Interaction in Cyberspace and its effect upon women's identity in Iran

Topics related to women, gender identity, its formation and alterations have become popular in socio-political and academic fields, thus leading to an enormous amount of progress in recent years. The rise of such issues is to a great extent a reflection of changes in the social life which has caused some predefined differences between identity and behavior styles of male and females. Over the past recent years developments and changes have taken place in the field of communication and cyberspace causing change in women’s social roles and awareness. Increasing women’s education and participation in the workplace can lead to reduced value of traditional role of women. This can bring up difficulties in coordinating the traditional and modern role of women causing contradiction in women’s identity. The aim of this article is to consider the effects of cyberspace on women’s identity in Iran. For this purpose, we are trying to answer the following question: to what extent the interaction in cyberspace has affected women’s identity? In order to answer the posed question it could be said that the interaction in cyberspace has caused the Iranian women to get distant from their traditional roles and identities. The data for the research was collected through a questionnaire. For the purpose of the research, we selected 200 girl students from university of Tehran. The theoretical framework used to explain women’s identity is based on Giddens and jenkins theory. These theories believe in age of globalization, spread of communication and information. Through such framework we can observe the kind of transformation from local identity to macro identity. The results of the research show that in spite of expansion of communication and information and the increased interaction of women in cyber space, transformation from local identity to macro identity in modern approach cannot be observed. Statistical analysis shows that there’s no significant relationship between independent variable (cyber space) and dependant variable (Iranian women identity). Interaction in cyber space has no significant impact on Iranian women’s cultural identity.