جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « زنان ایرانی » در نشریات گروه « علوم اجتماعی »

Many theorists have addressed the issue of religious conversion. These theorists can be divided into two classical and modern groups. They separated converters into passive and active groups based on the type of their acts at the moment of their belief. One of the complete and classified theories that have dealt with the issue of religious conversion is the theory of Kilborn and Richardson, which is a combination of active and passive actions of converters. With the help of the semi-structured interviews that were conducted with 27 Christianized Iranian asylum-seeking women, the active-passive dual view of the converters’ actions is reviewed.This article presents an analysis of how the constantly dynamic process of religious conversion is presented so that a multi-dimensional view of this issue can be taken. Both, the active and passive actions of these women were related to the initial moment of a religious conversion or happening during the process of becoming a Christian. Consequently, 1. Religious conversion is an always dynamic process 2. Religious conversion can be active in some aspects and passive in some parts simultaneously, and this fluidity will happen forever, even after the establishment of the new religion 3. Religious conversion in active and passive terms has different types, which can be a combination of each of them according to the circumstances of each case.

This study explores the semantic interpretation of marriage between Iranian women and Afghan men. With Iran becoming a significant hub for Afghan migrants in recent decades, driven by geographical proximity and intensified by political unrest, economic strife, and socio-political factors in Afghanistan, this research adopts a qualitative research methodology and grounded theory approach. Targeted sampling was utilized to enlist Iranian women married to Afghan men, with data gathered through semi-structured interviews. The sample included 12 women, determined by theoretical saturation. Data analysis involved a three-step coding process, identifying 106 concepts, 35 subcategories, 10 main categories, and one core category. The main categories covered causal conditions such as patriarchy and forced marriage, contextual factors like family difficulties and poverty, and interventional aspects such as diverse response perceptions and legal barriers. The core category highlighted the theme of "unwanted selection and life." The findings reveal significant challenges in the marriages of Iranian women to Afghan men, shaped by social conditions, leading to an undesirable trajectory for these women and their families.

Migration, a significant driver of demographic change, induces deep and multifaceted transformations within population, both in the long and short term. Afghanistan, due to historical and cultural ties with its neighbors and marked by political and economic turmoil, has become a prominent source of migrants to Iran.
In host countries, intermarriage between migrants and native populations is commonplace, signifying cultural assimilation and social integration. In Iran, the influx of Afghan migrants has increased the incidence of mixed marriages, bringing challenges for Iranian women stemming from cultural differences, societal stigma, and legal intricacies. With the growing number of such unions, issues like poverty, children's educational access, and lack of support services have emerged, highlighting the complex interplay between migration, cultural adaptation, and family dynamics in Iranian society. This study aims to explore the semantic underpinnings of mixed marriages and shed light on Iranian women's perceptions of these unions within the Iranian socio-cultural milieu. 

Methods and Data:

This study adopts a qualitative research methodology and grounded theory framework, following Strauss and Corbin's systematic approach. The research focuses on Iranian women married to Afghan spouses, selecting Shiraz as the study's research field due to its long-standing acceptance of Afghan migrants, offering a suitable context for this inquiry. Participants were selected through purposive sampling and were chosen based on their readiness and willingness to participate in interviews. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants, lasting between 40 to 90 minutes on average, recorded with participants' consent, transcribed word-for-word, and coded to identify both main and sub-themes.
Ensuring the credibility and trustworthiness of qualitative research is crucial. Guba and Lincoln (1994) criterion of "trustworthiness" was employed to evaluate the research's quality. The researchers avoided personal bias, precluding preconceived notions during data collection and analysis phases, thus reinforcing the credibility of the findings. Moreover, expert oversight and guidance were incorporated throughout the interviewing, data analysis, and coding stages to enhance the reliability of the data and the conclusions drawn. The participants were 12 Iranian women who were married to Afghan men, living in Shiraz. They mostly had education up to pre-secondary school and were aged between 30 to 48 years. These participants provided insights into their marital lives with Afghan spouses.

Through data coding and analysis, 106 concepts, 35 subcategories, 10 main categories, and one core category were identified. The study's main categories fell into primary conditions ("paternalistic attitudes and forced marriage," "cohesion and pressure from foreign nationals"), contextual conditions ("hardships within the paternal household," "lack and scarcity of awareness," "poverty and feelings of deprivation," and "fatalism"), and interventional conditions ("perceptions of diverse responses," "administrative and legal obstacles," "lack of foresight," "financial and occupational instability for foreign nationals").
The analysis of concepts and categories in the study reveals various factors influencing the marriages and lives of Iranian women with Afghan spouses. The challenges faced by some of these women range from
oscillating between coercion and a kind of enforced choice, includes hardships within the paternal household, lack of awareness, poverty, fatalism, paternalistic attitudes leading to forced marriage, cohesion and pressure from foreign nationals, and lack of foresight. The core category emerged is "unwanted selection and life," representing a coerced choice.
While exploring the semantic essence of these concepts, one theme stands out prominently: coerced choice. This theme underscores the lack of agency Iranian women face amidst numerous adversities, pushing them to endure a life they would not ordinarily choose, under normal circumstances. Their decisions are not choosing between good and excellent, or even good and bad options; but rather are between existence and non-existence. Therefore, what seems like a choice, it is actually a quest for survival rather than a true preference.

In conclusion, the extensive migration of Afghans to Iran and the resulting marriages between some of Iranian women and Afghan men have reshaped family dynamics and introduced challenges for some Iranian families. For these women, the usual and voluntary choice in marriage has been replaced by the acceptance of undesirable conditions that it seems to be their preferred choices. This family lifestyle bears psychological, identity, and social implications for the women, their families, and children resulting from these marriages. In this regard, further research on the multiple consequences of such marriages is recommended. From both an operational and legal standpoint, it is recommended to implement effective oversight of foreign nationals' presence and their marriages, coupled with a comprehensive reform of migration regulations.

This article is extracted from the master thesis of the first author in the field of demography, completed at the Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences of Shiraz University. The authors appreciate the participants in the interviews of the research and the anonymous reviewers of the present paper for their constructive feedbacks.

With the emergence of late modernity and the growth of culture globalization, transformation has spread in human life, and women have not been excluded in this regard. The transformations made in the attitude of women in today’s world is an undeniable fact. Therefore, this research was conducted to investigate the effect of the globalization of culture on the attitude of women toward the concept of freedom. The research design included a survey and the instrument employed was a questionnaire. Convergent and construct validity were confirmed. Moreover, the reliability was calculated through Cronbach’s alpha and the compositional reliability was in the acceptable range. The statistical population of the research included women between the ages of 17 and 50 on the Instagram social media. Random sampling was used and based on Cochran’s formula the participants included 297 women. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results show that in the component of using global cultural and artistic products, watching foreign films and series had the greatest impact on women’s attitude toward the concept of civil freedom and then toward the concept of individual freedom, and the component of knowledge of international laws regarding women’s rights. The component of awareness of international laws regarding women’s rights had a greater impact on women’s attitude toward the concept of civil freedom. Regarding the component of using global information networks, the most impact related to foreign news networks, which had the greatest impact on women’s attitudes toward the concept of individual freedom and then civil freedom. Also, the results of stepwise regression coefficients in demographic variables showed that women’s attitude toward the concept of personal and civil liberties in individuals less than 30 years of age and women with master’s education was closer to Isaiah Berlin’s definition of personal and civil liberties.

This paper aims to study the image of Iranian women in the Safavid era within the work of French priest Raphael Du Mans entitled the Status of Iran in 1660 . This book is one of the first works written in French about Safavid Iran and its author is unique among European tourists who traveled to Iran due to the length of his stay in Iran (more than half a century) and is also more famous than many other French  tourists like Jean Chardin or Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. The present research seeks to first thematically classify the descriptions that Du Mans presents of Iranian women, based on the knowledge and method of imagology and then analyze his evaluative attitude towards Iranian women in each of these themes. Then, the reasons for this attitude are investigated based on intra-textual and extra -textual components. For this purpose the images of women within his book are extracted and classified. These images include women of religious minorities, the position of women inside and outside the house, dancing women, issues related to women's marriage and divorce, and polygamy. Then, by referring to historical resources and also checking the intratextual signs based on imagology the positive or negative evaluation of the images and the context of their formation are analyzed and identified. The result of the research is that most of the images that Du Mans presents of Iranian women have a negative connotation; the reason for which can be found in the purpose of his trip his European sense of superiority and also his ideas about women as a Catholic priest. Most of the images presented in Raphael Du Mans 's book can be considered direct images, because the author has lived in Iran for many years and has made numerous observations

Introduction and the problem statement:

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Iran. Understanding non-affected women’s perspectives of breast cancer can effectively contribute to the development and implementation of preventive interventions against this disease. The aim of this study is to give more clarity to our understanding of Iranian women's perception of breast cancer.

Previous studies:

There are a large number of "qualitative" studies conducted on the lived experiences of "women with breast cancer" of suffering from this disease. As a matter of fact, most of the studies examining "non-infected women’s" knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in relation to breast cancer have used "quantitative" approaches in order to describe demographic variables associated with women's awareness of and performance in performing preventive screenings. The present study is regarded as one of the few qualitative studies on Iranian non-affected women’s views on breast cancer.

In this study, a phenomenological qualitative method was used in order to accurately describe Iranian women’s views about breast cancer, and the data derived from the semi-structured interviews with 39 women aged between 20-40, who were selected in a purposeful manner, were analyzed using the Colaizzi approach. The saturation criterion was employed in order to determine the sample size and evaluate the sampling adequacy. The interviews lasted 25-40 min and were audio-recorded. Also, an interview guide was prepared for the study. The participants were asked to answer a number of questions on four subject areas including (1) women’s knowledge and perception about cancer in general and breast cancer in particular, (2) women's beliefs about the causes of breast cancer (3) women's beliefs about the probability of them getting breast cancer, and (4) women's beliefs about their possible experience in case of breast cancer and any cancer-related perceptions. The data derived from the interviews were analyzed in seven steps by the use of the Colaizzi approach.

This study addressed four aspects including (1) the perceived nature (e.g., scary, symptomatic, shameful, and progressive), (2) the perceived causes (e.g., hereditary, environmental, lifestyle, and psychological factors), (3) the perceived probability (e.g., immunization, acceptance of the possibility of infection), and (4) the perceived outcome of (e.g., harmful to female identity, deadly and treatable if diagnosed early) of the breast cancer in order to better understand Iranian women's point of view about this disease. Thinking about cancer is a terrifying experience for most women. The women who participated in this study considered breast cancer as a symptomatic disease and pointed out the presence of palpable (mass) and visible (bleeding, discharge, and deformity) or understandable (pain) symptoms. They considered this type of cancer as a progressive disease that can spread to other organs and parts of the body. Although they cited the changes that occurred in recent years regarding the acceptance of women-related issues and diseases such as menstruation, uterine cancer, and breast cancer, they believed that suffering from breast cancer, education, and discussion about it is still considered a shameful issue among the Iranian society. In explaining the causes of the disease, they paid more attention to the presence of hereditary factors and considered breast cancer as a hereditary disease. They believed that psychological factors play a critical role in getting cancer. They imagined two paths for the influence of these factors: First, they evaluated the presence of unpleasant emotional moods, e.g., stress and anxiety, as an important factor in the occurrence of breast cancer; and second, they evaluated thinking about the negative aspects of life, e.g., the disease itself, as a cause of the breast cancer.

Several outcomes can be mentioned as implications of this research. Researchers should pay enough attention to the low level of women's information about breast cancer as a result of the lack of proper education in Iran, through either the media or the health education system, due to the taboo of topics related to women's issues and diseases. We found that one of the women's perceptions is that they strongly believe that they are immune to breast cancer; this belief that can be regarded as one of the serious obstacles to searching for information and performing preventive screenings. This immunity that they believe in is based on two main components: the immunity due to not having hereditary factors; and immunity due to avoiding thinking about the disease. Regarding the causes of breast cancer, the emphasis on hereditary factors has led a significant part of women to believe that they are immune to this disease. Therefore, when implementing interventions for increasing breast awareness, the information on the age and genetic background of the disease should be presented with more emphasis and accuracy. In suggesting the reasons for not thinking about breast cancer and, of course, not performing screening, women's other belief about the impact of thinking about the disease and calling it out was among the topics with a high frequency. Therefore, the belief that thinking about the disease is a calling of and prevents women from engaging in awareness training for enhancement of breast health should be corrected by designing interventions targeting at changing the false beliefs. When designing the education related to this disease, women's belief about breast cancer as a scary and deadly disease should be also given enough attention and the high probability of its treatment in case of early diagnosis should be explained. Women's perception that breast cancer is a symptomatic disease leads them to ignore preventive measures for early diagnosis. It also seems that one of the obstacles to preventive measures is the belief in Iranian culture that considers breast cancer as a shameful disease, and consequently, women probably avoid performing breast cancer screening in order to avoid the diagnosis of a shameful disease and the resulting negative reactions. Therefore, the normalization of issues related to breast cancer should be considered when implementing preventive interventions. The results of this study have provided a valuable contribution to the understanding of Iranian women's perception of breast cancer, which can play a critical role in designing interventions targeted at increasing awareness and promoting more effective preventive behaviors among Iranian women, and as a result, reducing deaths caused by late diagnosis of this disease.

The study investigates the manifestation of “Popular Feminism” in the content created and shared by Iranian Women’s rights activists on social media platforms. To do so, it is studied how women’s issues and claims are represented in these digital materials and which solutions are proposed by the activists for the gender inequality. This work is based on qualitative content analysis of sample posts extracted from four popular Instagram accounts which are run by women’s rights activists. Besides identifying the most frequent themes in these accounts, we criticised the content as being involved in feedback loops, emphasizing women’s bodies, presenting an aestheticised version of feminism and proposing simplified individualist solutions for gender inequalities.We also argued that however this sort of digital activism make women’s suppressed and marginalised issues and claims visible on the digital space, it is mainly a way for activists’ self-branding and it could be considered as part of a process in which popular feminist discourse is regenerated and reinforced in the Iranian digital space.

The chief intention in this study was to investigate the sociological demands of women in the press of constitutional era with an emphasis on the first edition of New Iran newspaper in 1948. This newspaper published women’s writings that had a demanding approach towards their social rights and also played a great role in their awakening, awareness, and the fruition of their social demands. Documented, descriptive-analytical method was applied in an attempt to gather information in this review. The importance of addressing this era is also due to the active presence of women for the first time in a guild-like association. This era, when women bring up their social demands, their most fundamental request was opening schools for girls and providing education for girls. The fruition of women’s social efforts to get their social demands in the form of girl schools is the focal purpose of this revision.

The aim of the current research was to investigate post-migration family dynamics and challenges among Iranian immigrant women in Australia. An ethnographic method was employed to explore this aim. Participant observation، open-ended in-depth interviews and informal conversations were employed to collect the data. A two year participant observation was conducted to directly observe the interactions between Iranians and Australians and to research if these interactions had any effects on the Iranian family system. 21 in-depth interviews with Iranian women and 11 interviews with key informants were conducted in Farsi and in English. The recorded data was transcribed and analyzed concurrently until data saturation. To clarify the ambiguous points or to add new ideas، these interviews were followed- up by informal interviews and conversations during the two and half year data collection. Data was analyzed by using NVivo software and employing a thematic analytic approach. Findings show that post-migration loneliness may enrich marital relationship and mutual dependence among Iranian couples. However، factors such as conflict over women’s rights and conflicts over gendered roles would increase marital conflicts among immigrant couples. Lack of social support and limited social networks was hindered women from seeking help. The results about possible post-migration changes in couple relationships may help in assisting immigrant couples and couples who are inclined to migrate.

The roles played by women in every society are an indication of the vivacity and vitality of the society. Iranian women have taken part in various fields through different historical periods in the public movement of the society of Iran. These communal actions throughout the history have taken place by different proportions. In the period of Qajar, because of the development of the relationships between the Iranians and different European countries, and also exploitation and colonization of Iran by Britain and Russia some changes happened to the identity of the Iranian women. In this situation, different groups (from religious to the westernized liberalist ones) performed communal actions. The present study, believing in the presupposition that the women in this period for the first time took organized communal actions and tried to penetrate in the public social layers of the society, studies the followings: the social background and the daily life of the Iranian women, the communal actions by Iranian women in regard with publishing newspapers, magazines, letters and notes, forming female clubs and organizations, establishing schools for girls, using houses as schools, creating critical arts and literature, demonstrations and rallies to protest, and struggling to achieve the right for voting. Furthermore, the article deals with the discourse between the women and the period of Constitutionalism.