Woman in Development and Politics
Year:2010 | Volume:8 | Issue:1 (28)|Papers Count:7

This article aims at investigating the relationship between the cultural capital of employed women and the type of their relationship with their husbands in the family. Cultural capital is a sociological concept first time proposed by Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (Harker, Richards, et al. 1990) discussing cultural and social reproduction. In order to elaborate how couples interact with each other in terms of being democratic, Resource Theory (Blood & Wolf, Giddens, Willmott and Young, 1960) and Exchange Theory (Peter Blau) are applied. Cultural capital includes different elements such as kinds of knowledge, education, careers, job prestige, skills and lifestyle. All of these put individuals in a higher position in the society and raise their expectations. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory, cultural capital consists of embodied, objectified and institutionalized sections and includes knowledge, skills and arts that individuals acquire through education and their cultural background. Possession of cultural heritage, ease of access to this heritage and educational credentials are also considered as cultural capital. The research method consists of survey and data is collected through random sampling with 324 married women in Tehran (both employed and unemployed) and via questionnaire. The data is processed in two ways: bi-variate and multi-variate analyses. The findings show that the higher the woman's cultural capitals, the more democratic relationship she has with her husband. In studying the effect of variable cultural capital on the type of couples’ relationship, it is revealed that there is a meaningful relationship with a P=99% between cultural capital and couples' democratic relationship (Pearson’s r=0.35). The positive relationship shows that with the increase in women’s cultural capital their relationship with their husband becomes more democratic. Also the results illustrate that the amount of cultural capital is more among employed women and their mean of democratic relationship with husband exceeds that of housewives. Cultural capital is the key variable in the multivariate regression model whereas husband’s job prestige is a key variable in demographic variables. Results reveal that women’s cultural capital (with a beta of .28) affects couples' democratic relationship. This variable has a positive and direct effect, which indicates that for every unit of increase in women’s cultural capital the couples’ democratic relationship has a variation of .28 in unit. Furthermore, husband’s job prestige (with a beta of .19) affects couples' democratic relationship. This variable also has a positive and direct effect that indicates for every unit of increase in husband’s job prestige the couples’ democratic relationship has a variation of .19 in unit. The assumption is that employed women who possess a greater amount of cultural capital have more power in their relationship with husbands. Hence, the relationship is more democratic in such a family since in their exchange, they hold the reward resources (cultural capital). In other words, they possess money and social prestige and the results confirm this argument.

One of the main issues of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo was the empowerment of women with regard to reproductive health. It is assumed that along with increasing women’s autonomy and empowerment, they will accept more responsibility in decision making about marriage and child bearing, and it would lead to the increased usage of family planning devices, and eventually decreased fertility rate. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between women’s autonomy and fertility behavior in Iran. Data from the 2001 Socio-Economic characteristics of Households conducted by the Iran Statistical Center in collaboration with the Iran-French Research Center is used to meet the objective of this study. The survey covers 6960 households and interviews 5214 women (15-49 years old). Beside the social and economic characteristics of the household and women various aspects women’s autonomy are examined by different questions. The independent variables consist of different measures of women’s autonomy (information, physical, and decision-making autonomy). Physical or movement autonomy is constructed from five questions related to the visits that respondents made to such cultural places as cinema, music, exhibition and parks during the year before the survey. Information autonomy is measured by two questions related to the time allocated to reading books and magazines. Decision-making autonomy is also constructed using three relevant questions. The dependant variable is children ever-born, and is divided into three categories, lower (under 2), medium (3-4), and high (5 or more). In this study, having reviewed the existing literature on women’s autonomy and fertility including the various definitions of autonomy, the level and pattern of fertility in Iran is studied according to ethnicity. Then the relationship between different aspects of women’s autonomy and fertility is analyzed using bi-variate and multivariate analyses. The findings of this study indicate that significant discrepancies exist between women’s status (measured by such variables as physical movement, information autonomy and power of decision-making) from one society to another. A reverse relationship is found between information and physical aspect of women’s autonomy and fertility. With regard to decision-making autonomy, those who participated in decision-making are more likely to use contraceptive methods and less likely have high fertility. Overall, the results reveal that more autonomous women are more likely to have lower fertility. The results indicate that with the changing family dynamics in Iran, the role of men in decision-makings within the family are reduced and gender divided roles are replaced by new participatory roles. Although the impact of various measures of autonomy on fertility is found in this study, due to the influence of such context variables as education and employment, the impact of autonomy variables are not found to be strong. The research believes that studies of women’s autonomy in multicultural societies should take into account social and cultural aspects of various ethnic groups.

Watching Television and soap operas, is one of the most important activities of most people, particularly women, worldwide. There are various motives for watching T.V, such as obtaining serenity and entertainment, filling up the leisure hours, forgetting daily problems, and gaining information. The present study seeks to study the dimensions of satisfaction obtained from watching T.V soap operas by women. It also aims to find out the social correlations of obtained satisfaction, as well as their probable inter-correlations. The study utilizes Survey method, and data is collected through questionnaire along with interview. Since the “Use and satisfaction”, is the theoretical framework of the study, four-dimensional model of McQuail (including; gaining personal identification, achieving information, establishing social interactions, and obtaining serenity and entertainment) is applied to measure motives of watching (or sought satisfaction) and obtained satisfaction. Motives of watching and obtained satisfaction are considered as dependent variables and measured by investigator-made scales, on the basis of the McQuail model as well as previous research. Some social factors (such as level of education, employment status, socio-economic status-SES-, and rate of watching) are considered as independent variables. To measure the validity of the scales, Content Validity is applied and Alpha Chronbach is used to calculate reliability of the scales. The overall reliability coefficients for motives of watching and obtained satisfaction scales are .661 and .911, respectively; indicating strong internal consistency of the scales. The sample study consists of 383 married women residing in Isfahan city within the age range of 20 to 54 years old. SPSS (version 16) software is employed to analyze the collected data. Descriptive findings of the study indicate that slight majority of women have low education and income; while the great majority of them are married and housewives who belong to low SES families. The analytical findings of the study show that the strongest and weakest motives of watching soap opera for women are gaining personal identification and obtaining serenity and entertainment, respectively. On the other hand, the highest and lowest satisfactions which women obtained are the establishing social interactions and achieving information, respectively. Furthermore, there are significant correlations between different dimensions of sought and obtained satisfaction. Finally, the mean of watching motives and obtained satisfaction decreased in contrast with increasing level of education and SES. It seems that the women in this study reinforce their cultural and religious values, acquire socially accepted values, recognize and improve their social and familial status, and explore realities (which are used as criterions to measure gained personal identification) via watching soap operas. However, the subtle analysis indicates that although “gaining personal identification” was the strongest motive of women for watching soap opera, but they reported slight satisfaction in this regard. It appears that soap operas are mostly amusing and establish social interactions rather than inform and give personal identity.

Nowadays, societies are experiencing rapid social changes and growing expansion of consumptive culture, therefore, the human body has became very important, and is the concern of many sociologists. This research attempts to investigate an issue closely related to this domain namely the “make up”. The increasing use of facial make up among young girls has become prevalent. The decreasing age of wearing make up and the relationship between make up and social problems as well as the fact that wearing make up in public contradicts Islamic religious values has turned this issue into a deep social problem. This research tries to answer the following questions: why do girls tend to wear make up? What are the roles of make up in girls’ everyday life? The study aims at probing into the reasons behind. The research is conducted through interview based on qualitative method. Two methods are used to select sample population: convenient and Purposive Sampling. The sample consists of 30girls between 18-30 years old (that use make up). Through in-dept interview with the samples, the required data is collected. Having collected the data, they are analyzed through frame analysis. The result of the research demonstrate that, the young girls change their make up with Various environment, sex and kind of viewer, amount and level of communication, Permanency and Impermanency of groups, type of dress and activity. During the interview, they referred to a wide range of reasons for having strong inclination towards wearing make up including social (increase social capital, achieve social opportunities, make up as life style and social conformity), individual (build up identity and ideal self, hide oneself or mask oneself and body as center of power exertion or creativity) and psychological (increase the self-esteem, body satisfaction, change of psychic moods and pleasure and diversity). Findings of this research show that the individual's appearance (as part of their everyday reflexive world ) is mainly influenced by various social settings, as if that make up is interwoven with the individual’s life and is controlled and coordinated by it. In general, make up is a type of rational way to achieve the symbolic capital and even to transform it to other kinds of capital such as social and economic capital. In addition, every one through the type of make up they wear can get the physical and symbolic capital and they can also use it to increase their social and economic capital (get job) and even increase their social opportunities. This way they could modify the body. Although, it seems that women are influenced by structural forces, but they are still acting as an active agent, as if they could choose different ways based on their interests.

Family is the most important social institution in any society. As societies become increasingly complex, development of human social institutions can be characterized by the phrase “increasing specialization of functional activity”. Historically, family like other social institutions has changed. Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of family in the twentieth century is the increasing rate of family structural change, which directly influences the relationship between the members of a family particularly husband and wife. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate factors that affect power structure in family. In this survey, women’s employment status, women's job, men's job, the age of marriage, duration of marriage, women's education, women's income, men's income, men's education, and family size are regarded as factors which affect power structure in the family. The followings are the research hypothesis: 1) There is a relationship between employment status of women, and power structure in family. 2) There is a relationship between women's job and power structure in family. 3) There is a relationship between men's job and power structure in family. 4) There is a relationship between the age of marriage and power structure in family. 5) There is a relationship between duration of marriage and power structure in family. 6) There is a relationship between women's education and power structure in family. 7) There is a relationship between women's income and power structure in family. 8) There is a relationship between men's education and power structure in family. 9) There is a relationship between men's income and power structure in family. 10) There is a relationship between family size and power structure in family. The theoretical framework of this study is based on “Exchange theory”. The research method utilized is a survey through which a sample of 307 married women residing in “Lar” city is selected. Interview is used to collect data and the content of the interview is prepared in the light of the objectives of this study. Face Validity and choronbach Alpha are employed to determine the Validity and reliability of the measurement. The Power distribution structure is measured in two ways: area of power and couple strategy. The statistical methods include Regression analysis, t-test and ANOVA. The findings demonstrate that the great majority of the families (88.6 percents) have some degree of democratic structure, 2 percents of families have democratic structure and in 9.4 percent of families non-democratic structure exists. There is a significant relationship between the independent variables including age of marriage, women's education, men's education, women's income, duration of marriage, dimension of household, occupational status of women, and the dependent variable. In addition, in the multivariable analysis, independent variables predicted 6.9 percent of changes of dependent variable. Discussion about the sociology of family has always been a matter of debate. It emphasizes on family structures, and traditions. It focuses on the way "self emerged" from interaction with significant others. Social change occurs at many levels of society, in social institutions, culture, in roles and relationships among people. Families, as the primary unit of every society have undergone change as a result of social change. Social change occurs at different levels. And can take time to occur. Findings of this research show that, however, social change has occurred in family in Iran but structural condition remains in place.

The aim of this article is to analyze representation of women in contemporary Iranian painting. As the approach of cultural studies shows, a representation is never a pure reflection of reality; rather, it portrays reality in a specific way in order to reproduce the dominant hidden discourse. Therefore, this research aims to decode women’s portrayals in order to discover the hidden ideology in works of male and female painters. The theoretical approach of this article is based on studying the strategies which women use in their paintings in order to prevent becoming, in Foucault’s words, a subject of the male discourse. These strategies include visual techniques which challenge the expected ideas in facing women’s portraits. The study includes decoding the portraits drawn by women and men, and emphasizing on the meaning layers of power and resistance in the works. The methodological approach of this article is semiotics, and its method is content analysis using the technique of a reversed questionnaire which was designed according to binary oppositions of meanings used in the works. The questionnaire is designed based on decoding explicit and implicit significations in paintings about women, which includes undertaking a semiotic analysis of male and female painters. Thus the meanings are arranged based on the binary opposition, which is an experimental study of paintings based on counting the repetition of meanings in the works of male and female painters. The research statistical sample includes 142 paintings portraying women exhibited during the last two years in active galleries of Tehran. The main hypothesis of this article is about the existence of a meaningful difference between the paintings drawn by female and male painters. The strategies which explain two different masculine and feminine subjectivities are examined in 9 categories and 30 binaries including: sexual performance/desexualized performance, subjective strategies/objective strategies, descriptive/explanatory, natural/cultural, generalized/particularized. Probing into such binaries poses the question of how men using descriptive signs in representing women reproduce their masculine dominant discourse of culture with sexualized, subjective, naturalistic, generalized visual strategies. On the other hand, the issue as to how women using explanatory signs resist the masculine discourse with desexualized, objective, particularized visual strategies is examined. The findings show that the portrait of women in the paintings created by men is based on a system of descriptive, iconic and stereotypical signs, while women painters have an explanatory, non-stereotypical, an interpretive vision towards characteristics and the real conditions of women. In paintings of men the reference to women is an implicational, symbolic, and mythic reference which does not aim at femininity, but rather points to feminine characteristics and the implicit meaning and subjectivity of being a woman; and thus portray woman’s beauty and elegance. On the contrary in women’s paintings, the representation of women is based on feminine experience explaining the shortcomings of women’s life-world, while men’s paintings disregard these conditions and portray women in an imaginary space. The study of Iran’s contemporary paintings show that for women, a woman’s painting is a field of resistance against the masculine subjectivity and, in Foucault’s words, is a war against subjectivization of the woman. Women painters attempt to deconstruct the visual form which men have constructed about women. They resist subjectivization, and using new visual strategies, create gaps in the reproduction of masculine dominant culture.

The research is aimed to determine the socio-economic and demographic factors affecting the fertility in rural regions of Najaf-Abad Township. In rural development process, demographic indices are the most important ones. Fertility is among many factors which affects population growth. Therefore, in population planning, it is essential to determine factors affecting fertility. The statistical sample consists of 415 married rural women (10 to 49 years old), in their first marriage with at least one alive child, and the data is collected during the year 2007. The Data is obtained from information available in household folders of Najaf-Abad Health Houses. Based on a multivariate regression method, the results show that 40 to 44 years old women, 46 to 55 years old husbands, marriage age at 20 years and older, the length of marriage life, child mortality rate, the number of abortion, and the size of village (an estimate of the village expanse of useful land) have statistically positive effects on fertility. On the other hand, woman's age at first delivery, birth interval, husband's education level, and having health insurance have statistically negative influence on fertility. The main implication for the demographic policy makers is to enhance the level of education and upgrade the health level in order to wipe out child mortality and abortion. Mothers should be taught the right time of first partum and proper birth intervals. Using insurance advantages, a larger number of families should be covered. Last but not least, couple's high level of education and husband's employment status that may have negative effects on number of children should be taken into account.