Historical Studies

Historical Studies

Triple-Layered Gender Inequality: Discourses of Reproduction and Resistance in Qajar Women's Magazines (1910-1924) – A Bourdieusian Analysis

Document Type : Research Paper

Author
Monire Sadeghi
M.A in History of Iran, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
10.30465/hcs.2026.52618.3052
Abstract
Abstract
This research aims to analyze the mechanisms of gender inequality reproduction and the discursive resistance in the Iranian women's magazines (1909–1924), based on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu. The primary research question addresses: how gender inequality was conceptualized and reproduced from the perspective of these magazines, and what mechanism women employed for capital transformation in resistance. The study initially categorizes inequality within a triple-layered system, encompassing three main dimensions: empowerment, reproductive health, and economic participation. All available issues of seven independent women's magazines were examined using Qualitative Thematic Analysis (QTA) interpreted through Bourdieu's framework. Key findings indicate that gender inequality during that period operated as a triple-layered system (discursive, corporeal, and structural) that stabilized male domination by reproducing a habitus of passivity. However, women's magazines initiated a discursive resistance by producing symbolic capital and challenging the established gender habitus. These resistances involved strategies for redefining women's identity, strategically transforming their capital, and reclaiming unequal fields. This research is significant in uncovering the roots of the early feminist movement in Iran and identifying the role of the magazines as agents of change in the gender discourse.
Keywords: Gender Inequality, Women’s Magazines, Patriarchy, Pierre Bourdieu, Discursive Resistance, Qajar Era.
Introduction
Gender inequality in Iran is not merely a historical coincidence but a phenomenon rooted in deep-seated patriarchal structures and socio-religious beliefs that have been naturalized for centuries under the guise of tradition. The Qajar period, specifically the era following the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, represents a critical turning point in Iranian history. This era marked the first systematic encounter with Western modernity, which catalyzed a new consciousness regarding social rights. Despite women's vigorous participation in the revolutionary struggle, the subsequent legal and political frameworks largely excluded them from formal power. In response to this systematic marginalization, pioneering women established a cultural and intellectual front through independent women's magazines. These publications were revolutionary, emerging in a socio-cultural climate where female literacy was often viewed with suspicion or outright hostility.
The core objective of this research is to move beyond a purely descriptive historical account. Instead, it utilizes the sociological framework of Pierre Bourdieu to analyze how gender inequality was structurally reproduced and how women journalists employed specific mechanisms of resistance. By examining the interplay of "field," "habitus," and "capital," this study seeks to uncover how women’s cultural capital—manifested in these magazines—was strategically converted into symbolic and social power to challenge the patriarchal status quo.
Materials & Methods
This study adopts a Qualitative Thematic Analysis (QTA) methodology, grounded in an interpretive-critical paradigm. The primary data corpus consists of the complete available archives of seven seminal independent women's magazines published between 1327 and 1343 AH (approximately 1909–1924). These include: Danesh (the first women's magazine), Shokufeh, Zaban-e Zanan, Nameh-ye Banuvan, Alam-e Nesvan, Jahan-e Zanan, and the publication of Anjoman-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah.
The analytical process was executed in four rigorous stages. First, a comprehensive "Open Coding" was performed on articles, editorials, poems, and even advertisements, resulting in over 120 distinct thematic codes. Second, these codes were organized into "Axial Categories" based on the three primary dimensions of the United Nations Gender Inequality Index (GII): empowerment, reproductive health, and economic participation. Third, the data were subjected to "Selective Coding" to identify the overarching narrative of resistance. Finally, the findings were synthesized using Bourdieu’s theoretical toolkit: Capital (cultural, economic, social, and symbolic), Habitus (internalized social structures), Field (social arenas of struggle), and Symbolic Violence (naturalized domination).
Discussion & Results
The analysis reveals that gender inequality in the Qajar era operated as a sophisticated, triple-layered system, with each layer functioning through specific mechanisms of reproduction and being met by distinct forms of discursive resistance.
Initially, in the discursive field, inequality was sustained through symbolic violence—a form of domination where the oppressed internalize their own inferiority. Patriarchal discourse utilized tropes such as deficient intellect (naqes-ol-aql) to justify women's exclusion from the public sphere, effectively creating a habitus of passivity. Women's magazines challenged this by accumulating and disseminating cultural capital. They engaged in a linguistic war, replacing derogatory terms like za'ifeh (the weak one) with empowering descriptors such as mothers of the nation and learned sisters. By redefining the ideal woman not as a silent shadow but as an educated citizen, they began the process of converting cultural capital into symbolic capital, achieving a level of social legitimacy that forced the patriarchal field to recognize their agency.
This discursive shift directly informed the resistance within the corporeal layer, specifically regarding reproductive health and the body as capital. Within the field of the family, the female body was historically treated as an economic capital to be traded in male-to-male transactions, most notably through child marriage and forced polygamy. The magazines resisted this commodification of the body by adopting a strategy of medicalizing the discourse. Instead of arguing solely on moral or religious grounds—where patriarchal authority was strongest—they utilized scientific and medical arguments. They linked polygamy and early marriage to the spread of disease and the physical degeneration of the Iranian race. By framing women's health as a matter of national survival, they successfully utilized scientific cultural capital to undermine the traditional habitus that governed the domestic sphere.
Finally, the structural layer of inequality was addressed, which was maintained through the male monopoly over economic capital, rendering women entirely dependent on their male guardians. The magazines identified this financial dependency as the shackle of slavery. Resistance in this layer involved an attempt to reconfigure the economic field. Magazines published articles praising the economic contributions of rural and tribal women, holding them up as models of self-sufficiency. They advocated for the establishment of women-only factories and schools of domestic science. Their goal was to transform women's domestic skills into a form of marketable cultural capital, eventually leading to economic independence. This was a strategic attempt to create a secondary economic field where women could operate outside the direct control of patriarchal structures, thereby completing the cycle of resistance across all three layers of social existence.
Conclusion
This research concludes that gender inequality in the Qajar era was not a monolithic entity but a dynamic, triple-layered system (discursive, corporeal, and structural). These layers were interconnected, with symbolic violence in the discursive layer reinforcing economic exclusion in the structural layer. However, the study finds that women's magazines were not merely passive observers but active agents of change.
Their resistance was characterized by strategic compromise. Recognizing the immense power of the established field, they often framed their radical demands (such as the right to work or education) within traditional roles—arguing, for instance, that an educated woman makes a better patriotic mother. This allowed them to infiltrate the patriarchal habitus and slowly expand the boundaries of the field. By de-legitimizing symbolic violence and generating a collective symbolic capital of resistance, these publications effectively broke the cycle of reproduction. They shifted the gender discourse from a matter of nature to a matter of social justice, laying the foundational stones for the century-long struggle for gender equality in Iran.
Keywords
Gender Inequality
Women s Magazines
Patriarchy
Pierre Bourdieu
Discursive Resistance
Qajar Era
Subjects
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Magazines
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "Address to Sanobar Khanum," No. 5. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "Inefficient Thoughts of Iranian Women," No. 6. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "No One Scratches My Back but My Own Nail," No. 2. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "The Arrival of an Unpleasant Newborn," No. 5. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "The Boogeyman Took the Breast (Momme Lulu Bord)," No. 5. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1340/1921), "Who Is a mother?" No. 2. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "Importance of Women in the Social Body," No. 1. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "Ms. Dowlatabadi's Conference," No. 5. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "Progress of Women," No. 3. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "Seeking Knowledge is an Obligation," No. 1. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "The Fellow (Yaru)," No. 6. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1341/1922), "The Harms of Marriage in Childhood," No. 6. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1342/1923), "Marriage in Iran," No. 3. [in Persian]
Alam-e Nesvan (1342/1923), "The Hooligan (Hoochi)," No. 4. [in Persian]
Anjoman-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah (1302/1923), "Ignorance," No. 1. [in Persian]
Anjoman-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah (1303/1924), "A lamentable Loss," No. 5-6. [in Persian]
Anjoman-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah (1303/1924), No. 3. [in Persian]
Anjoman-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah (1304/1925), No. 9. [in Persian]
Danesh (1328/1910), "Knowledge (Danesh)," No. 4. [in Persian]
Danesh (1328/1910), "The Etiquette of Husband-keeping," No. 1. [in Persian]
Danesh (1328/1910), "The Etiquette of Wife-keeping," No. 3. [in Persian]
Danesh (1329/1911), "Assistance of the Wives of English Members of Parliament," No. 25. [in Persian]
Jahan-e Zanan (1339/1921), "Famous Women," No. 1. [in Persian]
Jahan-e Zanan (1339/1921), "Miscellaneous (Gunagun)," No. 2. [in Persian]
Jahan-e Zanan (1339/1921), "Necessity of Women's Education," No. 1. [in Persian]
Jahan-e Zanan (1339/1921), "The Method of Raising Children in the East," No. 3. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1338/1920), "Misunderstanding or the Ultimate Misfortune," No. 3. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1338/1920), "Rights of Half of Humanity Are Trampled," No. 3. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1338/1920), "The Necessity of Education," No. 1. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "A Petition to the Presence of His Majesty," No. 5. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "An Important Proposal," No. 11. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "Ignorance Is the Real Enemy of Islamic Nations," No. 10. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "Importance of Women in the Society," No. 9. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "Muslim Woman," No. 10. [in Persian]
Nameh-ye Banuvan (1339/1921), "On Administrative Imports," No. 8. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1330/1912), No. 1. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1331/1913), "On the Health of Children," No. 17. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1331/1913), "To the Honorable Director and the Girls of the Nation," No. 3. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1331/1913), No. 11. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1331/1913), No. 4. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1332/1914), "On the Conditions of Male and Female Teachers and Spiritual Members of Schools," No. 19. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1333/1915), "A Strong Anesthetic Requires General Insensibility," No. 18. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1333/1915), "Moral Share and Benefit," No. 7. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1333/1915), "Speech by the Principal of Maziniyeh School," No. 15. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1333/1915), No. 2. [in Persian]
Shokufeh (1334/1916), "Work," No. 6. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1337/1919), "Sisters, Wake Up," No. 11. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1338/1920), "A Pathetic Story," No. 6. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1338/1920), "Elections," No. 23. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1338/1920), "Our Mother, Iran," No. 31. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1338/1920), "The Science of Livelihood," No. 31. [in Persian]
Zaban-e Zanan (1338/1920), No. 6. [in Persian] 
Historical Studies
Volume 17, Issue 2 - Serial Number 34
Autumn and Winter 2026-2027
October 2026
Pages 155-192

  • Receive Date 01 August 2025
  • Revise Date 03 November 2025
  • Accept Date 15 December 2025