WOMENS STUDIES
Year:2011 | Volume:9 | Issue:2 (28)|Papers Count:7

This study was conducted to examine mothers’ attitudes and beliefs on child-rearing and creativity in children. For this purpose 80 (5-6 years) preschool children (42 boys and 38 girls) along with their mothers were selected among preschoolers in the city of Shiraz.The sampling technique was multistage random cluster sampling. The children were evaluated by Torrance Test creativity form (A), the evaluation of their mothers was carried out using Parental Modernity (PM) Scale and Parent as a Teacher Inventory (PATT). The results showed that a positive and significant relationship existed between modernity beliefs and creativity in children. The regression analysis results also demonstrated that play and creativity was significant positive predictor and control was negative predictor of creativity in children. In addition, a statistically significant difference was found to exist between boys and girls indicated by mean scores of children’s creativity and those of their mothers’ beliefs and attitudes.

The situation in which girls tend to run away from home is one that has attracted little attention, and its increasing outbreak is a cause for great concern. It is the main goal of the present research to examine and explain the situation of girls’ tendency to run away from home. This is a survey-method research which has a sample population of 400 third-grade high school girls studying in educational district 18 of the city of Tehran in academic year of 2008-9. Data collection tool has been the questionnaire. The theoretical frameworks that are used here are Hirschi's social bond, Agnew's general strain, and Gottfredson and Hirschi's self control theories. Results of this research indicate that there is a reverse and meaningful relationship between belief and attitude to run away (depended variable). Also the results show a direct and significant relationship between presentation of negative stimuli and low self control with attitude toward running away.

The present research has tried to study the role of violence against women, gender socialization, and social capitals in the prediction of mental health of a group of women living In Tehran. On this basis, 184 women who had been subjected to violence were taken as an available sample. They had applied to the family court, the general examiner, and counseling centers, along with 228 other woman who had not applied to the above mentioned centers and were similar to the first group in terms of age and the length of marriage. The research method of the present study is correlation model.The findings showed that the women who had a higher access to the job, educational and family support resources in decision making, economy, and affection; enjoy a higher level of mental health. And the lower the current patterns of gender socialization and committing violence against women, the higher would be the mental health. Moreover, the control group women’s mental health was lower than that of the experimental group. The result of regression analysis showed that gender socialization, and social family capital have a decisive share in the prediction of woman‘s mental health.

This article studies the social context effect on conceptualization of love relationships among the youth. Questions addressed here include the effect of concept of love on youths’ views, understanding love-related behaviors, examining pathological outcomes arising from love experiences and strategies used by the youth. This research has been based on qualitative methods, grounded theory and semi-structured interview technique. A goal-oriented sampling method was used to interview young people between 19-30 years of age, who live in Tehran, and who have experienced love. Data coding yielded useful categories. The analysis of these categories furnish ed an understanding on a phenomenon which governs modern romance relationships of young people in Iran. This phenomenon is named ‘purposive risk’. More specifically, despite social changes, which have, among other things, increased the age of marriage, the society keeps emphasizing that an enhancement of girls’ social validity is obtained almost solely through marriage. This idealistic background of love relationships rooted in social environment puts social restrictions on opposite-sex relationships, causing boys and girls to have less cognition al understanding of each other through socialization, and thus their perception tilts towards idealistic imaginations of love. Moreover, this kind of social validity, as alluded to, is stressed by society which provides girls with marriage anxiety. Therefore, girls have to accept the risk of pre-marriage relationships with the ultimate aim of achieving marriage which is called here as purposive risk whereas such a phenomenon has not been observed in boys.

Social influence is one the most determinant factor in consumer behavior. Previous studies have also shown that women exhibit different responses to social environment stimuli, compared to men. So the main purpose of present article is to study the difference of men and women with regard to their susceptibility to interpersonal influence in contexts involving consumption. This is a descriptive survey study with a sample of 650 student of University of Isfahan who were enrolled in second semester of year 2007-8. The data gathering instrument was a questionnaire which has been designed by Bearden, et al (1989). The individuals in the sample were selected in a categorized random sampling method. The result indicates that susceptibility of students to interpersonal influence on informational dimension in consumption context was significant, but with regard to normative dimension of the index, their susceptibility was not significant. Also with regard to informational dimension of the index, women were more susceptible than men to interpersonal influence. Also, the reliability of used scale has been measured through confirmatory factor analysis by LISREL software.

The Purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between mass media, self-esteem, body image, and make up based on Festinger’s social comparison theory. A sample of 601 female students studying in universities of the city of Shiraz (consisting of Islamic Azad University, Payam-e Nour, and the University for Medical Sciences) participated in this study. We used survey method and prepared a questionnaire for data collection. The students were selected via Festinger’s table with an error margin of 4%. Festinger’s theory was also utilized as the theoretical framework. In this research make up was examined in its two aspects of ‘practice’, and ‘thoughtful make up’.The findings of this research show that a large proportion of our respondents used make up and were also inclined to use make up and that interestingly enough, a large proportion of the same respondents were dissatisfied with their body image. Further, significant negative relationship between self-esteem and dissatisfaction of body image and tendency to use make up were found. In addition, there were significant positive relationship between dissatisfaction of body image, practicing, and tendency to use make up. Finally, different types of media had different relationship with use and tendency to use make up, self- esteem and body image.

Using a social approach, this paper investigates the association between language and gender. Language has been identified as a media tool to maintain the gender status of individuals in our societies (Turner-Bowker 1996). Patterns associated with the gender identity of individuals are substantially formed during childhood and adolescence. This is mainly related to the fact that schools and textbooks play a key role in the gender socialization process of children. Using the content analysis technique, this paper examines how gender identity patterns have been represented in the Iranian school textbooks in three different languages: Farsi, Arabic and English. Generally speaking, the results show that "the male-first phenomenon" (Lee and Collins 2008) are clearly observed in the textbooks. Although these gender patterns vary partly across the textbooks, the similar patterns of gender codes (Taylor 2003) are represented in all of these three different languages textbooks. This evidently echoes the more important role of the socio-cultural context. The results also show that the representation of gender patterns in these textbooks is significantly correlated to various stages of language teaching.