Woman in Development and Politics
Year:2004 | Volume:2 | Issue:3|Papers Count:9

The history of Iranian cinema has links to gender relations. The changes that Iranian cinema has experienced in area of gender are indicator of social evolution. In this study, forms of gender relations in Iranian films can be explained through tradition and modernity. Based on content analysis, this research tries to follow conditions of modernity in Iranian society by searching the quality of representing gender relations in Iranian cinema after the Islamic revolution. The main hypothesis of this research is that gender relations in Iranian cinema after the revolution have changed from patriarchal to more egalitarian ones. The theoretical framework in the research is the liberal feminism theory. The theory helps researchers to explain the affinity of feminism and modernity.

Children develop their vocabulary, learn social roles and build relationships through reading story books. They get familiar with behaviors and actions which are attributed to men and women through these books. So the way mens and womens roles are represented in story books is very important. It is the main goal of this research to see how gender patterns are represented in story books. Despite the fact that statistics show that Iranian women undertake important social roles and are not merely restricted to their traditional roles such as motherhood, housewifery, teaching and nursing, they rarely appear in some of the key and influential roles. The method applied in this research is content analysis.

This paper is an attempt to indicate that the segregation of male and female in Iran in order to study the differences in their attitudes, is not possible due to structural barriers. Nevertheless, the significance of such segregation, through a complex theoretical attempt, can provide the grounds for understanding generational and gender differences and pave the way for understanding contemporary social changes in Iran. On this basis, this paper indicates that understanding attitude changes among males and females will be possible through a reference to their generational status. In order to substantiate this, the reactions of male and female members of various generations to four of the following attitude-scale items will be examined. This indicates that what is often considered in Iran to be a generation-gap (Alikhani,1382) is not in fact a gap in the sense that one generation distance itself from other generations. Rather, "generation-gap" refers to the socio-economic changes that can be identified as articulation of cultural modes of generations in contemporary Iran, i.e. a phenomenon that intensifies cultural interactions among generations means that each generation uses specific cultural values of other generations to promote its own generations ambitions. It shows that through this articulation model, the Iranian society is reproducing itself and crystallizing its new societal values. On this basis, an argument on the two following conceptual fields will be presented which are related to generations and the attitudes that originate from sex: 1- what is the nature of the generation-gap, 2- theoretical legitimacy of combining the two concepts of sex and generation. I will then present the results of my research on attitudes of males and females towards four following attitude-scale items as the empirical foundation for identifying a gender-based generation-gap. I will mention 8 items to indicate the methodological typology that exists among them however the results that will be mentioned here may not be understood without a reference to all these 8 scale items. Attitudes towards the ideas that: 1- Occupying positions has to bebased on competition not sex 2- Making income within a family requires participation of all family members 3- Male leadership in a society has precedence over female leadership 4- Education is a field that should be granted more to men 5- Women belong to private sphere and men belong to public sphere 6- Occupation and field of activities should be divided based on sex 7- There is no difference between men and women and talent is the key difference not sex 8- Polygamy, i.e., having more than one wife, is a social norm

This study, at the first stage, attempts to assess the family structure of runaway girls whilst also assessing the quality of their functions in "family roles", "problem solving" and "emotional responsiveness". The sample consists of 50 girls from five centers including: the Juvenile Justice System, Crisis Intervention of Welfare Center, Counseling Center of the Educational System, Reihaneh House and prisoners of juvenile delinquencies. In the second stage, 15 participants with dysfunctional families along with their family members took part in ten therapeutic sessions (family and supportive therapy). A questionare of the Family Assessment Device (Iranian revision) was used. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Z test for Comparing Proportions and paired- samples T tests. Results show that; 1) problems like having incompatible parents who fight all the time, populous families, low level of parents education, fearful & hostile relationship between family members, punishment and not having any encouragment during their developmental period and having a drug addict or prisoner in the family are the important problems in the girls lives before running away 2) the family structure of runaway girls is dysfunctional ; 3) on subjects relating to " family roles", "problem solving" and "emotional responsiveness", the runaway girls have lower level participation than normal ones in the society; 4) the application of family system therapy with supportive therapy method can be useful for runaway girls to develop their family structure whilst making progress for their function in their families.

Marriage is socio, cultural and biological event that for the sake of its basic role has major importance in family formation. Therefore, stability of group, quantitative and qualitative of successive generation life is related to marriage. Marriage is one of social organization that is for doing family functions as, reproduction, children training and cultural transmission and as a means for order creation between individuals relationship. Each society has rules about formation and dimension of sex relationship Beginning age for these relationships is dependent on the rules that in usual is changing from 13 to 27 in different countries. The statute age at marriage in Iran, is 13 for girls and 15 for boys. The figure shows that men and women age at marriage in Iran is changing during 12-35 for women and 15-40 for men. After 1345, age at marriage for women has increased gradually (from 18.4 to 23.2 in the year 1381). The age pattern of marriage in Iran, on the base of people beliefs state that husband should be older than wife and it is necessary to be 5 to 10 year age differential. The existence figures show that between couples age in the year 1345 was 6.6 year and in the year 1381,was 2.7 year differential. Increasing in women age at marriage and no change in age at marriage for men has caused decreasing in age differential between couples. Meanwhile, by increasing the mean age at marriage for women, differential age between couples have more decreased. There are relationships between age at marriage and education, nationality, residential status, and in general, socio-economic status of individuals. Also age structure of population (unbalance between married men and women) is one of effective factors on changes in age at marriage in Iran. The aim of this study is to distinguish changes of womens age at marriage and compare its changes with age at marriage of men in recent decades, and also show effective factors of individuals demographic characteristics to this variable. Secondary analyses are the methodology of this study and source of data are: -Censuses and surveys conducted by the Statistical Centre of Iran (SCI); - Socio- Economic Characteristics of Iranian household conducted by Statistical Centre ofIran, 2001. - Demographic Indicators of Iran, 1956-1996 conducted by Statistical Center of Iran - Human Development Report of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1999 conducted by Plan and Budget Organization and the United Nations

The aim of this article is to study the effects of child abuse on different aspects of abused girls lives in their childhood and adolescence whilst also studying characteristics of abused and normal female adolescents. Our samples in this study are the girls who were studying in high schools in Isfahan in the year 1382-3 from two different groups. One hundred female students were selected (29 abused and 71 non-abused girls) through random multi stage sampling. The research indicators were a child abuse scale, such as six subtest of milon 2 which was based on the Clinical Multi Axial Inventory, Wecsler Memory Scale, Bonardel Accuracy Test, Standard Progressive Matrix and California Personality Inventory. The results show that there are significant differences between the memory of abused and normal female adolescents, but no significant difference between the abused and normal females intelligence. Moreover, we observed significant differences between the abused and normal groups in anti social behavior, aggression, and passive-aggressive behavior and drug dependences. Generally speaking, the abused girls are more likely to show these personality characteristics. Also in comparison with the normal girls, abused girls have lower levels of self control, sociability, good impression on others, capacity for achieving higher status and tolerance.

This study examines four hypotheses to predict dropping out and early school leaving among female students at secondary schools. These hypotheses include full academic achievement and direct effects related to school experience, family experience, peer relationships, beliefs and academic self esteem. It is the main goal of this study to predict the early leaving of school girls and the reasons behind it. Our sample in this study includes 149 female students in West Azarbayjan province who completed their secondary school and succeeded to find their ways to high school and 156 who left secondary school and failed to complete their education.