On one of the occasions when Dowlatabadi was arrested for her activities, she replied:
Sir, I was born a hundred years late, if I had been born earlier, I would not have allowed women to be so humiliated and trapped in your chains.[1]
Early life
Dowlatabadi was born in 1882 in Isfahan.[2] Her father was Hadi Dolatabadi and her mother was Khatameh Begum.[3] Her father was a progressive religious jurist and allowed Dolatabadi to begin her education in Persian and Arabic in Tehran.[2] She then continued her secondary education at Dar-ol-Fonoun Academy.[2] Aged 15, she married Etezad al-Hakma, but they divorced because Dowlatabadi was infertile.[1]
Career
Dowlatabadi believed that the only route for the advancement of women was through their education.[4] In 1917, she founded one of the first girls' primary schools, called Umm Al- Madaris (Mother of Schools).[1] The school was closed after objections from religious conservatives and Dowlatabadi was beaten and detained for three months as a result.[5]
In order to educate, she recognised that women needed news and articles that addressed their issues and concerns. This led her to establish the first women's gazette in Isfahan called Zaban-e Zanan in 1919.[6] This was the third women's newspaper to be published in Iran, and ran for 57 issues until 1921.[6] It was notable for its progressive stance and the outspoken nature of its articles on women's rights.[6] In her first editorial in it she pronounced that paper wanted to challenge the "backwardness and feeble-mindedness" of women's rights in the city.[7] She also established the Women's Association of Isfahan at this time.[8]
Dowlatabadi was an opponent of British involvement in Iran.[3] Together with other like-minded women, she expressed her opposition to the agreement by boycotting imported goods and going to coffee shops and encouraging them not to use foreign sugar.[3]
From 1925, there was a debate within the intellectual community, newspapers and women's magazines in Iran about the unveiling of women and whether it could act as a modernizing force in the country and increase women's participation in society.[10] During the late 1920s and 1930s there were rumours that the government planned to introduce a policy of compulsory unveiling (the reform, known as Kashf-e hijab, was promulgated in 1936).[9] Dowlatabadi was an outspoken advocate for the unveiling of women.[2] However this led to threats against her life.[7]
In 1926 she attended the International Alliance of Women's Conference in Paris and on her return wore European clothes and refused to wear a veil.[11] She is believed to have been the first woman to have done so,[9] appearing in public in 1928 completely unveilied.[12] Another advocate for unveiling was Khadijeh Afzal Vaziri, who campaigned for change in fashion alongside Dowlatabadi.[13] When the Shah banned the veil in 1936, Dowlatabadi was an active supporter of the reform, and engaged in the new women's committee Kanun-e Banuvan (Ladies Society) formed by the government.[8] The committee was led by the Shah's daughter Princess Shams to unite women organisations and prepare women for unveiling.[9]
By 1941, Dowlatabadi was Director of the Women's Centre, however the organisation had little autonomy - for example they needed permission from the Ministry of Education to organise a commemoration of the poet Parvin Etesami.[14]
Dowlatabadi died on 27 August 1961 at the age of 80 in Tehran.[15] She had been ill with cancer.[3] She was buried next to her brother in the Imamzadeh Ismail Cemetery in Zargandeh, however during the 1978 Revolution her tomb was damaged and her remains desecrated.[15]
Legacy
Some of Dowlatabadi's archive is kept at the World Foundation for Social Research in Amsterdam.[16] Part of this archive was exhibited in February 2016 at an exhibition on the background of the women's movement.[16]
^Moghissi, Haideh (1996), Moghissi, Haideh (ed.), "Women and Social Reforms", Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement, Women’s Studies at York Series, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 37–53, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-25233-6_3, ISBN978-1-349-25233-6, retrieved 2020-12-15
Sediqeh Dowlatabadi: Letters, writings and memories, ed. by Afsaneh Najmabadi & Mahdokht Sanati, 3 vols. (Midland, Chicago 1998). [in Persian]
Jasmin Khosravie, Zabān-i Zanān – The Voice of Women. Life and Work of Ṣadīqa Daulatābādī (1882–1961) (EB-Publishers, Berlin 2012). [in German]
Mohammad Hossein Khosroupanah, The aims and the fight of Iranian women from the Constitutional Revolution until the Pahlavi dynasty (Payam-e Emruz, Tehran 2002). [in Persian]
Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with mustaches and men without beards: Gender and sexual anxieties of Iranian modernity (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley 2005).
Eliz Sanasarian, The women’s movement in Iran: Mutinity, appeasement, and repression from 1900 to Khomeini (Praeger, New York 1982).