Navigating Codified Gender Inequality: Drivers of Legal Practice in Iranian Family Lawyers’ Approaches to Divorce

Abstract

While prior research has focused on the role of cause lawyers in legal and social reforms within authoritarian regimes, the everyday practices of non-cause lawyers handling controversial cases remain unexplored. Drawing on 60 interviews with family lawyers and divorced women in Iran, this study directs attention to the everyday practices of ordinary lawyers, with a focus on divorce cases initiated by women, which are among the most challenging cases in Iran’s family courts. The study introduces a typology to distinguish between lawyers who are outcome-oriented and those who are transformative-oriented. I argue that lawyers’ perceptions of professional responsibility and their understandings of what counts as “meaningful reform” in a judiciary that is unreceptive to women’s rights influence how they pursue legal mobilization against codified gender inequality within an authoritarian system. This study concludes by suggesting that future research should examine how lawyers’ interpersonal interactions, as well as their educational and professional training, shape their approaches to challenging inequality and discrimination.