National Women’s-Rights Policy Networks: From Polarity to Homogeneity

Abstract

The two periods of study in this book saw big shifts in the arrangement and structure of national policy networks within women’s-rights domain in Iran. This chapter tells the story of these shifts based on interviews with woman activists and policymakers. The chapter shows that, whilst during the reformists a large polarised issue network formed at the national level of women’s-rights domain, the policies of conservative state re-formed it into a consistent exclusive policy community. As a result, the policies in this domain went into quite opposite directions across these two periods, and NGOs faced two different environments.