Woman in Development and Politics
Year:2003 | Volume:1 | Issue:6|Papers Count:7

This article considers women’s struggle as a part of the social movement emphasizing classical and modern perspectives. It also attempts to examine the factors which are inhibiting women, forcing them to call for change of their conditions. In the 90s, social movement thinkers emphasized the interaction process in social movements and social structures. In this view, instead of emphasizing strategies, they examined rehabilitation and changes of social identities of group members. Based on the feminist definition of the womens movement, the need for change is common among all women and emphasis could be made on the demand for change in a framework that creates social sensitivity about womens issues and their hidden needs. The activist groups of women can be categorized under four groups: 1. Women who are on the fringes of power. 2. Women in mass media. 3. Women at the universities. 4. Women in general. The author considers the basic challenges of Iranian women’s social movement to be: A pretentious backing of women, misconception about feminism, irrelevant support of women, lack of common language and interaction among activists in modern NGOs and traditional groups.

Common futures in the definitions of new social movements, allow us to call the ongoing process among Iranian women a “social movement”. This movement is distinguished by women challenging legal inequality among men and women and other deficiencies in different aspects of their life. To understand the goals and principals of the movement, a survey on the attitudes of activists in Iranian women social movement is carried out. The samples are selected from women NGOs. The research findings show an organized move among Iranian women with the goal of improvement in their life. The main futures of the movement are: efforts to decline legal inequalities, fact based evaluation, and concerns on sex differences, without any prejudice. The most and basic problem of Iranian women is legal inequality between men and women which is rooted in cultural values, biased and inferior attitudes of society towards women.

Women’s economic behavior, particularly due to their ever increasing contribution to the economic and social activities, needs to be further studied. This article, examines womens participation in the financial markets. A field study gathered data from the city of Tehran, to review main factors of women demanding loan and credit in the financial market (with an emphasis on the banking system). In this model, economic factors such as average income, interest rate, length of return, size of household, age, employment, education, marital status, saving and investment behavior were included in the. The research findings indicate that the most important economic factors that influence women to demand loans are the average income of women and their household as well as the length of return. That is to say, with the increase of income or the length of return, women’s demand for credit will increase.

A comprehensive social security and safety net along with the quality of benefits are indicative of social development. This article considers social security as a feminine phenomenon. Biological characteristics of women (longer life expectancy and greater longevity among women) and their special cultural and social conditions (higher risk for becoming divorced and having a broken family) put them in a greater need for social protection than men. While due to unequal conditions of the labor market, cultural restrictions and their social responsibilities, women are deprived from participation in formal economy and receive less social security benefits. The article reviews international approaches to engendering social security policies and presents three important issues: 1) Individualization of women’s rights, 2) Formalization of informal activities, and 3) Enhancing the concept of social security to cover other types of social protection systems as well

This article discusses the capabilities of nomad women and emphasizes on their role in the productive economy of 72 field locations of Hamadan province. The article reviews economic, social and cultural characteristics of nomad women, to present their economic status. Participatory Rural Appraisal and use of secondary data analysis were the main sources of information. Observations and research findings show that activities such as animal husbandry, food processing, and tribal moves are dependent on the work of women. Nomad women’s share in productive and non-productive activities is higher than men. Also their participation rate in social and cultural activities is much higher than men. Nomad women’s share in economic activities is equivalent to 85%. There is a significant and direct relation between womens number of work hours and the income of the household. Also, women’s participation rate is positively related to their age and position.

Considering the structure of the agricultural system where family holdings are dominant and the major portion of the labor force are unpaid women and children, official and comprehensive data on rural women’s participation is non-existence. Aiming to study womens role, the present article examines their share in the strategic agricultural production of Iran. Based on the latest agricultural census (2000-2001), about 82% of cultivated lands are allocated to 77% of farm products. Rural women’s share is estimated to be in rice production 65%, cotton 60%, vegetable 80% and animal husbandry 49.8%. Meanwhile their managerial role in farming and husbandry is minimal and key decisions are made by men. Prevalence of patriarchal culture and gender inequality seemed to have caused rural women lacking independence of identity, status and social security

Women’s participation means their total involvement in the process of decision makings and implementation of all social phenomena. This is a precondition for the success of all health programs. Womens participation in the maintenance of the society’s health is considered important. The program of women health volunteers not only provides the required skills and training to women volunteers it aims to disseminate health messages to all Iranian families. To evaluate the success of the program and the review of its impact on awareness-raising and changes in womens behavior, a longitudinal survey was conducted on two groups of women with similarities in socio-economic conditions (one covered by the study and a control group) in the Oroumeih district. The study was done before and after the implementation of the program. Comparison of the data gathered on awareness-raising of women in the two groups, demonstrated a significant difference due to the activities of health volunteers which had raised the level of the awareness of the society. However, behavioral changes among the groups were not significant. It seems that to review changes in the behavior require more than the one year period of the study.