The role of spiritual health in bringing balance for women in their social and family roles

In the present world, many women play simultaneous roles in the family (as mother/ spouse) and in society (by being socially/politically/culturally active). With the aim of analyzing women’s family and social roles from the viewpoints of Islam and the West and evaluating their corresponding theoretical perspectives, and to study the conflicts between women’s family and social roles and try to create a balance between them, the current study tries to answer the question that whether or not monotheistic-based spiritual health can, in the most perfect way, create a balance between women’s family and social roles. There are four perspectives in studies relevant to women’s family and social roles. The first perspective holds that women’s family and social roles are essentially contradictive. According to this perspective, family roles are delegated to women based on sexual clichés and have priority over social roles. The second perspective maintains that, though the two roles are contradictive, since sexuality is a socio-cultural construct and emphasis is put on social roles; therefore, social roles take precedence. The third perspective, which is based on balance theory, supports the idea that both roles are equally important. This perspective has received criticism because of its inattention to cultural, social, age, and gender grounds. According to the fourth perspective, a monotheistic-based spiritual health system is utilized to create balance between the woman’s family. and social roles. According to this perspective, women’s family and social roles are not essentially contradictive and become contradictive only if their respective value systems become non-functional. The value laden system of monotheistic-based spiritual health is based on three principles: correct prioritization of values (giving precedence to spiritual values), determining the criterion of prioritizing the values (in the order of their closeness to the ultimate goal), and choosing the right value when there are conflicting values. When conflicting values occur for women, first their primary roles should be determined and then the right value should be chosen based on the necessities defined by these values like society needs, individual needs, and internal characteristics of women.