A Reflection on the issue of unmarried women in Iran

One of the social issues in the field of women and family in today's Iranian society is the growing trend of women's celibacy. Celibacy, including elementary celibacy (girls who fail to get married on time for any reason, especially between the ages of 18 and 29, this process, if extends to the threshold of 45 and according to some views until the age of 49, is referred to in the customs of demographers as definitive celibacy); Secondary and late celibacy (women who have been released from marriage after one marriage due to divorce or death of their spouse and have not been able to remarry despite desire and readiness) are caused by many personal and structural causes and factors and have harmful effects and consequences at individual and social levels. Considering the sacred status of marriage and the formation of a family in the dominant religious discourse of Iranian society, delay in the age of marriage, especially long-term delay and definite deprivation of it from both men and women, and the preference of celibacy, in the absence of justification, conflict with the existential philosophy of the family in the value system of Islam with special functions. Demographers, for other reasons, consider women's celibacy in large circulation as prablomatic and pathological, and consider social cultural policy-making and planning to reduce and modify it inevitable. This article seeks to describe, interpret and explain this issue theoretically, with a focus on Iranian society after the revolution, by referring to the statistics, studies and researches conducted. The method of this study is in the position of collecting documentary information and as an analysis and explanation, deductive and inferentative .