فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی زنان
پیاپی 31 (بهار 1385)

Observing women's material and spiritual rights is an important objective the guaranteeing and reviving of which, according to article 21 of the Iranian constitution, are the duties of the government. The right to be elected is among the social rights and qualified women, like men, have the right to run for socio-political positions such as presidency. This paper is to answer the question whether, legally and jurisprudentially, women, like men, can be the head of the executive or that women are not competent for the position merely because they are women. Afterwards, having elaborated on the reasons for the competency of women for undertaking presidency, the paper evaluates the most important arguments of the opponents, coming to the conclusion that there are no religious and legal prohibitions against women's presidency.

Among the causes of the emergence of feminism, religion has had a crucial role. An overview of the negative attitude of the Bible towards women and, hence, the discriminatory gender approach of Christian intellectuals to them accounts for the challenges between women’s movement and religious teachings. The Christian theological system has a completely gender-based nature. In this system, woman is guilty of committing a sin that is naturally inherited by the descendents of Adam. The burden of the sin is so heavy that, to eradicate it from mankind, God had to be incarnated in the Christ and with His crucification purify the Christians from the impurity of the sin. This paper critically studies the Christian dogmas related to women on the basis of the Bible and the Christians’ interpretations and theological stances in the early and middle ages.

Defending women's sexual freedom and rejecting stereotypical maternal and spousal roles in family and marriage, feminism encountered with contradictions and adopted stances mainly in line with the denial and elimination of these social foundations. From the perspective of radical feminism, men are in a dominant state leading to the subjugation of women. As a result, men-women interactive systems, such as family, must undergo serious revision. These feminist excesses, in spite of their seductive gloss, created socio-cultural abnormalities and failed to determine an appropriate position for women.

After the social and feministic developments under the rubric of the equality of the rights of men and women and the eradication of discrimination between them, new laws passed in the Western countries in the recent decades. It was expected that these laws would improve women’s economical rights in family, but the constant modifications of these laws show that they could not meet women’s real needs yet. On the other hand, Islamic jurisprudential laws, for centuries, have considered women independent in the ownership of what they gain themselves, with the spouse being obliged to provide his wife with her needs under moral principles. This paper is a brief comparative study of women-related economic laws such as alimony, dowry, and inheritance in Iran and England. The paper ends in some suggestions in this regard.

Oteh Ehrhart, assuming that gender differences are merely a product of education, social conventions, and environmental pressures, is going to exonerate women, by means of psychological techniques, from depression and sexual and gender oppressions in his book "Good women go to paradise, bad women to everywhere." He wants to help women have equal rights with men. However, many of his claims are not compatible with psychological, physiological, and biological achievements. This incompatibility led to the writer's incorrect analysis of the cause of the inferiority of women, which in turn, resulted in the inefficiency of his psychological solutions. In addition, Ehrhart, in opposition to the prevailing scientific and statistical views, is mistaken about some of his major and minor premises as a result of which he did not come to correct conclusions. The present paper embarks upon a basic and methodological evaluation of Ehrhart's views and finally mentions the implications of his claims.

This paper is a study of the relationship between gender and religious attitudes indices and the Iranian’s family patterns and norms on the basis of the secondary analysis of the data of two national surveys of the values and attitudes of Iranians (2000 and 2003). The amount of samples in the first survey was 16824 people and in the second survey 4581 people. At the beginning of the research, religious and gender attitudes indices were obtained through factor analysis from among the related questions and the relationship between these two indices and the variables of family and marriage was studied. An overview of the major results of the research shows that there is a relationship between religious and gender attitudes in the two national surveys and with the rise of the level of religiosity the gender attitude towards women moderates too. In addition, it was shown that there is a positive relationship between strong religious attitude and family behaviors such consulting, unburdening, avoiding violence, disagreements, punishment of children, interference in children’s personal affairs, and leaning towards children’s independent life.