Socio-cultural Context of Women's Economic Actions and Its Consequences

Qualitative studies allow researchers to understand and analyze daily actions of individuals based on actors’ own definitions. On this basis, the present study focuses on field data in an attempt to study the subjective meaning of women’s economic actions in Paveh city as well as to identify socio-cultural contexts affecting these actions and its consequences. The methodology of this study follows that of qualitative research. Data was collected using in-depth interviews and participant observation techniques. Also, the framework approach was used in five stages to analyze data, i.e. familiarization, identifying a thematic framework, indexing, tabulation and data combination. The findings were organized around the five main themes of “contextualization of economic actions”, “contextualization of savings patterns”, “need-oriented employment pattern”, “family assistance in production” and “redefinition of women’s role and status”; each of these themes cover two sub-themes. The final theoretical framework was obtained by reviewing and combining the extracted themes. Based on “the final theoretical framework” it can be stated that economic actions of women in Paveh are based on a set of “intentional actions” and that among the obvious consequences of these actions is “deconstruction of women’s roles”. In the same way, the final outcome of economic actions in the study population is “feminization of household economy”, a category that semantically covers other main and sub-themes emerged from research findings.