A Study of Gender Stereotypes in the Iranian Literature: The Case of Al-e-Ahmad's Fictions

Being a man or woman entails some defaults and conceptualizations which depend on the culture of each society. These images of men and women are called gender stereotypes which exist in each society. Based on gender stereotypes, men and women have some behavioral and psychological traits and are fitted to do jobs which are different from each other. Stereotypes are reproduced over the generations by social institutions like family, mass media, peers and education system. Media, family and educational system are factors affecting socialization process. In one hand, media content is affected by culture; on the other hand media content affect the culture. Among all media, books, using reflection of norms, values and thoughts, reproduce culture strongly. In this paper, we have studied gender stereotypes in Al-e-Ahmad's fictions, one of the greatest contemporary writers of Iran. All of Al-e-Ahmad's books are studied in search for gender stereotypes. Our methodology is content analysis. Results reveal that many gender stereotypes (talkative, superstitious and emotional for women and aggressive, angry and dominant for men) are prevalent in Al-e-Ahmad fictions.