Women’s cultural rights, despite their partial recognition in international human rights instruments and the reflection of certain aspects within the Constitution and statutory laws of Iran, still occupy a marginal and insufficiently realized position within the normative framework of human rights. This situation highlights the question of the implicit hierarchy of human rights and its relationship with women’s cultural rights as a component of rights connected to human dignity and cultural identity. Based on an analytical examination of human rights texts and a reconsideration of the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence, it becomes evident that, alongside international instruments, principles such as inherent human dignity, justice, and the prohibition of discrimination in Islamic jurisprudence provide considerable grounds for supporting women’s cultural rights. Nevertheless, these elements have not yet been formulated within a coherent and indigenous theoretical framework capable of explaining the position and function of women’s cultural rights within Iran’s legal system.
The findings indicate that the marginalization of women’s cultural rights stems less from the absence of theoretical foundations and more from conceptual fragmentation, reductionist approaches to culture, the dominance of secular individualism in parts of human rights literature, and the gap between jurisprudential foundations and their institutional and policy translation at the levels of legislation and implementation. In contrast, Islamic law, through its teleological understanding of culture and its recognition of women as civilizational actors and transmitters of culture, possesses the capacity to redefine women’s cultural rights as fundamental and empowering rights. Accordingly, a conceptual reconsideration within human rights discourse and the development of an indigenous, Islamic, and operational theory for the realization of women’s cultural rights within Iran’s legal system appears to be a pressing necessity.