Representation of Iran joining CEDAW in the reformist and conservative press: a sociological examination of competing arguments on women’s human rights in Iran

The matter of women’s rights has been one of the main battlegrounds between reformists and conservatives, the two major blocs in Iranian politics. This thesis is an empirical case study of arguments in the reformist and conservative press between 2000-2004 on the matter of Iran joining CEDAW - Convention on the Elimination of the Discrimination Against Women. It focuses on how CEDAW opponents and supporters in the reformist and conservative press position the issue of women’s human rights in relation to their religious values, political positions, and the international criteria on women’s human rights and cultural particularities - features that are unique to certain cultures. Using thematic analysis, this thesis analyses fifty-nine articles from the reformist and conservative press, focusing on the matter of Iran joining CEDAW centred between 2000 and 2004. This time frame is focused because the debate around Iran joining CEDAW was encouraged by the reformist government of Khatami to the reformist-majority parliament between 2000 and 2004. Accordingly, this subject surfaced in the both reformist and conservative press more explicitly in this period rather than any other time. Women’s human rights in Iran is strongly connected to religious beliefs, political ideologies and cultural particularities. The subject of women’s rights is a symbolic issue used to define, sustain and contest political identities, a site based on which Iranian ‘Islamic nation’ is founded, and through which the otherness of the West, a principal idea in the Islamic Republic, is articulated. Although the issue of women’s rights has symbolically been a point of distinction between Iranian reformists and conservatives, research findings show how the shared national, political and religious principles between the two groups prevent the emergence of a strong alternative perspective on women’s human rights within the Islamic Republic. The thesis further argues whilst CEDAW is fundamentally about women’s rights, the debates around CEDAW in the both reformist and conservative press do not principally revolve around the material challenges of Iranian women’s human rights