Utopia or Dystopia? Exploring the Prospective Efficacy of Women, Life, Freedom Movement in Future

This study examines how Iranian women activists and supporters of the Women, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement perceive its prospective efficacy and how these perceptions give rise to dystopian and utopian future imaginaries. Drawing on 60 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2022 and 2024, and informed by Brown’s ( 2016 ) concept of prospectus alongside alternative futures scholarship, the analysis focuses on efficacy as perceived plausibility rather than measurable political outcomes. The findings show that divergent future imaginaries stem from contrasting conceptualisations of social movements. Participants who understand WLF as a revolutionary event oriented towards immediate regime change tend to evaluate its efficacy negatively and articulate dystopian futures characterised by intensified repression and social exclusion. By contrast, those who conceptualise WLF as a processual mobilising force emphasise gradual transformation through collective agency and everyday resistance, envisioning utopian futures grounded in freedom and gender equality. The study argues that perceived functionality precedes perceived efficacy and that imagined futures emerge as epistemological outcomes of efficacy sense-making under authoritarian conditions.