Sediqeh Dowlatabadi


Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, was a Persian feminist activist and journalist and one of the pioneering figures in the Persian women's movement.
Dowlatabadi published the first women's gazette in Esfahan called Zaban-e Zanan in 1919. Sediqeh Dowlatabadi was a pioneer in the unveiling of women. In 1925, there was a debate within the intellectual community, newspapers and women's magazines about the unveiling of women as a method of modernizing Iran and increasing women's participation in society, and rumors that the government planned to introduce such a policy: though this reform did not come about, some women from intellectual circles started to appear unveiled in public for the first time, possibly with silent encouragement by the government, and Sediqeh Dowlatabadi is believed to have been the first woman to have done so. When the second Congress of Women of the East was arranged in Teheran in 1932, Princess Shams Pahlavi served as its president and Dowlatabadi as its secretary. When the shah banned the veil in 1936, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi was an active supporter of the reform, and engaged in the new women's committee Kanun-e banovan formed by the government and the shah's daughter Shams to unite women organisations and prepare women for unveiling.