فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی زنان
پیاپی 30 (زمستان 1384)

Introducing different feminist views, the paper tries to critically study the problems related to women’s employment, development, and the globalization of economy. The insignificant role of women in economical decision-making centers is another issue discussed in the paper. It seems that the different feminist theories only could provide short term solutions and did not manage to solve the problems related to the unsound conditions of women’s work such as unsafe working environment, emergence of secondary jobs, and wage decrease. Thus, nowadays, with the expansion of the principles of modernity and economic globalization, despite all the slogans which are being expressed, women are still the most vulnerable class of the society. The principal reason why feminist economic approaches could not solve women’s problems is that they challenge men and ignore the power networks dominant over the unequal economic relations on the part of the big economical cartels.

Criminology or the study of the causes of crime commission is a compound science which is located at the crossroad of other sciences and is used to study a criminal act. Feminists have empirically criticized the achievements of criminology and come to the conclusion that criminology is a male-dominated science because women commit fewer crimes than men do and their crimes are also of different types. Thus, women who are victims of crimes are less supported by law and appropriate jurisdiction procedures. However, feminists did not make an effort to study the crimes committed by women based on criteria compatible with womanhood, though feminist criminology has been accepted as a framework for the gradual improvement of laws and norms for women. This paper briefly studies the background and the position of feminism in criminology, types of feminist criminology, feminism and differential criminal policy, and the impacts of feminism on women’s rights. Finally, the paper clarifies that feminist criminology has been reflected in the domestic laws of countries and in international documents.

The scope of the Islamic scholars’ different attitudes towards the modern world, the manner of the application of Islamic teachings, and the challenges arising from newly occurring subjects has influenced on women’s issues, too. In the first part of the paper, published in the previous issue, these studies were classified under the fundamentalist and the intellectualist approaches. Concerning women’s issues, the fundamentalists adopted a cautious reaction to the modernist developments in the West whereas the intellectualists’ attitude towards women’s issues is influenced by the Western modernity and feminism. In this part of the paper, the intellectualist approach is examined under the two categories of modernists and epistemologists. Islamic modernists’ stance towards women’s issues is shaped by their criticism of the traditional approaches and admittance of the Western modern teachings. Under the influence of the recent developments in epistemology, Islamic epistemologists, maintaining the historicity of the religious texts, have tried to present new interpretations of Islamic teachings.

Elaborating on the origin of gender according to philosophy of science in general and social sciences in particular, the paper examines the claim of the existence of a “feminist science” and critically analyzes the underlying assumptions, presuppositions, and the logic of methodological analysis of such a science, and its abilities to account for social problems. The starting point of the feminist science is its criticisms of the existing social sciences, with the most important theoretical and methodological challenges arising from the contradictions between the proponents and opponents of feminist science, which are also dealt with in this paper. In addition, the paper concentrates on the necessity of paying attention to time and place conditions of the subject matter under study (women in the society) and the necessity of paying attention to the methodological characteristics of the subject including multi-dimensionality, multi-originality, and multi-disciplinarily. The paper also stresses on the necessity of designing a native methodology in Iranian Islamic society, presents the characteristics of such native methodology on the basis of religious foundations, and offers the related arguments.

In the recent years, due to the vast but passive cooperation with the UN, all the policy-makings and plans implemented in the realm of women’s issues were based solely on the UN strategies and the feministic attitudes existing in international documents. Some of the projects which were codified on the basis of these documents and put into operation are as follows: the National Plan of Action for Women in the Islamic Republic of Iran, preparation of the Fourth Development Plan, organizing the activities of rural women, preparation of the educational program for women, legal suggestions to modify the laws related to women, and international communications concerning women’s issues. In line with the paper in the previous issue of the quarterly, this paper tries to present the documentations related to the above issues.

Khāghāni is among the great Iranian poets who, in certain respects, is unique in the history of Persian literature. These dimensions may not be compatible with our modern aesthetic bases and poetic tastes, but it is an emphasis on what he himself calls “the new method” and “the odd technique”. Studying women in his poetry and comparing it to the image of women in the poems of other poets is a starting point which can familiarize us with that odd technique and its position in the contemporary Iranian literary treasure. To achieve this goal, the first part of the present paper studied the women who actually lived in Khāghāni’s family and community and this part of the paper studies the fictitious women in his poetry.