Socio-Cultural Strategy

Socio-Cultural Strategy

Discourse analysis of the Seventh Development Plan with a view to women and family issues

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Fatemeh Ghasempour
Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Women and Family Research Center, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/scs.2026.538750.1728
Abstract
The country's programs are among the most important planning programs in the country that determine the major executive measures. From the second to the seventh plan, the issue of women and family can be pursued in these programs and decrees have been approved in these areas. Of course, the approaches of the development programs in this area are different, and the third, fourth, and sixth plans are influenced by development literature and follow the approaches of "women and development" and "gender and development", and the fifth plan follows the approach of "family orientation" and the role of women in the family. In the seventh progress plan, which was developed and approved under the political discourse of principlism, a separate chapter has been allocated to the issue of women, family, and population. In this research, with a qualitative research approach and focusing on discourse analysis using the Laclau and Mouffe methods, the decrees of the seventh plan on the issue of women and family were examined, and the discursive differences of this plan with previous plans were obtained. The central signifier of this plan is the "third model of women" rooted in the Islamic Revolution's literature on women. This plan distinguishes itself from the Third Development Plan (with its Women and Development approach) and the Fourth Development Plan (with its Gender and Development approach). Although designed within the political discourse of principlism, it differs from the Fifth Development Plan, which had also paid attention to the status of the family alongside women's social action. In the seventh plan, familyism is traced alongside women's social activism, articulated through the signs of "familyism," "women's social action," "support for motherhood," "women's empowerment," and "governance and action model."
Keywords
Familyism
agencyism
Seventh Development Plan
women's social action
Subjects
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  • Receive Date 09 August 2025
  • Revise Date 10 May 2026
  • Accept Date 11 May 2026