نشریه زن در توسعه و سیاست
سال دوازدهم شماره 1 (بهار 1393)

Cosmestic surgery has been become one of the common forms of the regular management of body in today''s world. With an exploratory and analytical description of constructed meanings of cosmetic surgery، this research tends to find out why Sanandejian’s women have cosmetic surgery and what this context and implication، functions، and consequences act have had. According to the nature of the subject and reaching deeper layers of mind، grounded theory، among qualitative methods، was chosen. In this study، data were collected through semi-structured interviews and grounded theory is used to analyze the data. Using theoretical and purposive sampling، 27 women were interviewed. Results show that women tend to have cosmetic surgery in order to react against change of norms beauty، making beauty erotic، annoying of life every day، and the proliferation of a negative image of their body. In this process، popularizing beauty and development of surgical science function as a facilitating context and national and foreign media function as a confounding condition. Performing their strategies، women appreciate and experience cosmetic surgeries just as the media، as a tool to facilitate the social achievement، expressing themselves and power and individual choice of being acquired beauty. Beauty obsession، health risks، impaired life and the social isolation are viewed as the effects of cosmetic surgery by women.

Women as half of the population of each society have important role in societies development. Accordingly, many sociologists consider study of women’s empowerment and its influencing factors. Present study is to examine the relationship between digital divide and women empowerment. In addition, women empowerment and its dimensions (access and control of resources, participation, gender awareness, mobility and security) were investigated. Also these independent variables: marital Status, respondents and their families’ Income, social class, Education level of respondents and their spouses, Head of household status, employment status, occupation, age, technology divide, information access divide, information literacy divide were investigated. By virtue of multistage random sampling, 600 ones were selected based on leen formula. Required Datas were collected from Shiraz women aged 15-54 by means of questionnaires based on survey method. The study findings indicated variables: social status, respondent and husband education, technology divide, and information literacy divide and information access had a significant relation with the women empowerment; while marital status had no significant relationship with women empowerment. Multiple regression showed that 27 percent of the variance of women empowerment variable was explained through the independent variables (information literacy divide, respondents under Graduate Diploma).

Recently, women’s participation has increased in the workplaces. Therefore it is a challenge for contemporary managers to help employees to balance their work and family responsibilities. This paper aims to identify factors affecting the work-family balance. Sample included 261 women employed at a number of universities in Tehran. Data is collected from the questionnaire. Correlation and multiple regression tests were used to analyze the data. Research variables are: family support, organizational support, work flexibility, and individual recourses. We suggested four hypotheses to exam the impact of family support, organizational support, work flexibility, and individual recourses on the work-family balance. The results show that family support and individual resources have positive impact on work-family balance, but organizational support and work flexibility have not significant impact on this variable. It is suggested to managers to encourage work-family supportive culture, and try to provide time and place flexibility of the work.

Study about political attitude and gender differences seems necessary, because of essential role of the political attitude in political behavior, and importance of gender differences for researchers in the field of women's studies. Considering to this scientific necessity, this study investigates the role of university reference groups in college student's political attitudes according to gender differences. This descriptive- analytic study was carried out using survey method. The statistical society is comprised of all the undergraduate, master's and PhD students at University of Tehran. 400 students (226 boys and 174 girls) were selected through availability sampling. Students have responded to a researcher- made questionnaire. The main hypothesis of this study is: there exists gender differences in relationship between the level of interaction with the reference group (including college professors, student organizations and the university students) and students’ political attitudes (in three dimensions: cognitive, affective and action). For data analysis, SPSS was used. The results showed that there are gender differences in all three dimensions of political attitudes. The findings also suggest that university friends and then college professors have the most important role in changing political attitudes of the students.

Gender equality, equity and women`s empowerment are the essential factors for integral human development and also key factors for all countries to achieve economic, political and social development. The main goal of this paper is a comparative study on women`s status in Malaysia and Iran as two developing countries, which are similar from different aspects. The method used in this research is comparative. The result of this study shows that despite the efforts of both countries to improve the women`s status in many key areas such as education, health, employment, according the reports of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and World Economic Forum, especially in Gender Inequality Index and Gender Gap Index, Malaysia is ranked higher than Iran. Why and how a country like Malaysia has a higher score than Iran, it is a question that at the end of this paper was answered.

By political choice, people achieve the official positions in political system. Woman's political participation is one of the most important subjects that has been take attention of scientists and devoted much of sociopolitical topics. Parliament provides suitable ground in order to Woman's political participation. In this article, by using descriptive and analytical method, the barriers of Woman's political participation are searched. In Islamic republic of Iran empathizing Islamic parliament is based on the opportunity's structures. The review of 32 years after the Islamic revolution findings suggest that in tree opportunity's structures, political- legal and individual- personality and socio- economic for Iranians woman are not concern serious legal barriers because of some individual- personality factors. Also, sociopolitical couldnt have widespread assist in parliamentary election and achieving seats in Islamic parliament.

In recent decades, the fertility rate in Iran has gone through dramatic changes due to different reasons. One of these reasons is women’s increasing participation in the workforce and modern employment which has imposed changes to the childbearing behavior. On the other hand, working women face different challenges regarding childbearing. The present qualitative study investigates the childbearing challenges for working women using grounded theory approach and purposive sampling. The participants were 24 married women working in both governmental and nongovernmental organizations (age range: 24 to 36). The data was collected through deep semi-structured interviews. Some of the main questions in this study included the determining factors in childbearing challenges for working women, the working women’s approaches to face the challenges of childbearing and the consequences of this situation. The results show that working women face challenges both inside and outside their jobs in regard to childbearing, which force them to choose low fertility as their lifestyle. The participants viewed low fertility as an inseparable part of the modern social behavior and lifestyle.

Cooperatives can be considered as suitable means to achieve social and economic development, employment and participation. Undoubtedly, rural women's membership in cooperatives can be really useful in the process of rural development. Social capital is one of the key determinants of women's participation in different social activities. Social capital may act directly through physical investment or indirectly through reducing transactions costs, satisfying people and making social action. Both of these functions can move rural societies towards development. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate social capital components determinant for women membership in production cooperatives of Choram County. A descriptive- correlational research method was used in this study. Research sample include all of women members of rural cooperatives of Choram County and the same number of Non- members. Research tool was a predesigned questionnaire that it's validity was verified using face validity procedure and it's reliability way also verified using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient obtained from a pilot study (from 0.65 to 0.89). The results showed that the mean score of social capital was significantly more in members in comparison to non- members. Also, the result of logistic regression showed that five components i.e. interaction, trust, cooperation, solidarity and participation were significant determinants of women's membership in production cooperatives of study area respectively.