WOMENS STUDIES
Year:2007 | Volume:4 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

In Iran, entrepreneurship is a new phenomena and the research on this subject, especially when it comes to women's entrepreneurship, is very limited. Despite the fact that most Iranian women are participating in socioeconomic activities and higher education in particular, the society does not reap all the rewards of their socio-economic participation.Based on entrepreneurship research, entrepreneurship networks have four outcomes: motivation, presentation of the models roles, customized consultations, and the facilitated access to resources. The research on women's entrepreneurship indicates that women utilize rather personal networks and the affective support and that this is the most important role of personal networks in start-up process. In order to gain a general understanding about the knowledge of the Iranian women concerning the business and factors that influence the start-up process, an extensive national research was conducted on educated women entrepreneur population. A questionnaire, which was later expert-modified and pre-tested, was devised for such subject. This paper is a partial presentation about women's entrepreneurs' networks. The results show that the most important supporters of the Iranian women entrepreneurs are their immediate relatives that are their husbands and children or their parents. Affective support is the most and financial gain is the least important factors for them.

The goal of this research is to analyze the structural factors which are influential in formation of women cinema after 2 Khordad 1376 (23 May 1997). This research tries to answer the following questions: - What are the influential structural factors in formation of the film wave in question?- How these factors differentiate the representation of women in the Iranian cinema, especially after Khordad the second?The main hypothesis of this research is that there is a significant connection among structural conditions, change in how women are represented in films, and change in films contents. In this research which is conducted through documentary study, using Huaco's theory in sociology of cinema, we have tried to explain four structural conditions which, in our view, are influential in construction of a new wave in film, in relation to the Iranian conditions and the film wave in question.The most important finding of this research is that in post 2 Khordad cinema, four necessary structural conditions for the formation of women cinema were present due to the following reasons: Cancellation of scenario commission; Less censorship; Special support for women subjects in scenarios; Increase in the number of women directors; Change in social status of women; and Formation of non-governmental organizations for women and the like.

In this paper, while focusing on the consequences of prohibition against the of use religious symbols at the French public schools serving the Muslim community, we have tried to offer an analysis of the reasons behind passing the above prohibition. In so doing, we have drawn upon data from historical sociology and upon the roots of the formation of the republican tradition of the Republic of France. To this end, definitions of republican values, citizenship, and secularism are presented. Then a sketch of the ideas of both proponents and opponents of such a law are provided. At the end, the possible legal challenges to, and impediments of confronting French government are considered. The result of the study indicates that the French legislators enacted the law by emphasizing the definition of republican principles and the concept of citizenship thereof accordingly. They also intend to modify the trends of immigration into their country in order to prevent fundamentalist Muslims from entering France, while making it easier for non-fundamentalist Muslims to gain admittance to France.

In the past several decades many Iranians residing in Iraq have been forced to leave their homes there and return to Iran. The majority of them have taken residence in Ilam province. On the other hand, studies considering migrants' adjustment in their new places of residence usually focus on the adjustment of the head of the household, whom most often are men. The purpose of this study is to examine the adjustment of the Iranian women who have been forced to return to Iran (Mo'aved= Repatriated). Utilizing participant observation and a questionnaire, the Mo'aved women's adjustment was measured. Adjustment had two dimensions: Cultural adjustment (that is; adoption of the Iranian traditions and ways of conduct in dress, food, social gatherings and the utilization of Persian language), and satisfaction (which included level of satisfaction with social facilities, of the way the Iranians treat them and whether or not they consider themselves as Iranians or Iraqis).The results showed that age had no significant relations with adjustment, but the variables of marital status, education, income, number of children, and type of work, were significantly related to adjustment. It is noteworthy that the adjustment of the majority of respondents was at the level of medium.

In contemporary societies, the television, as a powerful medium among the mass media, is the most effective mechanism for reproducing culture and its elements. In this paper the authors try to answer the following questions: - What kind of family structure is presented in the Iranian Television programs?- Is there any link between this structure and the Iranian traditional culture?To answer the above questions, the family structure is investigated in three parts: family type, gender roles, and family relations. The method applied in this research is qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The present study demonstrated that in family structure which is presented on Television dramas, the reproduction of gender-role stereotypes create a kind of gender hierarchy and a sexual division of labour both of which require men to work outside the home to support the families while women stay at home in order to take care of children and of the housework. In other words, women are not given enough credit for social duties. This is how the role differentiation between man and women or husband and wife is realized.

Despite the fact that the representation of maternal love was very weak and pale in the literature pertaining to the 18th and 19th centuries, one can see a reflection of maternal love in the literary works of Balzac and Flobert. The social position of mother and child during the 18th and 19th centuries was such that maternal love could not grow. The reason was the existence of digressive thoughts about the human child. In the French literature authors like Lafontaine had considered the human child as nonhuman. Gradually it is with the coming of thinkers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, and also with the emergence of concepts concerning women's freedom, equality of women with men, and the like that child's value is taken into consideration. Thus the literature echoes and exalts the subject of maternal love in its everlasting literary works. The happy woman, in such literary works, is the one filled with maternal love.When maternal love is traced in history and its present formation processes followed we arrive at this understanding that maternal love is an acquired phenomenon. This is not to say that maternal love is learned through lecturing but that feeling of such love has been with mothers in such a manner that now they feel that it is part of their personality.