Research Training Group World Politics RTG 2225

In the 1960s and 1970s, rapid population growth in developing countries raised global concerns over potential economic and social instability. Following global discussions on population control, Iran removed legal barriers and allowed the Ministry of Health to initiate its Family Planning Program in 1988, which led to significant improving women's status. This research hypothesises that women’s empowerment was the unintended side effect of the Islamic regime’s evolving foreign policy and global political stance between 1979 and 2001. The study specifically examines changes in women's status in Iran in relation to population policies during this period. The research hypothesizes that global political conflicts enabled the emergence of a less conservative stance on population policy and bodily autonomy in Iran. The Islamic regime’s shifting policies, new alliances, and growing animosity with the US in the late 1980s inadvertently led to a less anti-democratic regime. Discourse analysis of international discussions on population policy, and archival reports from the UN Commission on the Status of Women will be carried out to shed light on the impact of Iran’s foreign policy on women's rights, the Islamic regime's inconsistent gender policies, and its paradoxical and vagarious stances which have inadvertently reinforced women's status in the country.