The Relationship between Gender Inequality and Social Mobility Motivation among Female Students

Gender inequality is an acute problem of our society today affecting social order, development process, and even political stability. Under the universal effects brought about by industrialization and urban life, the prevalence of gender inequality results in widespread feeling by the women to be treated unjustly, particularly in relation to motivation and chances of social mobility among female students. The subject has been analyzed by different theories of justice (exchange and relative deprivation), stratification theories (Parsons, Davis, and Moore), and gender inequality theories (Chafetz’s and Blumberg’s). Chafetz’s theory is used as the main theory to show the relationship between the feelings of gender inequality and social motivation as an independent variable. This is a survey research which uses questionnaire. The statistical society is comprised of all female students of University of Tehr􀆗n in which 373 students were selected by the model (of Kukran). Simple and multi-variable regression method was used for the data analysis, and for determining the effects of the dependent variable on the independent one. The results show that 94.9% of the students in our sample have high and very high feelings of inequality, and that 98.9% have high and very high feeling of lack of motivation. Totally, 52% of the social motivation variety is illustrated by inequality feeling which has five dimensions, and according to their effects, such dimensions consist of 1) political inequality feeling, 2) Legal inequality feeling, 3) Social inequality feeling, 4) Cultural inequality feeling, and 5) Economic inequality feeling.