shah has been turning dress into an integral problem of Iranian politics.
Mastoureh Afshar was an Iranian intellectual, feminist, and a pioneering figure in the women's rights movement in Iran. Alongside contemporary feminists Mohtaram Eskandari and Noor-ol-Hoda Mangeneh, she co-founded the radicalist Patriotic Women's League of Iran in Tehran in 1922. She became the society's president in 1925 and held the position until 1932.
Islamic Nations Party or Party of Islamic Nations was an Islamic leftist armed group with clandestine system short-lived during 1960s. It was initially a secret society active against Pahlavi dynasty in late 1950s. It consisted of middle-class youth, mostly highschool teachers and university students.
The defense lines of the Sasanians were part of their military strategy and tactics. They were networks of fortifications, walls, and/or ditches built opposite the territory of the enemies. These defense lines are known from tradition and archaeological evidence.
Nour Hamada was a Lebanese poet and feminist. She is one of the major figures that strived for feminism causes and gender equality in the Arab region.
Hajar Tarbiat was an Iranian women's rights activist and politician. In 1963 she was one of the first group of women elected to the National Consultative Assembly. Eight years later, she also became the first woman elected to the Senate.
Khadijeh Afzal Vaziri was a women's rights activist, journalist and educator from Iran. She campaigned against the enforced wearing of the chador and supported the Kashf-e hijab.
Persian astronomy or Iranian astronomy refers to the astronomy in ancient Persian history.
Kanoun-e-Banovan was an Iranian women's rights organization, founded on 14 October 1935. It played an important part in the Kashf-e hijab reform against compulsory hijab (veiling).
After the Arab conquest of Iran in the 7th century, Islam became the dominant religion and culture in the country. Since then Iranian women adopted the hijab, which was a simple scarf that covered the hair and neck, but not the face. Hijab was seen as a symbol of piety, dignity, and identity for Muslim women.