A Phenomenological Study of Women Journalists' Experiences of the Phenomenon of Gender Inequality in the Press Workplace

In the contemporary era and along with the admittance of modernity into the Iranian society, Iranian women have redefined their identities in the shadow of major social changes. However, the procedure of changing women's traditional roles as well as their presence in the public sphere has been a challenging process. These women are struggling with the structure of gender inequality in their identification process. Having employed a feminist approach and a qualitative and phenomenological method, the researchers of the present study have investigated the lived experiences of the women whose presence and employment in the press have given them different experiences as compared to their male counterparts. Accordingly, we conducted narrative and in-depth interviews with 16 women working in the press of Mashhad who were selected based on purposive sampling. Experiencing unequal distribution of power, wealth, prestige and opportunities, gender division of labor, the presence of gender stereotypes, gender sociability, the presence of gender ideologies, gender blindness in the workplace, feelings of relative deprivation, self- objectification, reliance on sexual capital by some women in the workplace, and strategies against the structure of gender inequality, are themes and concepts that explain the lived experiences of the women who participated in this study.