فصلنامه زن در فرهنگ و هنر (پژوهش زنان)
سال چهارم شماره 2 (تابستان 1391)

This study tries to show how gender as a discourse construction has been formed since decades before the Islamic Revolution in Imam Khomeini’s words differently from then language system capacity, power and residence relations embodied in the traditional discourses, pre-revolution modernization period, in a context of political and social events and how it has stabilized or transformed the customary and determining boundaries of women and men. For this very purpose this paper studies the signified meaning of masculine/feminine in Imam Khomeini’s words as the most important political and symbolic elite in religious and revolutionary modernism discourse in relation with focal signifiers of then opposition in the context of political confrontation including official position of Pahlavi regime against traditional clerics, applying Ruth Wodak’s method of historical discourse analysis. As a result ‘woman’ in the words of Imam Khomeini in connection with subjects such as Islamic Values, humanity, freedom, equality, bravery, rights, taking part in self determination etc., is an active subject in contrast with two conceptual systems: traditions and modernity. And women are not opposite men but beside them and not in a specific field but in their whole private, social and political lives they are responsible for establishing and maintaining a political system based on Islamic values.

Fairy tales are stories in which metaphysical, paranormal and mysterious events take place and there is no exact time and place; everything is spiritual. The Lorestanian story of “Daughter of Daal” is a tale of the “mythical birth” of a girl from an egg and her being raised by Daal (phoenix) in the cave of a Caucasus-like mountain. Daughter of Daal is snared by a hireling hellcat’s deceit, but is finally reborn from inside a calamus by the help of a prince and marries him. In this article, with a mythological approach and by use of library and documental method, stories with similar theme are collected, and the rules governing these kinds of stories, with the objective of explaining common global mythological theme, have been studied. Through analyzing the content, based upon mythological and cryptic elements, and by the help of comparative mythology as well as analyzing mythological and epic narratives of Iran and other nations and ethnos, the writers are to prove that Daughter of Daal is a fairy and a symbol of vegetative god, and finally answer this fundamental question that of Daughter of Daal and other characters of the story, each symbolizes who, and what the theme is trying to convey. Implied answer to these questions and hypotheses is that Daughter of Daal is a goddess-mother who is freed from land of daemons to return lushness to dead nature. The hellcat symbolizes settlers of the dark land who do not want to fertilize the earth. The story of Daughter of Daal displays the theme of the contrast between vegetative/aquatic life and drought/death.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between attachment styles (secure, avoidant and ambivalent) and satisfying basic psychological needs of children (independence, competence and relevance) with regard to mothers’ employment status. The subjects included 409 high school students selected randomly by multi-stage cluster sampling method. Instruments were: Attachment Styles Questionnaire (Sharp et. al., 1998 cited in Gilbert & Irons, 2005) and Satisfaction Basic Psychological Needs Scale (Gagne, 2003). The result of multiple regression analysis indicated that secure attachment predicts significantly and positively the satisfaction of relatedness. It didn’t have a significant relationship with competence and autonomy needs. Avoidant and ambivalent needs and attachment styles significantly and negatively predict satisfaction needs for autonomy, competency and relatedness. Employment status of the mother did not predict satisfying basic psychological needs significantly.

The subject of this paper is the analysis of Islamic period earthenware of Iran containing decorative designs of women. The basic goal of the paper is recognition of determining factors to use these figures and also responding to important questions such as: in which Islamic periods women’s figures can be seen? And what features and factors have been influential in applying them? Answering these questions can obviously help us know more and better about the religious, social and political position of Iranian Muslim women compared to pre-Islamic periods of Iran. After careful examination of different samples pertaining to the Iranian Islamic era, the most important and most expressive ones were selected, then other factors influencing the use of these pictures were investigated. Findings of the paper show that use of women’s figures on Islamic earthenware especially in Seljukid and Ilkhanid periods have been affected by several factors including arrival of new tribes with new attitudes towards women in addition to the flourish of Iranian literature in form of Shahnameh Firdausi and Khamseh nezami fictions and certain astrological concepts with female symbols as the Venus and the moon

This study reviews the formations of the family in Shahnameh; distribution of power in it; and its identity. Therefore, we study the theoretical background related to the subject of the research, theories related to the topic of cultural theories of Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown, Ario and Shlensky, Ronard and proposed research and theoretical framework of the research were written according to the background of the research. Citation method was used to examine the issue and we tried to use social representations to explore sociologically the composer’s ideas behind his poems in Shanameh. Studying the families of Zahak, Faranak and Abtin, Fereidoon, Zal and Roodabeh, Rostam, Siavash, Piran (the minister of Afrasyab), Katayoon, Goshtasb, Bahram Shah and Farangis, and Keikhosrow shows that various forms of families propounded in modern sociology can be found in Shahnameh. On the other hand, families play a key role in preserving the identity of individuals and it is also sociologically a distinctive factor and at a higher level, the family is a symbol of identity of individuals and the identity of individuals is based on their families. The family also plays an important role in preserving cultural heritage, transition of culture and customs and also linking generations. Family marriage between two different communities, cultural conflict, cultural diversity, and cultural transmission, understanding cultural commonalities, and ultimately the cultural production and reproduction are among cases of identity and family issues in which the role and family identity of Iranians can be found. We also know that men have had the main part in decision making in the family though in some cases the decisions were made together with their wives, who were respected a lot in the Iranian family.

Proverbs are short statements which have deep concepts and arise from the social forms and perceptions that provide social situation and orientation. This study seeks to examine the image of women and their issues among local proverbs of Lamerd city in Fars province. Female related proverbs have been compiled and trough qualitative content analysis method analyzed. The results show that no social or professional role are considered for women in this society and proverbs are just related to the different personalities of women’s roles within the family as a mother or a wife and these roles are formed based on male chauvinism in the city.

Islamic jurisprudence concerning the male-female relationships relies upon the mahram / non-mahram concepts. In the contemporary religious literature, one, usually a stranger, who is a mahram to someone of the opposite gender (as enumerated in Islamic law) can establish an acceptable kind of friendship, whereas lacking such a feature (failure to become mahrams) means that there is an unorthodox boundary for the interactions between the two genders. On the one hand, the view of the Islamic culture is to keep the relationships between boys and girls to a minimum; on the other hand, however, the only opportunity for a prudent relationship between boys and girls is when they have a serious plan for marriage. Beyond the limits of the family and religious marriage, virtually all emotional, intimate and love relations are despicable and religiously unlawful or a path to pave the way towards great sins. In the past there had been a social acceptance relying the local and traditional criteria which could practically lead to timely marriage at the beginning of puberty; given the above, the main question in this paper is how it is possible to regulate the time gap which exists between puberty and the time of marriage, under the present circumstances where as a result of the expanded network of relationships, the society encounters reduced age of puberty and increased age of marriage. This paper seeks to seek feasibility of a regulated management of the period between puberty and the time of permanent marriage, and that upon the theory of Islamic friendship.