About Women’s Center

The Women’s Center promotes women’s studies and women’s human rights in the context of Iranian contemporary history and politics. To facilitate and encourage research on the past, present and future of Iranian women, we have compiled a rich collection of primary sources, including oral history interviews with women from many walks of life. The Women’s Center has organized seminars and conferences on women’s issues and provided outlets for scholars and feminists to publish their research on Iranian women.

Goals

A goal of the Center is to help further the development of theoretical and practical knowledge that will lead to a better understanding of the condition of women in Iran and other Muslim societies. Another focus of the Center has been to extend contact with women in Iran in order to expand its communication base, collect material for its research base and to disseminate its publications. This effort has been largely successful with the Center’s increasing involvement in bringing women from Iran to speak on women’s issues particularly human rights.

Partnerships

The Women’s Center is closely cooperating with the Women’s Learning Partnership for Right, Development and Peace, an international women’s rights organization, of which Mahnaz Afkhami is founder and president. The Center cooperates also with a variety of institutions interested in women’s issues to promote women’s human rights in Iran, including women’s studies departments in the US and elsewhere, and women’s NGOs in the US, and the Global South.