Rethinking Feminine Gender Roles and their Related Cultural and Social DeterminantsA Case Study of Married Women in Shiraz, Iran

In the last few decades, women have sought an identity beyond their roles at home and in the family by challenging their traditional roles and redefining their gender roles. Rethinking gender roles depends upon one’s attitude and beliefs about it. The purpose of this study was to investigate women's attitudes to gender roles and to explain the cultural and social factors affecting them. This study has been conducted quantitatively using the causal-correlational descriptive method in the years 2018 and 2019. In this study, 600 married women were selected from the eleven districts of Shiraz using a questionnaire and the proportionate stratified sampling method. Data analysis was carried out using SPSS software, descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation, t-test, analysis of variance and multivariate regression). The results showed that 21.5% of the respondents considered the traditional feminine roles in social, occupational and family areas to be the most important roles of women; rethinking highly, 13% believed there is the least difference in masculine and feminine roles; and 65.5% had a moderate attitude. It was further revealed that there is a significant relationship between the variables of age, employment status, education, income, socioeconomic status, duration of marriage, extent of using mass media and women's virtual communication networks, as well as their husbands’ income and occupational status, on the one hand, and their rethink of gender roles, on the other. The results of simultaneous multivariate regression also indicated that education, economic and social status, use of Instagram and television and husbands’ occupational status are the most important factors which explain women's rethinking of gender roles.