Battling Oppression and Crafting New Identities: Case Study of the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement began in 2022, and Canada’s Iranian diaspora– the second-largest globally–continues to mobilise advocacy initiatives in its support. However, no studies have examined the movement’s implications on identity individually or collectively. These gaps fail to recognise the experiences of Iranian peoples in Canada who care deeply for the movement and have been historically marginalised. As such, using a qualitative and arts-based method, my project facilitates the retelling of experiences of young adult advocates (n = 4) in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Specifically, I inquired about the perceived development of their collective identities as advocates, along with the impacts of their advocacy. First, I conducted semi-structured oral history interviews to examine their personal experiences in depth. Narrative analyses then identified factors that initiated, supported, and hindered identity development. In the second stage, I performed a community check-in session to validate these initial analyses. Afterwards, three arts-based group sessions outlined a digital graphic novel envisioning each advocate’s desired narrative of the movement. Relevant narrative analyses were also conducted here. In the findings, I reveal three stages of identity development: 1. Life in Iran before immigrating, 2. Life in Canada before advocacy, and 3. Life as advocates in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In each stage, I also identify factors that influenced their development and any perceived interactions between them. Above all, their perceived Self demonstrates resilience, empowerment, and values that mirror the movement (i.e., universal value of human life, inclusivity and democracy, and a resolute belief that the regime will fall). The findings also uncover strong interconnections between the Self and the collective, demonstrating identity's fluid and socially constructed nature. I underline the implications of these findings, including the importance of shifting narratives on identities and offer novel avenues for therapeutic interventions within narrative art therapy for Iranian and minoritised peoples.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.062 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".