Fractal scaling of feminist politics and the emergence of woman life freedom movement in Iran

Abstract

This article presents a socio-historical analysis of the ways women’s everyday resistance and struggles over several decades have contributed to the emergence of the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in Iran. Drawing on archival and (digital) ethnographic data spanning from the mid-19th century to the 2022 WLF movement, I take a spatiotemporal approach to illustrate the evolution of feminist politics in social (non)movements in Iran. I argue that while state policies have historically constrained women’s access to and participation in sociopolitical spaces, these very constraints have gradually fueled the growth of grassroots feminist politics, which have incrementally scaled up to sustain and generate new forms of resistance and struggle. I specifically argue how the ongoing dialectical interaction between the state and women’s everyday resistance and historical struggles have led to the fractal expansion of feminist politics through decentralized feminist friendship networks that cultivate (in)visible forms of everyday resistance. This study has implications for understanding how women in general and feminist activists, in particular, navigate material circumstances and different forms of spaces for change across various spatiotemporal scales, particularly in authoritarian states, where feminist politics’ creativity and adaptability become essential forces for sustaining resistance and advancing social change.