Governance Challenges in Realizing the Third Model of Womanhood and the Capacities of Social Jurisprudence to Address Them

Introduction and Objective

The realization of modern Islamic civilization requires redefining women's role and status based on a model that sets aside both ossified Eastern traditions and Western modern instrumentalization, offering an alternative to both. This study aims to elucidate the third model of womanhood as an idea rooted in the intellectual system of Ayatollah Shahid Khamenei and to explore the challenges to its realization in society, seeking strategies for its actualization from the perspective of social jurisprudence.

Materials and Methods

This descriptive-analytical study collected data through documentary-library methods. The research corpus includes jurisprudential, legal, policy-making sources, women and family issues, and the statements of Ayatollah Shahid Khamenei.

Findings

Findings indicate that overlapping duties and institutional fragmentation, non-family-centered policies and laws, legal weaknesses and gaps, the disconnect between jurisprudence, law, and implementation, cultural and educational shortcomings, and imbalanced prioritization of roles are among the challenges to realizing the third model.

Discussion and Conclusion

Social jurisprudence is a social approach to jurisprudence benefiting from capacities such as supra-branch institution-building, the jurisprudence of legislation (fiqh al-taqnin) for converting religious rulings into coherent laws, attention to expediency (maslahah), and policy-making based on preserving gender characteristics and the Islamic family model; it can assist governance in overcoming the aforementioned challenges. Thus, moving from an individualistic approach to social jurisprudence is a prerequisite for formulating a coherent structural and legal system that enables women's civilizational agency in various arenas.