Women’s Voices: The Journey towards Cyberfeminism in Iran

The working paper looks at the history of Iranian media by and for women,
culminating in cyberfeminism. The main focus are women’s websites and cyber
campaigns dedicated to improving women’s rights, and how they helped to
mobilize Iranian women’s movements. There are two main case studies: The
main case study on websites is the “Feminist School” as an important site for
feminist discourse and women’s movements managed from inside Iran. The
main case study in relation to cyber campaigns is the “My stealthy freedom”
campaign which is undertaken from outside Iran. Through these two case
studies, the paper aims to answer the following questions: To what extent and
how do these sites provide strategic opportunities for the Iranian women’s
movement to advocating gender equality and women’s rights? And did the
cyber campaign help to build coalitions between women’s movements inside
Iran and diaspora activism outside of Iran? The case studies are based on the
author’s earlier work on the history of the women’ movement, interviews with
leaders and directors of women’s websites and directors of mobilizing cyber
campaigns along with self-reflective and discourse analysis of the websites and
campaigns.