The Transnational Patriarchal Bargains of Iranian Women: The Gendered Work of Family Life over the Life Course

Abstract Key Words: Patriarchal Bargains, Gendered Negotiations, Gendered Agency, Non/citizenship, Care work, Legal Status Work, Life Histories, Iranian Women, transnational families, Iranian diaspora This dissertation is a qualitative study of women’s gendered negotiations of womanhood through the life course and in the context of precarious legal status and transnational migration. Placing three scholarly fields in dialogue, my project contributes to scholarship on gender and migration, postcolonial feminist theory, and work on precarious non/citizenship. I draw on and extend Denise Kandiyoti’s (1998; 2005) concept of “patriarchal bargains” to examine changes in gendered negotiations throughout women’s lives and in changing institutional and political contexts. I focus on the patriarchal bargains that women engage in with relation to marriage arrangements, their education and labour market participation as young adults and later in life, migration and return visits to Iran, and the work of securing livelihood and legal status upon migration to Toronto. My study is based on life history interviews with two cohorts of women. The first cohort (n=21) are older women (between 60-80 years old), who came of age in Iran during the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979). The second cohort (n=19) are younger women (between 30 to 59 years old), who came of age under the Islamic Republic (1979-current). I investigate: How do women navigate hegemonic gender ideologies over time throughout their lives with a focus on 1) coming of age in Iran 2) leaving home 3) engaging in transnational homemaking? I ask, how do class, family composition, and life stage shape these strategies? How do these strategies challenge or uphold gender ideologies? I examine patriarchal bargains in three moments in the women’s lives, each shaped by different cultural, political, and institutional agendas. Each moment is marked by distinct hegemonic gender ideologies: 1) The secular Pahlavi era 2) The Islamic Republic 3) Toronto, Canada. In the context of Iran, I name the hegemonic gender ideologies as the ideology of “sacrificing motherhood” and the ideology of “male guardianship”. Based on these ideologies, women are encouraged to take part in the economy, political sphere, and in civil society if they continue to prioritize motherhood, and to the extent that their participation does not challenge the ideal of “male guardianship.” The ideal of male guardianship has shaped paternalist obligations for men as fathers and husbands who are expected to assume responsibility for the welfare and security of their wives and children. In the context of Canada, I name the dominant gender ideologies “invisibilized and culturalized gender”. In Canada, women enter a secular state, where the institutional and cultural setting reinforces gender neutrality. The public space, therefore, offers women new forms of autonomy and mobility; they can go out on their own in public, make friends, volunteer, go to the mall, date, etc. On the other hand, the dominant discourse in Canada invisibilizes gender inequality as a structural problem related to social, economic, and political institutions in which women are embedded. Women bargain in a context where policies related to migration, job market, housing, etc. create systemic precarities for them. I show that patriarchal bargains are spatially and temporally complex: in any given society and at any given time, patriarchal structures are heterogenous and fragmented and operate differently across different arenas, for example in the family, in the labour market, and educational system. I specify the affective dimensions of patriarchal bargains. In my work, I examine how women draw on patience and compromise, acquiescence, confrontation and shaming in patriarchal bargains. These affective dynamics are present and are deployed in alliances and relations with different family members. I also emphasize the importance of studying how women’s patriarchal bargains change over time, where past negotiations inform the space of manoeuvres and character of bargains in future moments. Women engage in patriarchal bargains throughout their lives from youth to senior years, learning to negotiate and draw on different “rules of the game” (Kandiyoti 1998). They engage in patriarchal bargains within a wide network of extended kin and fictive kin to secure an income, provide care work, and improve their legal status.

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