Textual construction of femininity in the first Iranian women's magazines

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

From the beginning of the process of modernity in Iran, i.e. the historical period of the constitutional movement, to the end of the first Pahlavi, which is referred to as the starting point of the issue of femininity and female gender identity in Iran, women have faced various ideologies of femininity. Language, especially discourse analysis, provides a tool to examine what these ideologies or discourses are and how they persist. One of the rich sources of language that encodes and perpetuates the ideologies of femininity is women's periodicals, as it can be said that the history of periodicals is closely related to the history of representations and discourses of modern femininity. Based on the discourse analysis approach in the framework of James Paul Jay's theory, the present research examines the textual construction of femininity in the first Iranian women's publications that were published between 1919 and 1941. Based on the research results of these publications, by constructing various ideologies of femininity such as "patriarchal femininity", "egalitarian femininity", "empowering femininity", "nationalist femininity" and "sexual femininity ", a series of discourses or They put forward competing and potentially contradictory identities about what the ideal woman is. The analysis of words, metaphorical choices and rhetorical structures shows how the language of the periodicals in the historical continuum places femininity in a wide discourse spectrum from the reproduction of patriarchy to the post-feminist construction of the ideal woman, based on which it is used. Women's bodies and even women's sexual attractiveness are considered a rich source for women's identity and empowerment.

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References

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The Women and Families Cultural-Educational
Volume 20, Issue 72 - Serial Number 72
Autumn 2025
October 2025
Pages 259-282

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 January 2025
  • Revise Date: 19 January 2025
  • Accept Date: 19 April 2025
  • Publish Date: 23 September 2025

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