WOMAN IN CULTURE AND ART (WOMEN'S RESEARCH)
Year:2009 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:7

The book “One Thousand and One Nights” has always been considered as a relatively major source in cultural studies about women. This book comprises many female characters who play various moral and operative roles. It seems that this book does not merely reflect the common perspectives of one era or the personal experiences of its authors in relation with women, yet it is an intricate result of the society views toward this issue and different experiences of the authors. Throughout the years, it has developed the opportunities for expressing an idea, or the ways for opposing a belief and has also established the ground for its survival or demise. The investigated domain in this article is the Persian translation of the book “One Thousand and One nights” and some of the paintings of Sani’-ol-Molk. In the present study, the stories in which women play the primary role have been selected. The purpose of the current research is to explore the image of woman in these stories and to compare it with the paintings of Sani’-ol-Molk. Shahrzad is a key female character in the One Thousand and One Nights book who creates a general convergence in the stories by illustrating the conditions of women and introducing them as prudent, courageous, lover, artist and writer, and this results in the fact that not only is woman no longer disgraced but also the readers consider her as a complement, a collaborator and a comrade for man and therefore try to resolve her problems. Consistent with the language of the narrator of the stories and the story principles, Sani’-ol-Molk also creates a democratic atmosphere about women which demonstrates the profound impacts of Shahrzad and other women of the story on him.

Iranian society was a patriarchal one in which men had normally the highest authorities in political, social and economic relations and women often were absent from the scene of the official policy. But, since the prior qualification of the king was his attachment to the royal origins and family, the female’s rule was practiced in the case of unavailability of the mature males. Thus, Seyr-Al Moluks have been published for men. Seyr-Al Moluk writers, specifically after the hejiri sixth century, believed that women are the second-class God’s servants and physically and rationally do not have an independent existence, moreover, they have been created just for biological functions in generation production. Therefore, Seyr-Al Moluk writers divided society into the private and the public spheres and considered women in the private one. The author of Tarikh- I- Shahi wrote a book on the customs and the sovereignty of a woman king called Qutlugh Tarkan. This article presents the viewpoint of Seyr- Al Moluks on women. In addition, the phronesis described in the Tarikh- I- Shahi and the author’s historical experience about the principles and the standards of kingdom in a woman’s administration, as the first and perhaps the only experience is analyzed. Furthermore, Tarikh-IShahi is compared to the other Seyr-Al Moluks to examine the differences and the factors related to gender issues. Key words: seyr-ol moluk, phronesis, Tarikh-i-Shahi, Qutlugh Tarkan, Qara-khitai, king- woman. Point of view regarding all issues. Regarding permission in marriage the legal dimension is considered and not the canonical dimension.

In order to peruse the political and social role of women in Qajar family, studying the haramsara, the inside complex women lived in, separated from other parts of the palace, of this era is very much important. The situation of haramsaras in Qajar era and its political- social outputs demands the deep thinking in their nature to explain the political structure of Qajar government. Some subjects in the realm of haramsara functions, however, are more significant such as the ways women entered into the kings' haramsaras, and under which circumstances they passed their lives as the rich women who were in wealthy and comfortable layers of society. Their social activities, training and successes in cultural arena are all significant concerns on Qajar women. The most important point is to understand that how these women managed their responsibilities in the political context of the country particularly at the crossroads such as Tobacco Movement and Constitutional Movement, has serious affair. The findings show that the life of these haramsara women was not very different from the ordinary women of that epoch of Iran history and they also followed the traditional styles of life. It should be mentioned that they were in different positions comparing to men of that age. Also their progress in the socio - cultural fields had a suitable process, considering the variable conditions of Qajar society. The political activities of these women were varying according to the personal and the family authority and also according to the will and the power of the kings.

The conversion to Islam and bay’at of the newly converted Muslims are significant to draw the relationship between the Prophet of Islam and Muslims. There are lots of records and researches which depict the different aspects of bay’at between men and the Prophet. Then, what is significant is to examine if the Prophet also took the bay’at of women and, if yes, under which conditions? In fact, the social presence of women at the advent of Islam is the question the paper is to answer. This study is to explore the way the bay’at stimulated women to convert to Islam and abide by that. The principal questions the paper is to answer are: 1) What are the main periods of time and places that women did the bay’at with the Prophet? and 2) What is the relationship between the women’s bay’at and their stimulation to convert to Islam?. The hypothesis, here, is that Bay’at is the subject under the Muslim women’s conversion to Islam. Women actually did use bay’at to indicate their affection and loyalty to Islam and the Prophet. The studies show that there is a direct relationship between doing bay’at and acknowledgement of and abiding by Islam. Women’s bay’at with the Prophet has occurred in different stages in Mecca and after the Prophet’s immigration to Medina. It even cannot be limited to any specific place, time or person, and the converted women to Islam were looking forward to doing bay’at with the Prophet. He obliged the converted women to do bay’at after the conquest of Mecca, but it is not reported him to urge women to do so in any other episodes of the history of Islam.

In recent centuries, women were provided with the proper space to be active in social, political, economical, cultural, intellectual and literary areas. Therefore, they have done valuable activities and helped their countries to achieve increasing growth and manage fundamental changes. In this regard, the Lebanese women have been active, despite all difficulties they have encountered. They try to present their ideas and activities in cultural and political conferences inside and outside the country. Simultaneously, they release the artistic and literary works which are so qualified and unique specifically comparing the similar works produced in other Arabic countries.

Human brain has been constructed to be different between male and female from structural and functional points of view. This research aims at the study of the difference between two genders in perception of non- affective (linguistic) prosody of speech. The present study is cross – sectional, whose subjects include 50 Iranians in two gender categories of male and female. The responses of each group to all tests are registered. The stimuli comprises 144 linguistic sentences (declarative, interrogative and imperative) in three categories of meaningful, non-sense and filtered types, which are recorded by two speakers, a man and a woman and presented to the subjects. Data analysis is carried out using statistical independent t-Test. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between males and females in perception of non- affective prosody (P<0.005). The comparison of the mid-results also shows that women's efficiency in perception of non- affective (linguistic) prosody is more than men's. The mentioned result is the same for the nonsense stimuli. It means that women's efficiency in perception of non- affective prosody in none-sense sentences is also more than men's (P<0.005). Neither women nor men show a meaningful difference in perception of filtered sentences. (P= 0.103). Therefore, human females exhibit a higher level of efficiency in perceiving and responding to linguistic prosody.

Chante or Ayenedan is one of the Qashqa’I hand-woven arts that is made only by women. It is applied for carrying individual things like: money, food, etc. Qashqa’I girls and women learn how to weave Chante from childhood and will weave an excellent Chante when they are going to marry. In the tribal society, the women are in a lower position than men and they don’t have the reserved identity as an independent individual so there is no place to express their emotions. This causes that Qashqa’I women use Chante weaving as a device for illustrating their aims and happy or sad dreams. We can say that Chante is a way to their innocent loneliness and aspirations. These women utilize the ancient motifs and the pictures of inspiring nature around them to express their emotions. So, they show their love, interest or worries through weaving Chante, and this paper aims to search their mysterious world exploring them. First, the social and cultural history of Qashqa’I tribe is explained, and the position of women in the tribe is examined. Second, the paper introduces Chante and the technical way of weaving. Finally, the imagination of Qashqa’I women as appeared in Chante will be described. This paper is a library study and it exploits the historical approaches. It is also an innovative study semiologically introducing the symbols appear in Chante.