Women's voices: The journey towards cyberfeminism in Iran

markdownabstractThe working paper looks at the history of Iranian media by and for women, culminating in cyberfeminism. The main focus are women's websites and cyber campaigns dedicated to improving women's rights, and how they helped to mobilize Iranian women's movements. There are two main case studies: The main case study on websites is the "Feminist School" as an important site for feminist discourse and women's movements managed from inside Iran. The main case study in relation to cyber campaigns is the "My stealthy freedom" campaign which is undertaken from outside Iran. Through these two case studies, the paper aims to answer the following questions: To what extent and how do these sites provide strategic opportunities for the Iranian women's movement to advocating gender equality and women's rights? And did the cyber campaign help to build coalitions between women's movements inside Iran and diaspora activism outside of Iran? The case studies are based on the author’s earlier work on the history of the women' movement, interviews with leaders and directors of women's websites and directors of mobilizing cyber campaigns along with self-reflective and discourse analysis of the websites and campaigns. A biography of the author can be found here: (http://www.pen-deutschland.de/en/themen/writers-in-exile/ehemalige-stipendiaten/mansoureh-shojaee/