During the Second Pahlavi era, Iran was influenced by a modernization project which had been started by the First Pahlavi’s government. The project, which was supported by western media, was to bring about social, economic, and technological advancement and to modify the dominating traditional culture of the Iranian society. Part of the project was directly related to Iranian women’s citizenship rights and was to improve them based on western standards. The present study aimed at tracing women’s citizenship rights in the Persian translation of an American novella, Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West which was translated in 1963, the same year when the White Revolution was launched in Iran. Marshall’s theory of citizenship (1950/ 2009) was used to collect and analyze data. The analysis of the collected data showed issues which were addressed in the Persian translation of the novella were similar to those which were discussed in relation to Iranian women’s citizenship rights during the Second Pahlavi era: early marriage, lack of girls’ sexual health education before marriage, closely spaced pregnancies, domestic violence against women, and arguments over women’s taking social roles. Although during that time programs had been developed to provide Iranian women with an alternative lifestyle, many of them failed to fulfil the expectations as they were rooted in western culture.
