Women’s security feeling in Tehran

The present research was conducted aimed at sociological study of women's security feeling in Tehran city.

The research was carried out using grounded theory. The under study population includes women who are housewives, working, 18+, married and single women in Tehran. The data collection tool is a semi-structured interview, and after conducting 24 interviews, data saturation was achieved. Data analysis has been conducted using open, axial and selective triple coding method.

The analysis of the participants' experiences regarding the security feeling led to the identification and extraction of 664 open codes, 64 central codes and 27 selective codes, which were included in the form of a paradigm model including: causal conditions, background conditions, intervening conditions and strategies.

In general, the results indicate that several factors such as providing social security, providing security and urban health, providing security in familiar areas and a sense of belonging to the environment, providing social health, improving the cultural and moral level of society, eliminating economic inequalities contribute to creating security feeling. Also, issues that pave the ground for creating security feeling on the part of women are: social surveillance, training and informing citizens about their social rights, establishing justice-oriented laws, ensuring justice and economic equality, cultural development, eliminating gender gaps, creating suitable urban structures and ensuring the citizens’   psycho-social health. Also, public support and participation, social surveillance, existence of commercial centers, training women with regard to defense capabilities, appropriate economic status and observance of women's social rights are among the interfering conditions in the emergence of security feeling on the part of women. As far as strategies of women's security feeling are concerned, one may refer to strategies such as economic development of neighborhoods, social health, which enhance women’s social interaction.