The Culture of Women's Clothing among Women at the Faculty of Psychology and Social Sciences (National, Arabic, Qajari Chador)

Women's clothing has witnessed remarkable changes in history. Among all these coverings, chador bears a special significance. The developments that have rose as a result of changes in the form and usage of this covering has always been appealing to critics and researchers. This covering has represented its wearer's social, political, economic, and religious character; hence, researchers of different social sciences have always argued for or against this covering. This article explores the reasons as to why this covering witnessed changes, particularly in the past decade. It further demonstrates the developments and changes from a traditional chador to the modern forms. The present study was conducted in an academic environment (Islamic Azad University, Tehran Central Branch), and the subjects were students aged from 20 to 35. The research is conducted using qualitative methodology, direct observation, external sources (library deeds and documents), research tools (camera, tape recorder, etc.). The results of this anthropological look and field research show that during the past decade, change of chador patterns from its traditional form to modern has created new thoughts about this covering. The change of form and size of chadors reveals some secret layers in the thoughts of today’s women and girls. This has led some of them to feel sorry about and some other to feel proud of being a woman in the studied population. Though anthropology is not obliged to provide solutions and suggestions, we should not overlook the results of this research which is the overall opinion of women about chador or Islamic hijab. In this paper, the thoughts of functionalist theorists, particularly those of Beranislaw Malinowski are used. Despite the changes in Islamic covering, it can be said that women themselves are the main factors in such development.