Veiled Voices, Global Echoes: How Domestic and International Activists Navigate the Struggle for Women’s Rights in Iran
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2025-06-23
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en
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Women's rights are not guaranteed everywhere in the world. This thesis investigates why domestic actors in Iran employ different strategies to advance women's rights than international actors between 2019 and 2025. Employing an adjusted Transnational Advocacy Network framework, the study applies four key strategies: factual reporting, symbolic action, network mobilization, and legal frameworks. Through deductive content analysis of non-governmental organisation reports, social media posts, diaspora publications, and other secondary sources, the distinct strategies used by domestic and international actors are compared. The study finds that international actors primarily utilize factual reporting and various legal mechanisms to put pressure on Iran's government. At the same time, local activists mostly rely on symbolic actions, such as hijab removal in public spaces. Amid severe state repression and potential imprisonment, local activists use small, but often high-impact actions to exert pressure. Ultimately, it is Iranian women who are truly making change, transforming individual acts of resistance into a powerful global movement for gender equality.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen