WOMENS STUDIES
Year:2003 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:9

There is certainly a role conflict between womens employment, as a human resource, and their housekeeping tasks. The latter has been womens traditional role for centuries in Iran. Investigation into the nature of this conflict is a matter of important discussion. Through the Revolution and the Reforms, the rights of women have been reiterated by the media as well by the womens associations. This paper attempts at showing how far women have succeeded in satisfactory reconciliation of the conflict between their job and their home requirements. Womens share in the labor market is very small, viz., less than 10 percent of their active population. Our data analysis indicates that a majority of 60% of women who work outside the family think that there exists a contradiction between working and housekeeping, and that they prefer to maintain their traditional role, the housekeeping. This finding, among others, is a factor to be considered as an obstacle to the extension of womens work in Iran.

This is an empirical study on power in the family. The structure of power within family has been measured in three aspects: symmetric relation, area of power, and the couple strategy. The study attempt to offer a definition of the democratic family, which leads to the construction of scales in order to measure the dimensions of family structure. Social survey is applied as the methodological orientation with a sample covering 200 cases. The statistical techniques used include: dispersion and central indices, bivariate and partial correlation, factor analysis, regression equations, and path analysis. The findings indicate that the structure of power in the south Tehran is less democratic than that of north Tehran. Results show that factors such as womens education, their employment and participation in spouse choosing would incline power structure closer to more democratic family, while submissive self-conception, on the part of women, and the authoritarian one, on the part of men, cause power structure to lean toward less democratic family.

Many factors influence educational inequality. One may, among others, point to war, poverty, racism, civil wars, and wrong educational policies. Female educational deprivation is a serious subject for discussion at national and regional levels. This descriptive-analytical paper aims at studying the educational status of girls in Iran, in terms of both quality and quantity. It attempts to identify causes of gender educational inequality, and seeks to find proper mechanisms for removing the existing impediments.

This descriptive study aims to investigate factors affecting domestic violence against women in Urmia City of Iran. Since the researchers had no access to court documents, which are considered private evidence, the data for the research were gathered at two police stations, which more frequently received such complaints. The population under study comprised women who filed complaints of domestic violence at police stations number 11 and 17 within the period of one year (March 2001 to March 2002) in Urmia City. The required information was extracted from the available cases with respect to the purposes of the research. Results of the descriptive statistics indicated that 56 percent of violence against women were carried on women between 17 and 32 years old. In addition, 60 percent of victims had primary education while 25 percent lacked schooling. Response to the question that "who used violence" consisted of 82 percent by husbands, 3 percent by fathers, and 7 percent by sons. Reports on type of violence included: 50 percent physical, 25 percent emotional, and 23 percent as financial. In attempting to classify reasons why violence was erupted, finding indicated: 20 percent addiction, 29 percent worries about subsistence. Most men who used violence were unski1led or unemployed workers. The real number of women who are experiencing domestic violence can perhaps never be known because most cases are not reported. Cultural reservations inhibit most women from revealing the secrecy of domestic violence which otherwise would bring about shame and isolation. The main motivation to carry this study was to portray the major factors causing domestic violence. Structures and policies to support the safety of women have been lacking.

Bringing up mentally sound human beings is regarded to be one of the most fundamental objectives of education. Given the young population structure of Iran, the task becomes more crucial. This paper aims to examine the grounds for development of performing such crucial role in educating the young. In doing so, efforts are made to predict the effective factors, which are introduced here as the predicting variables. In psychology such causes are termed "Behavioral Risk Factors", which in turn cause the probability of the predicting variable (school truancy) to occur. In order to obtain such variables, a single sample taking process was adopted, and among the 19 school districts of Tehran City, four districts were selected as "indicator clusters" . In conducting the research, 178 students of first to third grades of secondary school, ranging from 14 to 18 years of age were selected who filled out the prepared questionnaire. In performing the statistical analysis, methods such as descriptive statistics (tables, mean-values, frequencies, standard deviations), and inferential statistics (X2, logistics regression equation) have been applied. The results indicated that samples for both; the group who faced the problems and the group with normal conditions, have been properly selected, because each with a reliability of 91.38% and 84.91 %, respectively, showed that they have been properly located within the designated group. In the section titled "Analysis", based on the obtained results, it has been shown that grounded on the predicting variables it is practically possible to minimize the rate of "school truancy". This is so because apart from such factors as low academic performance, economic status of the family, and effects of peers conduct, there are still other factors that have proved to be both effecting and facilitating the occurrence of such phenomenon. These factors, if correctly recognized, can be used to properly control and guide this generation of youth.

The investigation of the relationship and comparison of mental health of children and their mothers; who have and who lack the custody of their children, is the aim of this study. The number of the divorced mothers selected for the study is sixty out of whom thirty did have the custody of their children, and the other half did not. They were presented with two questionnaires: 1) the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and 2) Conners Questionnaire. For data analysis, T- Test, and Pearson correlation were used. A summary of the results is listed as follows. First, there were not any significant differences between the mental health of mothers who had the custody of their children and that of those who did not. Second, there were significant differences between mental health of children who lived with their mothers and that of those who did not. Third, there existed a significant relationship between mental health of mothers and their children.

We took up as the purpose of this study the measurement of the BMD (bone mineral density) of the neck of femur and radius in female athletes participating in weight bearing (WB) as well as non weight bearing activities in Iran and the world. Non athlete females were also included in the measurement. To initiate the study, 23 female athletes (age 20 to 25) were selected. They were all from the Iranian national teams engaged in swimming, tennis, table tennis, and gymnastics, and had sport activity at least for 1 0 years, 3 days a week. Subjects were free of problems, which would affect their bone mineral density. BMD measurement was conducted in two areas of the body (necks of femur and radius), then statistical analysis was performed on data using (x=0.05). Results indicated that in the neck of femur, values of BMD for female athletes were higher than standard values of BMD for non-athlete females. Compared with standard values of BMD in Iran, the difference was significant for gymnasts, the tennis players and the swimmers, but not for the table tennis players. Comparison with world standard values showed the difference to be significant for gymnasts and the tennis players, but not for the swimmers and the table tennis players. In radius, the values of BMD for the female athlete was lower than standard values for non athletes but the differences were not significant for the two groups of table tennis players and gymnasts. Comparing the four groups of athletes there were differences in values of BMD in the two areas, but the difference was meaningful only for the gymnasts. BMD for swimmers (NWB) was lower than other groups of athletes (WB) in this study but the difference was not significant.