نشریه زن در توسعه و سیاست
سال بیستم شماره 2 (تابستان 1401)

Women's economic empowerment is related to human rights and social justice and is very important for human development. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has shown that women's economic empowerment plays an important role in eliminating gender discrimination and sustainable development. Also, increasing women's economic empowerment through access to and control of valuable resources has positive effects on the well-being of women and the next generation, and therefore, women's economic empowerment also contributes to human capital and human capabilities. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of financial access on women's economic empowerment in Middle Eastern countries using generalize method of moments (GMM) panel data from 2004 to 2018. The results showed that economic empowerment increases with improving financial access, so that with a 1% increase in the number of commercial banks branches, economic empowerment increases by 0.37%. Also, the variables of life expectancy, education and cost of living have a positive and significant relationship and the variable of GDP per capita has a significant and negative relationship with economic empowerment. Therefore, it is suggested that governments, organizations and policy makers consider measures to facilitate, improve and increase the granting of self-employment loans to women in order to activate them in society and the labor market. Also, by providing programs to increase the level of education of women in society and by implementing development plans and programs and in general by providing comprehensive services to increase women's health improves women's economic empowerment.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate and present the viewpoints of employed men and women graduates and the construct of gender in the workplace. In this study, in addition to avoiding one-dimensional and narrow view in the analysis of employment and gender, a GrandedTheory approach and  an exploratory one were employed. The qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling method from 22 educated men and women working in Tehran. The data were analyzed with MAXQDA software and data-driven theory method.The paradigm model obtained from interpreting the viewpoints of the population under study indicated that the core phenomenon (gender construction of employment) could be defined based on the interactions of factors such as causal conditions (gender relations governing the work environment, gender beliefs and constructive rules); underlying conditions (challenges of the workplace, the nature of the workplace and the support of communication networks) and intervening conditions (recognizing the professional position, job quality and the paradox of the university and the labor market). While confirming qualitative findings, the analysis of data revealed that women experienced the gender construct and unequal access to resources more than men in workplace. In the final analysis it could be said that working women, when exposed to unequal access to opportunities and resources, can change the way of access to resources with their active action strategy, but this does not imply absolute freedom. The structure is imposed by rules and resources such as gender relations in the workplace, gender beliefs, constructive rules, lack of communication network support, authoritarian work environment, workplace challenges and paradoxes between the university and the labor market and it changes and limits women actions. Men, like women, acknowledged the existence of a masculine dominant environment in work, the existence of discriminatory laws, the challenges of the workplace, the paradox of the university, and the tendency of the labor market to exclude and marginalize women.  Based on these results and a multivariate view of gender construction in the workplace, it is possible for women to achieve greater participation and leading the workplace to move towards avoiding gender domination by reviewing the employment policies, reforming managers' attitudes and balancing power in the family.

This research aims to identify and rank the political and legal challenges of women taking political positions in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The research method consists of two qualitative and quantitative stages.  The qualitative stage ,  which attempts to identify the challenges, that has been done by thematic analysis method. At this stage, the data sampling method was purposive sampling. The quantitative method using the AHP, at this stage, the data collection tool, a Pairwise comparison questionnaire including 32 challenges to rank the challenges were provided to experts in this field. Findings show that the challenges of women taking political positions include two types of challenges: political and legal ones. Political challenges themselves are divided into two sub-themes, governmental and non-governmental. The ranking of challenges is as follows: political challenges with a weight of 0.694 have gained the first rank and legal challenges with a weight of 0.306 have gained the second rank. Among the sub-criteria of political challenge, governmental challenges with a weight of 0.713 have the first rank and non-governmental challenges with a weight of 0.287 have the second rank. Among the 32 challenges, male dominance in politics (patriarchy) with a weight of 0.07719 has won the first place. After that, the patriarchal administrative culture with a weight of 0.05542 ranked second and the lack of legal protection for women with a weight of 0.05263 ranked third. Findings show that macro-challenges related to political structure are more important than individual challenges and micro level. These results are consistent with some other researches .

One of the reasons for the unsuccessful presence of women in the field of entrepreneurship is the lack of theorizing and the shortcomings in policy making. New studies in the field of new approaches compatible with gender dimensions in the field of women entrepreneurship have been presented for this purpose. The main question of the present study is what the new approaches and approaches in the field of women entrepreneurship are? Can these new approaches and developments in gender studies, while reducing inadequacies, create new opportunities for women to play a better role in development? To answer these questions, first the most important new theoretical approaches in the field of women entrepreneurship were identified and categorized. Then, in order to evaluate and complete them, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 19 university professors, managers, as well as a number of successful female entrepreneurs, and thematic analysis method was used to analyze the collected data.Empowerment in self-knowledge, women being pioneers in charity works, complementarity of family and social roles, Women creating surplus value are some of the 47 main themes identified in this study. This means that by intersecting the transgender characteristics of entrepreneurship with the gender roles of women in the objective and practical field, a new conceptual framework in the field of women entrepreneurship can be achieved that can lead to new opportunities, as well as reduce barriers and shortcomings.

Women, as half of the citizens of the society, can play an efficient and fundamental role in sustainable development if  equal rights of men and women are recognized and implemented in the society. Civil institutions and organizations such as parties and NGOs have an effective role in the political development and the distribution of power system, and they lead to reform the political and social structure of the country by preventing the monopoly of power of a particular group or stratum, and if used correctly and rationally, they will lead to the more participation of women.  In this study, the problems of women activists in the two decades of 1370s and 1380s and the extent of their participation and the manner of their agency in parties and NGOs have been discussed, and the following basic questions were answered:  what are the reasons for more participation of women in NGOs than political parties during the 1370s and 1380s and what factors have caused political parties in the field of women's activities that they have not not achieved their desired functions. Qualitative and descriptive methods have been used to find the answers to the questions. The results of documentary studies, coding, and categorization of interview data through MAXQDA software and the use of content analysis method and data-oriented theory showed that although political parties after the 70s and 80s claimed to expand the role of women in political and social fields, this important goal has rarely been achieved at the highest levels due to the nature of political parties in Iran, and NGOs have, to a large extent, been in a much better position in presenting, expanding, and playing the participatory role of women.

Iranian women adopt various strategies to enter the field of politics or to face political issues. The purpose of this study is to understand these strategies from the perspective of women. Strategy refers to large-scale approaches that can be explored as a whole from individual behaviors in different situations, and in the present article, we are particularly concerned with mechanisms Iranian women use to enter politics and confront political issues and problems? For this purpose, a conceptual - critical approach was developed with an interpretive approach relying on sensitive concepts such as understanding gender inequality, different experience (female lived experience) and slow progression from perspectives such as radical feminism and that of Asif Bayat. This research has been done with a qualitative approach (individual and group interviews) and with the method of content analysis. Based on the results of this study, four types of strategies were identified:  bold gender resistance, anticipatory inaction, feminine political attitude (soft strategy) and desperate isolation. Thus it can be said that due to the difference in the method of awareness and its origin in different individuals, the choice of strategy is different among women, and consequently there is a multiplicity of patterns of agency and subjectivity of women in politics. In addition, the results of the study indicate two important points: 1. Gender sensitivities and women's political activism are interconnected and inseparable. 2. Gender can be considered one of the determining factors of political activism in the micro and macro arenas.

The development of any country depends on the optimal use of all facilities, especially human resources, which is one of the most important and key assets of that country, and undoubtedly the role of specialized human resources is more than others. The purpose of this study is to study the contexts and contexts of unemployment formation of female graduates in Ilam city using a qualitative method and in particular the methodological approach of grounded theory. The study population includes all unemployed female university graduates from the period 1390 until now in all university fields in Ilam. The sample size was determined based on theoretical saturation, and the validity of the findings was provided by confirmation and matching with the opinions of expert judges and key informants. In this study, information was collected through in-depth interviews and semi-structured. Analysis of graduate interviews led to the formation of a conceptual framework in the form of definition and understanding of female graduates of the phenomenon of unemployment, background conditions in the form of "non-institutionalization of work culture", "structural constraints", "tribal culture as a deterrent" Mediating conditions in the form of "managerial weakness", "weakness of human capital", "erosion of social capital".Considering the relationship between the mentioned categories, the category of unbalanced social development was finally selected as the core category.