Mona Tajali, PhD
Author, Academic, and Activist
I am a social scientist with expertise in gender, politics, and Middle East studies. My research, teaching, and activism center around efforts for gender equality, women’s empowerment, and democratization, including measures that resist gender discrimination, gender-based violence (GBV), and limited opportunities arising out of patriarchal structures.
A firm believer in engaging across the academic-practitioner divide, I am committed to research questions that have practical implications, and to this end have disseminated my findings to audiences both inside and outside of academia, including civil society. My publications, with two books published as open access, are centered around questions of how to elect more women to positions of political power, how to reduce barriers that keep women out of politics (such as the recent waves of violence against women in politics-VAWP), and how to further empower women as political actors.I draw on my research (including extensive field research in Iran and Turkey) in media analysis on women’s rights and feminist mobilization in Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan in English and Persian. My essays, expert interviews, and consultations have appeared in media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wilson Center, and CNN International.
I have been collaborating with the transnational feminist solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML.org), since 2007, and since 2019, I am a member of its board, and the principal investigator of its multi-sited women and politics project. I am currently the research director of WLUML’s Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute, focused on training the next generation of feminist leaders in the region. I am also an Associate Professor of International Relations and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Agnes Scott College, a historically women’s liberal arts college, in Atlanta, Georgia.
For the 2023-2024 academic year, I am a visiting scholar at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law (CDDRL), at Stanford University.
Download my open-access books:
Tajali, Mona. 2022. Women’s Organizing for Political Representation in Iran and Turkey: Demanding a Seat at the Table. Edinburgh University Press.
‘Mona Tajali’s book provides a deep dive into women’s political strategies in Iran and Turkey. This unique study, which is based on extensive fieldwork, looks at women’s efforts across the political spectrum to carve out political leadership roles and influence for themselves in two challenging political environments.‘ Aili Mari Tripp, Professor of Political Science. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Based on award-winning doctoral dissertation: The 2015 American Political Science Associations’s Best Dissertation Prize in Women and Politics.
Tajali, Mona and Homa Hoodfar. 2011. Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women. London, UK: Women Living Under Muslim Laws Publications.
‘In the march towards inclusive democracy and addressing women’s historical exclusion from electoral processes, gender quotas have emerged across the North and the South as a major tool for redress. This book outlines successes as well as shortcomings of the various types of gender quotas as they intersect with electoral systems.’ Charlotte Bunch, Founder of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership
