Afghan and Pakistani Male students' lived experiences from women's studies in Iran: A Phenomenological Study

Women’s studies, which was founded on the activities of the women's movement in the West and its main goals was to change attitudes, has been constantly changing and expanding. Today, there are various trends in this field in different countries, which in Iran has an Islamic approach. The purpose of this study is to investigate the lived experiences of Afghan and Pakistani male students of women's studies in Iran, who are more with a patriarchal background. The method used in this research is interpretive phenomenology which has been done by conducting semi-structured interviews with sixteen of these students. Data analysis was performed by Van Mann method using MAXQDA 2018 software and the three main themes of "gender awareness", “reflecting on gender stereotypes “and, “decreased gender perspective" were obtained. According to the findings, gender awareness indicates "understanding the fabrication of existing attitudes towards women" and "understanding the common nature of men and women in the Qur'an" has led to reflecting on gender stereotypes including “reflection on religious readings of women" and "reconsideration of social beliefs towards women", and finally has led to decreased gender perspective including "decreased of patriarchal hegemonic view in the family "and" decreased of patriarchal privileges in society".