By Homa Hoodfar
Introduction
Few would disagree that the question of women and gender has become amongst the most frequently discussed and highly charged and politicized in post-revolutionary Iran. Such debate in itself is viewed as a challenge to the Islamic Republic since it has made its own gender vision a central part of its identity as an Islamic regime. In its view, God has ordained women to be wives and mothers and to dwell primarily in the private sphere; and they are to be part of their father’s and husband’s fiefdom with very limited rights. An ideal Islamic society for many of the regime’s ideologues is a completely segregated society where women and men will not intermingle outside their immediate family.