Iran's Feminist School in the Diaspora: Dynamics of Decline and Demobilization

Sanaz Nasirpour, Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh

Development and Change, 2022, vol. 53, issue 4, 736-759

Abstract: This article explores the mechanisms behind the demobilization of the Feminist School, the self‐proclaimed ‘intellectual wing’ of the Iranian women's movement, which was established as an online forum in 2008. For a short time, the Feminist School was at the forefront of framing the Iranian women's movement and provided the conceptual tools for its strategy setting. In the years following the disputed presidential election of 2009, however, many of the School's founding members were forced to leave Iran. Although they attempted to continue their work in diaspora, by 2015 the School was in decline. This article analyses the demobilization of the Feminist School using data collected in interviews with some of its founding members. The authors argue that despite the dedication of activists in the diaspora, and their willingness to continue their efforts to fight for gender justice at the grassroots, their capacity to do so was compromised by extreme top‐down tensions between Iran and ‘the West’. Those tensions caused serious security concerns and gave rise to an ever‐widening conceptual and affectual gap between domestic and diasporic activists/advocates. This empirical study adds to scholarship on the demobilization of transnational and diasporic movements that seek to influence the policies and politics of highly repressive homelands.

Date: 2022
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