Woman in Development and Politics
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:4 (27) (DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICS)|Papers Count:9

This paper reflects the results of a survey-method research evaluating the impact of women's employment on their self-reliance in two towns in Isfahan Province, Iran. The sampling is conducted using clustering stepwise method. Information is collected from 375 women residing in 20 rural settings with the number of samples determined according to population of each setting. The results indicate that only for a small proportion of rural women the need to fulfill family's basic financial needs is not the major derive for employment. The findings significantly reveal that in spite of women's vital role in the economy, about half of the employed women do not receive their income directly and also two third of those receiving their salaries straight are not allowed to spend it autonomously and independently. Results also show that for those with the right to spend their income, there is a significant difference on degree of their autonomy for different cost items. Most women's autonomy to spend their income is connected with purchasing jewelry, clothes, economic investment, and savings. In general, it is concluded that women of rural women, lack reasonable self- reliance and their level of self confidence has a direct relationship with the proportion they receive from their income. In this relation, outside home employment, being an employer, holding executive positions, having multiple economic activities and gaining an income are the main factors affecting self-reliance.

Nowadays, novel is the most dominating genre in literature. Concerning the advocates and proponents of novel, women’s share either as the writer or the reader is ever so increasing. It is such that some rhetoricians speak about a feminizing literature. This article is an attempt to deal with these aspects. Unfortunately, in the domain of the Iranian novel reading, there are no exact and proper statistics available, so the findings of the experiments in this article are the results of sets of students' works concerning the relationship of girls with novels. The results of these researches indicate that women outnumber men in reading novels and of course there is no meaningful difference between the rate of reading novels between male and female students. The most frequent reason for reading novels is to gain new experiences and to become familiarized with the world and new characters.

One of the key issues of migration concerns women’s migration. This article, examines the conditions of skilled immigrant women in ehran. Qualitative method is used to collect the necessary data for this tudy. The research also conducts in-depth interview with 25 immigrate women residing in Tehran. The results of the research show that migration decisions depend on multiple factors including lack of employment, educational and entertainment opportunities search for a better life, or to escape poverty, social or family pressures. According to the study migration has heterogeneous impacts. This phenomenon creates both opportunities and threats for personal security. The study reveals that the motives for women’s immigration include access to further knowledge and information, more varied choices, higher economic status, chance of empowerment as well as gender discrimination, vulnerability, conflicts, exploitation, and indeed involvement in the paradox of privation and prosperousness. However large majority of immigrant women and girls do not want to return home because they fear to lose their newly-won autonomy.

Over the few last decades, the Iranian Kurdish society, including Family and Kinship systems, has experienced enormous changes and developments. Therefore, it is important to examine the leading mechanisms and possible consequences of modernization as well as the people’s understanding and interpreting towards the family and kinship changes. This paper seeks to make use of the mixed method study of the family changes in Iranian Kurdistan; Case Study of Mangor and Gaverk tribes residing in Mahabad Township located in West Azerbaijan Province. These tribes have been deeply influenced by modernization programs during last decades. In this study, the mixed method research was employed as one of the most important contemporary methodology in social sciences. The Concurrent-Triangulation design has been used as practical procedure of mixed methods study. Based on mixed method sampling, 586 samples selected in Quantitative part and 20 participants were interviewed for Qualitative inquiry. Data were collected both by Questionnaires and In-depth Interview and Participant observations. Hence, the quantitative data analyzed by Sp.ss software and qualitative data interpreted by Grounded Theory procedures. Finally, the Quan-Qual data have been combined and discussed in conclusion. The mixed findings and results demonstrated that the family and kinship among Mangor and Gaverk tribes have been widely changed and challenged by modernization programs both in structural and interpretive aspects. The quantitative findings showed that urbanization, modern education and mass media have contributed to the emergence of a new form of family and kinship life. In addition, while supporting quantitative findings, the qualitative results reveal that the People being studied are aware of and sensitive to sources, process and effects of modernization on their family and kinship life; they also reflexively interpret and discuss the new family and kinship circumstances.

Utilization of women labor force, and in particular rural women should be in line with raising their social status and dignity in management and decision makings. Rural women’s participation in different and varied economic activities, especially agriculture, is of great significance. In addition, women's expectations have increased considerably due to development of rural communities. The present research tries to clarify the effective factors acting upon women's participation and decision making processes. In order to verify the research hypothesis and confirm the meaningfulness of the relationship between the dependant and independent variable, statistical and correlation tests are applied. The study not only analyses women's participation, decision making, expectations and the relationships between them, but also considers some familial and individual factors influencing economic decision making and participation. Thus, the present paper is both descriptive and correlative. The research instruments include questionnaire, interview and overt (non-participatory) observation, and based on Cronbachs Alpha the validity of the questionnaire is estimated at 78%. The sampling is carried out using systematic and probability method. Our sample consists of 256 rural women and the questionnaires distributed among 5 villages namely-Chiar, Amin Abad, Esfejin, Yengejeh and Yamchi located in Zanjanroud (central zanjan). The SPSS software is used to analyze the data. The results show that the more their education improves, the higher their expectations in the decision-making field rises. The results, also, indicate that the greater the economic participation of the rural women is, the more significant is their decision-making level and vice versa. Based upon the findings, there is no meaningful relationship between the economic involvement of the rural women, their expectations and their participation in the decision-making processes.

The Present article studies epistemological and sociological dimensions of feminism theories, using documentary and analytical methods, to examine the relationship between Feminism as an emancipatory social movement and the problem of human totality. The most important criticism about views of modern and postmodern feminism movements is related to their inability to provide a general concept for the emancipation of human subject and, conversely, construct a basic gap between the two halves of human being. These two currents of thought which have been influenced by different socio- epistemological conditions especially due to changing conditions of the last years of the century and formation of Post feminism theories are subject to criticizing and rethinking. Post feminism has different tendencies, one tendency is, basically, denying the feminist achievements and announces its obsoleteness, but the other tendency, is trying to provide a relevant perspective for paying attention to emancipation of women and the totality of human being, simultaneously. In the present paper, this critical and continuing tendency has been studied in terms of their ways of constructing the dual subject of human being.

Women’s costume constitutes factors such as design, color and pattern. By putting these factors together, specific clothing is produced in each region. This study is considers foot wears in small villages of different parts of Iran. The main goal of this research is to find the similarities between the foot wears and factors which affect them. To this aim, different women’s footwear are introduced and examined separately. The research method utilized in this study is documental analysis. The findings indicate that there’s a close relationship between the footwear and women’s living conditions. The study reveals that the type of footwear is taken into consideration in various activities such as farming, ranching and also migration. In each activity the footwear that provides the best comfort and convenience is used. The same results can be seen among women who live in similar location and climatic conditions. On the whole, such research can shed light into the culture of rural people, their type of clothing and so reveal subtle points about them.