Abstract:
This ethnographic study examines the phenomenon of women’s mostouri (seclusion/withdrawal) in Tehran’s Shahid Harandi neighborhood, analyzing it within the framework of the area’s physical, social, and cultural transformations. Findings reveal that mostouri is not merely an individual choice or cultural constraint but the outcome of a complex structural process. In this process, power dynamics, social stigma, market mafias, spatial rezoning, and the pathologizing gaze of media/institutions collectively exclude "ordinary, healthy women" from public space. Women—particularly educated and successful ones—self-isolate at home, fearing identity erosion and social judgment, while disavowing their neighborhood identity. In contrast, "damaged" women (e.g., addicts) are hyper-visible and receive disproportionate institutional support, whereas ordinary or civically active women remain invisible in urban policies.However, the study documents women’s everyday resistance: through home-based rowzehs (religious gatherings), digital networks, cultural hubs like the Hosseinieh-ye Montazeran-e Abassaleh, and small-scale economic activities, women are reconstructing safe spaces and collective identity. Integrating theories of gender, space, and power (Lefebvre, Foucault, Goffman, Massey), the research argues that women’s urban freedom depends not only on physical safety but on spatial justice, identity recognition, and access to symbolic resources. Ultimately, it reinterprets mostouri not as weakness but as a survival strategy—and at times, a prelude to re-emergence and activism in the social sphere.