women beyond their ordinary roles: a study of the role of women in the words of imam khomeini

this study tries to show how gender as a discourse construction has been formed since decades before the islamic revolution in imam khomeini’s words differently from then language system capacity, power and residence relations embodied in the traditional discourses, pre-revolution modernization period, in a context of political and social events and how it has stabilized or transformed the customary and determining boundaries of women and men. for this very purpose this paper studies the signified meaning of masculine/feminine in imam khomeini’s words as the most important political and symbolic elite in religious and revolutionary modernism discourse in relation with focal signifiers of then opposition in the context of political confrontation including official position of pahlavi regime against traditional clerics, applying ruth wodak’s method of historical discourse analysis. as a result ‘woman’ in the words of imam khomeini in connection with subjects such as islamic values, humanity, freedom, equality, bravery, rights, taking part in self determination etc., is an active subject in contrast with two conceptual systems: traditions and modernity. and women are not opposite men but beside them and not in a specific field but in their whole private, social and political lives they are responsible for establishing and maintaining a political system based on islamic values.