Woman in Development and Politics
Year:2009 | Volume:6 | Issue:4|Papers Count:8

Cultural politics regarding status of women is a common issue of Iranian society. Influenced by Prophet Mohammad's teachings in the Arab world, women's status changed rapidly and soon they gained a different social-cultural position in their society. This article, based on the reasoning of discourse aims to distinguish the social order governing the Arabian Peninsula focusing on its discourse order (introducing ignorance discourse and prophetic discourse). The research aims to find out what discourse propositions in the field of women did Prophet Mohammad produce as a ruler that improved the socio-cultural status of women. In doing so the research has made use of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moffe method in analyzing the discourse based on "articulation".

Permission along other unilateral legal acts has a specific place in religious jurisprudence and consequently in civil law, thus it is used in different juristic and legal discussions. Considering the significant role of permission in legal and social relationships of individuals, the issue of marriage in religious jurisprudence and civil rights questions the validity of permission of a parent in the marriage of an immature girl or boy and also in the marriage of a maiden girl. Thus the answer to such skepticism brings about various orientations in juristic and legal discussions. A child cannot be the stipulator of a coupling because of her absence of eligibility. There are different opinions about whether this can be argued for adolescent and mentally mature maiden girl and a lot of jurist consults are completely against it and argue that she should have complete independence in this matter, while some of them are in favor of dependence of the maiden girl and also the continuation of natural guardianship of her father and grand father. However there are some who have provided interim opinions. This article conducts a comparative survey on Sunni and the jurist consults of Shiite religion in order to probe into their juristic principles while presenting arguments for the necessity of permission of parent for marriage. It is concluded that in Shiite there is no juristic necessity for the permission of a parent. Never the less concerning legal matters, besides accounting for the views of juristic consults, has the legislator to consider the social interest and necessarily he is not obliged to pass a law in accordance to famous juristic point of view regarding all issues. Regarding permission in marriage the legal dimension is considered and not the canonical dimension.

Most women need fundamental support to function in their humane life. In terms of gender, in Iran there are regional differentiations with regards to accessing benefits of development.  The purpose of this paper is to describe the human development and development index in different regions and to study the relationship/ regression between levels of development and human poverty index on the basis of individual's deprivation in society in terms of three important indicators of human life such as life expectancy, knowledge and education and welfare. Study of gender differentiation in access to development's benefits is the main object of this article. In this paper sociological terms are adopted including Global system and women's empowerment theories and capability, inequality and social rejection approaches. The results conform to other early researches and approaches that show meaningful regression. The development indexes have a determining effect on changes and prediction of poverty and deprivation indexes. The absence of gender sensitive approach in planning for reducing the poverty and deprivation will increase the gender gap in the country.

Feminist Ethics is a new and important branch of western ethics. This article is an attempt to examine one of the essential issues in this area; i. e. the necessities of feminist ethics. The paper has taken it for granted that:1. It is necessary to criticize feminist ethics, 2. without considering some points in this criticism, one cannot take a fair position towards or against it.Having offered the definition, background, aims, and consequences of this ethical branch, the paper has presented some reasons for the necessity of criticizing it. In addition some proposals are offered to formulate an Islamic system of ethics for females.

There have been a lot of arguments about body in pre-modern literature in different disciplines such as Christian religious and theological debates. Such debates argue that body is considered as a negative element with the potentiality of committing sin and preventing the elevation of spirit.  These arguments are followed by western philosophy of mind/ body paradox, which is itself followed by other paradoxes such as man/ woman, male body/ female body, etc. This article aims to describe a branch of sociology namely the sociology of body and express the theoretical arguments about ontology of body, mind/ body paradox, surveillance and feminist literature on female body.

This article discusses the female motifs on the seals and stamp seals of pre-Islamic world of Iran. The Use seals were a common practice in the ancient world and many different types of seals can be found across Iran. The use of female motifs was not a common type of style in the ancient times but there exist a few examples of this type. In this study we classify different kinds of seals. In addition, we shall compare the female figures used on the seals with the written texts as well as the information about the importance of the female policy in the ancient society of Iran. The results of the research confirm that in pre-Elamit and Elamit world women were important parts of daily life and possessed a significant role in social affairs. Although during the Acheamenid period women were engaged in special social affairs but their image is seen as the religious deities, represented in the form of the great queen. During the Sasanian period it seems that there exists a combination of the two previous trends. The female figure appears as a symbol of important deities such as Anahita who is again a queen. In this way the queen does not only appear as a representation of the Anahita but also as an important character in the great Kingdome of Sasanian dynasty. The queen is represented with or without the king. Sometimes she is represented with a little child; this type of representation is assumed to be holy Mary and may belong to the Christians living in Iran during that period. This is the period during which the women rights were clearly described not only in the religious texts but also in the Kingdome rights.

There is a significant difference between monogamous family and polygamous one, thus different family relationships are observed in each one. Whenever deep changes are found in the shape of family, style of residence, number of members in family in terms of their role and status, the content and degree of conflict in the family is directly affected. Never the less, all the theories used in this study insists on defining family as an intimate environment. According to these theories in polygamous families since different members should play the same role, they resort to competing mechanism to attain common, rare and valuable resources, either openly or in concealment. In this way, legitimacy is questioned, and a degree of conflict is created in power, emotional and sexual relationships in the family. To evaluate the hypothesis of the research, 300 women of which 150 belong to monogamous families and 150 are a member of polygamous families are studied through questionnaires and interviews. Finally, the hypothesis of this research which stated that there's a significant relationship between family structure and the content and degree of conflict in family relationships is empirically proved. As a result, conflict in power, emotional and sexual relationships in polygamous families that reside in the same house is most intensive, whereas conflict contained in power and emotional relationships of monogamous extended families is at average level.