Representation of women in Gilaki proverbs (Eshkevarat variety)

Proverbs are the mirror of the culture of a community. The examination of proverbs on women can, therefore, help us better understand beliefs and attitudes of the speakers of a community towards women and the socio-cultural values of the same community. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the representation of women in Gilaki (Eshkevarat variety) proverbs. The data have been collected via a structured interview with sixty native speakers (both men and women) who were over forty five years old and barely influenced by standard Persian. Since the method of this research is descriptive-analytic, the collected data were, first, categorized and described. It is worth nothing that the proverbs were semantically classified into eighteen categories encompassed by three different representations of women which are as follows in order of frequency: a. negative representation, b. positive representation, and c. neutral representation. The distribution of theses representations were analyzed within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Feminist studies. One of the important findings is that in Gilaki (Eshkevarat variety) speaking community, gender is perceived as an ideological structure. According to the rigid hierarchical relationships of dominance and inferiority, the social group of women is considered inferior and disadvantageous that counts for nothing.