To Live in a Feminising Society: How Younger, Middle-Class Male Citizens of Tehran Appreciate Their Becoming City after Women, Life, Freedom Movement

This study examines the impact of the 2020 Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in Iran, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody for alleged violations of mandatory hijab laws. Mahsa’s death ignited widespread feminist protests, reminiscent of other uprisings such as the Arab Spring. These events renewed scholarly attention on gender inequality in the Global South, particularly in Iran. However, the study emphasizes the importance of avoiding reductive framings that exceptionalize Iran or Muslim-majority countries, which risk detaching their gender struggles from global feminist discourses.

While patriarchy manifests differently across geographies, its core principle of marginalizing women remains constant. In Iran, enforced veiling and gender-segregated spaces are state projects that exemplify this marginalization. Yet, where there is oppression, there is resistance. Prior to 2020, acts of quiet resistance by women, as theorized by Asef Bayat, were already present in Iranian urban spaces. The WLF movement amplified these acts, with women visibly defying both hijab mandates and their marginal roles, transforming Tehran’s streets into a stage for feminist resistance.

Men, too, are the audience of a feminist movement which unsettles the gender dynamics and redraws gender maps anew. Men are impacted, and this research adopts a Bourdieusian framework to explore how men in Tehran, aged 20-45, have perceived and responded to the emerging feminine defiance in the city. It investigates whether the visibility of women’s resistance has altered men’s internalized beliefs about gender and urban space, and if so, how. By focusing on male perspectives, this study contributes to feminist geography by examining whether WLF has come to fruition and how men’s views on gender dynamics and women’s ‘right to the city’ have evolved in the wake of the the movement.