Editor's Note: This article uses terminology like ‘pan-Turkist’ or ‘separatist’ to describe Azerbaijani Turk activists. It is important to clarify that these terms have been weaponized by the Iranian regime and dominant racist discourses in Iran to stigmatize, delegitimize, and criminalize ethnic and language-based movements. These labels reduce a complex and diverse landscape of civic, cultural, and political activism to security threats, and risk misrepresenting the legitimate demands of Azerbaijani Turks for recognition, equality, and linguistic rights. Our purpose in translating and publishing this article on our blog is not to reinforce these reductive narratives, but rather to shed light on the unique intersectional challenges faced by Azerbaijani women within public and activist spaces. We acknowledge this problematic framing and encourage readers to engage with the content through a critical and contextual lens.
Laleh Foroughanfar • Problematica • May 07, 2019
Due to the intersection of gender with other variables of inequality and discrimination, the demands of non-centralized, non-Persian, and non-Shia women in Iran acquire multiple dimensions and complexities. Unfortunately, these are not adequately reflected in the dominant Persian-language feminist discourse. This article examines the reciprocal relationship between space and gender in the public sphere and urban environments. Relying on intersectional feminist critique and by presenting examples of “single-gendered” urban spaces, it seeks to depict the gap between identity-seeking Turkish activists and feminist Azerbaijani women, as well as the compounded problems and discriminations these women experience in their daily urban lives—particularly in the metropolis of Tabriz.
Women and the Public Sphere
The aim of this article is to emphasize that the social lives of Azerbaijani women—or other non-Persian nations—cannot be studied solely under the general framework and umbrella of “Iranian women.” This is because not all women living in the political geography of Iran share the same conditions, opportunities, or even restrictions. Furthermore, the restrictions imposed on them do not fall into a single, uniform category. For this reason, intersectional feminism is essential as an analytical tool for addressing these complexities and entanglements. Intersectional feminist critique acts as an instrument to highlight and analyze the interconnectedness of gendered, class-based, ethnic, religious, and sexual social relations.
For Azerbaijani women, being both women and non-Persian means they experience multiple layers of discrimination—both externally and internally within their own groups—depending further on their social, class, and religious backgrounds. With this introduction, we continue the article by asking: What is the social life of women residing in the Azerbaijani geography—specifically Tabriz—in the public sphere like, and under what conditions can feminist activism occur in this space?
By definition, urban public spaces are primarily physical areas that, in addition to being accessible to all, should accommodate diverse groups with differences in gender, race, age, and class. These spaces play a vital role in creating democratic environments, a sense of belonging, and place-based identity (Madani Pour, 2008). Urban spaces also have the potential to bring various social groups together and, thus, play a significant role in shaping social structures and relations.
This social structure, referred to as the public sphere, encompasses both political-social structures and physical space. In a close relationship, public space and the public sphere can mutually reinforce and energize each other. Ideally, individuals and groups within civil society—such as activists, intellectuals, and dissenters—can use the public sphere to monitor governmental decisions or influence power relations by gathering social forces within urban spaces. Consequently, a dynamic and inclusive public and urban space is crucial for civil society because it provides a platform for bottom-up negotiations.
However, it is evident that in many countries—including Iran—public spheres and urban spaces often lack such democratic values. In most Iranian metropolises, the policing and securitization of urban spaces, the dramatic increase in surveillance cameras, and policies like gender segregation in urban spaces have eliminated opportunities for spontaneous activities in public areas, stripping cities of vibrancy and dynamism.
The issue of dress codes and restrictions imposed by morality police (Gasht-e Ershad) is a common challenge faced by most urban women in Iran and significantly shapes their urban experiences. In addition, hidden urban violences—such as insufficient infrastructure for women with infants or children, poorly accessible public transportation across all urban areas, urban planning that prioritizes vehicles over pedestrians in metropolises, and street harassment—are further challenges that many urban women, especially during their leisure time, encounter.
In such conditions, access to urban spaces is limited for many residents—especially women, LGBTQ individuals, and other marginalized groups. Moreover, opportunities for civil activity in the public sphere are often suppressed or entirely denied. Although in recent years, technology and the internet have played an undeniable role in bringing diverse groups together and amplifying their voices, access to fast and unrestricted internet is not available to everyone. Thus, virtual space cannot be considered an adequate substitute for the public sphere.
The "Third Place" and Its Importance
The American sociologist Ray Oldenburg discusses third places—spaces that are neither the first place (home) nor the second place (work)—where deeper social relations and interactions are formed. A third place is where individuals voluntarily and informally spend their leisure time, free from the responsibilities of home and work, such as cafés, bars, and beauty salons. These are places where a person becomes a regular attendee voluntarily, casually, and without strict rules or formality—essentially a "hangout."
In such spaces, individuals define their identities through a sense of belonging either to the location itself or to the other regulars. These places often become part of a person's lived experience. In fact, an individual's identity is constantly being shaped and reshaped in a dialectical relationship with space. This is similar to the role that public bathhouses for both women and men—and teahouses for men—played in pre-modern times. These places, beyond their practical function, served as hubs for social interaction, news exchange, identity formation (both individual and collective), a sense of belonging, and even the reproduction of new social norms.
However, with the arrival of modernity and urban and social transformations, many of these spaces and their functions changed drastically or disappeared entirely. Interestingly, male-dominated third spaces adapted to modernization and were restructured to continue as part of urban life. But female-centered spaces, closely linked to the domestic interior, were not able to visibly enter the public sphere and remained largely limited to household gatherings and religious events, even in their modernized forms.
A quick comparison shows that Tehran, due to its size, urban scale, larger and more diverse population, and better cultural infrastructure, has generally provided a more vibrant, flexible, and diverse urban life for women. However, in smaller cities, where traditional norms are more entrenched, women’s ability to access and appropriate urban spaces depends heavily on their socioeconomic class, age, and religious affiliation. Although in recent years—with the growth of consumerism and the rapid rise of shopping malls—mall-going and dining out have become part of the daily life of some middle and upper-middle-class urban women of the younger generation in a city like Tabriz, traditionally, in-home gatherings are still the most common form of socializing and public presence outside the home.
What Is a Gender-Segregated Space and How Does It Emerge?
Space is a product of social relations and connections. Places and spaces can generate or regenerate different meanings through spatial relationships, patterns of use (like gathering in a sunny corner of a park), physical traces (like cigarette butts on the ground), and existing symbols and signs (like a national or rainbow flag hanging from a balcony). In fact, individuals and groups give meaning to spaces through their presence and use, thereby producing and reproducing new spatial realities.
Henri Lefebvre, in his book The Production of Space, argues that spatial patterns are not fixed or absolute but are shaped by social, economic, and political power relations. Therefore, space is not an absolute concept but a fluid one, dependent on its variables. Gendered spaces, too, are produced in this way. Space is not inherently gendered; rather, traditional gender roles are reinforced through dominant social, economic, and political forces, which in turn reproduce gendered spaces.
If we accept that men have traditionally held greater economic and social power, it follows that public spaces have also been constructed to serve male-centered needs and preferences. On a larger scale, and in the public sphere, the reproduction of these unequal power dynamics means that women generally have had less opportunity to occupy public space.
Women’s presence in urban public spaces—even when adhering to cultural and governmental norms—is often only deemed acceptable or morally justifiable if it involves purposeful activity. This might include daily errands like shopping, taking children to school, commuting to work, or engaging in consumer behavior to support the market. Outside of these contexts, leisure activities—like standing on a street corner, reading a book on a park bench, or any number of free and spontaneous acts—are subject to public judgment, street harassment, and sometimes even intervention by moral patrols.
Thus, the third place discussed earlier is in Iran highly gendered, and women’s presence in spaces outside the home or workplace has always faced significant limitations.
For Azerbaijani women—the focus of this essay—top-down decisions, especially those concerning their presence in the public sphere, often come with unique sensitivities and restrictions, sometimes in direct contradiction with policies implemented in the capital. For instance, permission for women-only concerts is not granted by local authorities in Tabriz under pretexts like "respect for local cultural and traditional norms" or the "lack of cultural and social infrastructure."
Another example is the "women's parks" initiative, which, although implemented in Tehran and other cities, failed to achieve its intended goals in Tabriz for several reasons. One of the main reasons was poor location planning—unregulated construction, overdevelopment of city centers, and destruction of green areas on Tabriz’s outskirts made it difficult to designate parks that could be properly enclosed for women's exclusive use. As a result, authorities did not permit unrestricted implementation of these parks.
Currently, Tabriz has six women-only parks, but due to high-rise buildings overlooking these parks, multiple security guards are always present, monitoring women's activities and dress. This contradicts the very idea of the park as a space where women can move freely, exercise, and enjoy sunlight without worrying about their appearance. Although later phases of these parks introduced additional facilities like cultural centers, educational classes, and food courts, which managed to attract more women, in most cases these parks appealed only to a specific social class and failed to gain broader acceptance—even among proponents of single-gendered park initiatives.
Public Sphere and Women's Activism in Azerbaijan
Women in the field of activism and civil engagement in the Azerbaijan region, particularly regarding the “right to the city,” face various limitations in their everyday lives. For example, in the city of Tabriz, any activity or gathering held in public spaces on International Women’s Day is treated as a security threat and met with repression. In recent years, Azerbaijani women activists—except in rare instances such as organizing events under the guise of charity work or aid to imprisoned women, or live musical performances by female artists—have been prevented from using public spaces in the city to commemorate such occasions. As a result, strategically and out of necessity, these events, including International Women’s Day on March 8, have for years been held in private homes and attended only by women, with no men present.
This spatial and gendered division means that women concerned with equality not only lose the liberating and unifying potential of public space to amplify their demands, but also fail to engage other segments and civil society groups—including men—in their cause. The gap that exists between identity-based activists and Azerbaijani feminist women is in part a result of this lack of shared presence in common spaces, and is further widened by other factors such as patriarchal attitudes and a guardian mentality that dominates these identity-oriented groups, along with the prioritization of ethnic or identity-based demands over gender equality.
Even in cases where opportunities for collective presence and demands exist—such as gatherings to protest the drying up of Lake Urmia and the disruption of the region's ecosystem—these protests are either securitized and suppressed by the government or diverted by some toward extreme nationalism.
Although democratic access to public space for dialogue, exchange of ideas, protest, and activism is not exclusively a women’s issue—and indeed affects all civil groups and society at large in Azerbaijan—gender plays a particularly prominent role in activism, as discussed in the introduction to this note. In fact, men, with their broader access to public space, are more capable of creating organic and alternative public forums that can challenge power structures and produce new spaces. This opportunity is not readily available to women.
The following examples may help clarify this issue further:
In the Azerbaijan region, traditional teahouses and modern cafes have played a significant role in fostering intellectual spaces and the production of ideas and content. Although the intellectual atmosphere of teahouses was somewhat disrupted after the revolution, over time it adapted to societal changes and continued its social life. In the late 2000s, with the consistent presence of a new generation of intellectuals—students, writers, musicians, poets, and Azerbaijani artists—these spaces were reclaimed and revitalized, aligning with the legacy and spirit of earlier teahouse-based intellectual movements. They breathed new life into the intellectual and social life of Tabriz’s teahouses.
Today, however, the teahouses and cafes of Tabriz, in addition to their traditional role as "third spaces," largely function as (male-dominated) urban social spaces where different generations from various social and professional classes come together. This new wave of teahouse-goers and cafe regulars has managed to build an intergenerational connection and draw on the local identity of these places to construct a new cultural identity. They voice national, civic, and linguistic demands through everyday forms of resistance. It can confidently be said that the seeds of many independent intellectual and cultural magazines and books, as well as the ideas and planning for theater productions and even art exhibitions, are sown, nurtured, and brought to fruition in these spaces.
Yet, due to prevailing restrictions and the deeply masculine atmosphere of these teahouses, women’s presence in such spaces is highly limited. In a context where women are absent from management, participation, collaboration, or even idea-sharing, the cultural and social products emerging from these environments are shaped solely by male experiences, knowledge, and perspectives—rendering them unable or less inclined to reflect and address women’s issues.
Another example of gender-segregated spaces that embodies the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination is sports stadiums. It is no secret that for many people in Azerbaijan, watching games played by the Tabriz-based Tractor football team (commonly known as Tiraxtur) carries far more significance than watching an average football team. Support for this team is closely tied to the political and ethno-national identity of many Azerbaijani Turks. Tiraxtur fans—especially identity-focused but not necessarily separatist or pan-Turkist activists—use the stadium stands as a platform to express their demands through everyday acts of resistance and symbolic appropriation of space.
In the absence of democratic and inclusive public spaces, stadiums have become a platform where the ethno-national movement of Azerbaijan articulates its national, civic, and linguistic demands. Football matches are pivotal moments when slogans, chants, catchphrases, and subcultures of this movement emerge and take shape.
Given that women are prohibited from attending men’s football matches, including those of the Tiraxtur team, this becomes a point of intersection between gender and ethnic discrimination in the Azerbaijani context. Beyond the often sexist stadium culture and its associated discourse, this compounded discrimination means Azerbaijani women, being excluded from such critical moments of collective expression, have limited opportunities to negotiate their human and gender-ethnic rights.
Moreover, these women also experience discrimination and limitations from within the public sphere and activism spaces dominated by Azerbaijani male activists—discrimination often rooted in patriarchal and guardian-like attitudes prevalent in society. According to interviews with women activists, many report being judged by male peers, and note a general disregard for women's issues or their de-prioritization compared to the broader Azerbaijani national movement.
A feminist activist recounted the reaction to their virtual efforts to raise awareness and promote a discourse of equality:
“Some men told us, ‘Don’t cause division in our movement. We had Zeynab Pasha in Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijani women have always been progressive—so gender isn’t our issue.’”
It appears that these men fear that incorporating women’s demands alongside national ones would dilute the focus or undermine the sacred and often romanticized goals defined by the identity movement. Although these groups claim to advocate for justice and oppose discrimination, they often reproduce patriarchal norms within activism and public spaces, thereby marginalizing other voices.
As a result, in some cases, women—seeking public presence and male validation—resort to self-censorship, suppress their ideas, downplay their fundamental rights, or even adopt a more conservative appearance and manner of dress.
In summary, the obstacles faced by equality-seeking and identity-conscious Azerbaijani women in accessing public and urban spaces can be attributed to a combination of restrictive and at times misogynistic laws, traditional customs rooted in families and society, and the entrenched patriarchal and guardian-based attitudes among Azerbaijani civil activists and their lack of solidarity with the women’s movement. Additionally, the lack of attention to intersectional feminism—both among non-central and central Iranian women—has led to the pursuit of women’s demands along parallel but disconnected lines, where often one set of rights is sacrificed for the other.
In the case of Azerbaijani women, women’s rights are often sidelined in favor of demands for equal recognition—such as civil equality, the right to education in the mother tongue, equal economic opportunities, and more. Yet these rights are not separate; they are deeply interconnected and unattainable in isolation from one another.
This note ends with a critical question: To what extent has the centralist feminist movement in Iran been able to articulate a reciprocal relationship with women’s groups across other regions of the country?
References:
[1] The concept of the intersectionality of gendered, sexual, ethnic, religious, and racial social relations was first introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar and professor at the University of California, in 1989.
[2] This note is based on the author's lived experiences and academic research in urban studies, as well as conversations with other women activists.
[3] Third Places, Ray Oldenburg, 1989, 1991
[4] French urbanist and geographer
[5] In the past three decades, the vertical development model has been strongly emphasized in Tabriz, and after Tehran, Tabriz has had the highest rate of high-rise construction. (Dehghan, Kamran; Three Decades of High-Rise Development in Tabriz, Architecture and Building Quarterly, Issue 49: Babylonism in Iran, Winter 2016)
[6] In Azerbaijani Turkish, the team is called “Tiraxtur.” Therefore, the author chooses not to change this name to the Persianized “Tractor.”
Tags: Azerbaijan, Intersectionality, Interwoven Oppression, Everyday Life, Public Sphere, Space, Gender-Segregated Space, Feminism, Laleh Foroughanfar
The archived link to the original Persian text on Problematicaa:
نقدی بر عرصه عمومی تک جنسیتی؛ فمینیسم اینترسکشنال و تجربه روزمره زنان در آذربایجان