Propaganda and Remembrance: Gender, Education, and “The Women's Awakening” of 1936

In The Spring Of 1997, I Attended a Memorial Dinner for My Aunt, Dr. Na‘imeh Amin. There, one of her friends from medical school, Dr. Maryam Tusi, shared pictures of herself and my aunt from their medical school days. In 1946, they had been among the first women students admitted to the University of Tehran Medical School directly from Iranian high schools. I was fascinated by what I thought I saw in three of the pictures. One showed ten young women on the steps of the medical school, looking eager and confident. Another showed men and women marching together in a street demonstration. The third was of men and women on a country outing, huddled together to fit into the picture and seemingly unconcerned about traditional anxieties regarding mixed-gender socializing. These images of women's progress and activism could have been produced by the propaganda of the Pahlavi state during its Women's Awakening project, 1936-41. In fact, the picture of the demonstration went beyond Women's Awakening propaganda and implied a new demand for gender equality that appeared in the Iranian press in the wake of the Women's Awakening.