The approval of women's suffrage in 1341 SH constitutes a historical turning point in the field of women's rights, achieved after overcoming numerous challenges since the Constitutional Revolution. This historical turning point makes it possible to examine, as a rupture from the preceding events, the power relations between the dominant discourse and the competing discourse(s) within a discursive context. The aim of this study is to examine the interactions among the discourses that existed at the time of the approval of women's suffrage.
discourse analysis using Fairclough's techniques was identified as appropriate for achieving the objective of this research.
According to the findings of the study, the approval of women's suffrage was accompanied by ups and downs. Although women's activists pursued it, their demands were ignored. Those who approved it made political use of it to create a favorable environment for themselves and referred to it as "a grant from the Shah." On the other hand, the opponents, including the clergy, regarded women's citizenship rights not as a right but as a political issue, creating a space for opposition and for declaring the ruling regime illegitimate. Despite the dominant interpretation of women's suffrage, women were regarded as political-sexual objects in both the dominant discourse and the two competing discourses, namely the "traditional discourse" and the "party discourse," and their demands were intertwined with power struggles. Only in the "discourse of legal equality between women and men" was legal equality pursued. The other discourses were positioned at varying distances from it.