This thesis analyzes five selected memoirs by Iranian women written after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 within the framework of the pre and post Revolution Period. These memoirs are thought as constituting a shift within the Iranian Literature by women. The memoir writing tradition in Iran which was absent before the revolution and boomed afterwards is the first topic of discussion with its catalysing factors. These memoirs are handled within the larger framework of Iranian literary tradition. The study mainly analyses the common characteristics and issues in these five memoirs, and the changes in the women&rsquo / s lives after the revolution as depicted within the memoirs.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the stance of feminist movement towards a dialogue with Islamist women and the &lsquo / headscarf problem&rsquo / in Turkey in 2000s. This is done by examining three magazines which claim to contribute to feminist movement and women&rsquo / s studies in Turkey, namely Feminist YaklaSimlar, Kadin &Ccedil / aliSmalari Dergisi and Amargi, all of which have been started to be published in 2006. It tries to explain the way in which feminists framed the issue has changed since the 1980s and 1990s, when the feminist movement and the debates on headscarves were on the rise in Turkey. In order to understand the shift of feminist discourse(s) on the headscarf issue, it also tries to explain how the women&rsquo / s movement and women&rsquo / s status in Turkey have transformed since the 19th century, along with the debates on the headscarf.

This study is focusing on the conflict-induced internally displaced Kurdish women&rsquo / s experiences. There has been an ongoing internal armed conflict in Turkey since 1984 and one of the consequences of this conflict is the internal displacement that occured in 1990s. In the displacement process, women and other family members were victimized. They did not only loose their homelands, but they also had to struggle in the city centers with poverty and discrimination. After they started to live in the city centers, women may become both marginalized and empowered. The aim of the study is to understand the situations that lead Kurdish women to be marginalized and/or empowered in the cities to which they have been forced to migrate. After the displacement process, which is one of the major victimization processes for these women, some of them may be trapped in ethnic and gender-based discrimination and may become more marginalized in the city centers. But marginalization and empowerment are not fixed categories and there is always a possibility for these women to transform their marginalized position into empowerment. By political engagement, working outside house and/or being head of the househod these women may break the cycle of their marginalization and becomes empowered in the city centers.

This study, which aims to portray the circumstances of Ottoman women&rsquo / s movement during the first years of Second Constitutional Era from the eyes of the writers of Kadinlar D&uuml / nyasi Periodical, makes an analysis of the meanings ascribed to the efforts for the restoration of women&rsquo / s position in social life and the roles claimed for women during Ottoman modernization period. This research intends to confirm the fact that the basis for the mentality of defenders voicing women&rsquo / s rights was the progressive outlook which chose the &ldquo / women question&rdquo / as the focus on the way of securing not only social progress but also social integration, solidarity, national consciousness and progressiveness. Thus, the ideas expressed in the articles all written by women writers of Kadinlar D&uuml / nyasi are evaluated with the question in mind that whether the boundaries of Ottoman women&rsquo / s movement and the social role granted for them in the modernization process were wholly determined by the women themselves or theorized predominantly by the policymakers of the state who were all men. Deducing from the self-evaluation of women in Kadinlar D&uuml / nyasi of 1913, this thesis consequently underlines the fact that the struggle for women rights, which were carried out on behalf of patriotic and nationalist claims in accordance with the socio-political conditions of the time, could not overcome their invariable position of being &ldquo / historical objects&rdquo / despite of the fact that women held a considerable progress in their status during the Second Constitutional Era which laid the parameters of the &ldquo / women question&rdquo / during the early Republican Era.