An Analysis of the Socio-political Factors Influencing Women’s Participation in the National Parliamentary Election in Iran

Subject Areas : Iranian Sociological Review

Nariman Bavarsad Omidian ¹ , Mohammad Hadi Mansour lakoorej ² , Zahra Soltani Larkani ³

1 - Ph.D. in Political Sciences
2 - Faculty Member of Islamic Azad University, Chalus Beranch
3 - PhD Student, Mysore University, India

Received: 2015-01-31 Accepted : 2015-01-31 Published : 2012-06-01

Keywords: Female participation, political participation, electoral process, Election, women,

Abstract :

This study questions why this is so and analyses the factors that prevent women from participating in the parliamentary election in Iran. The purpose of this research is to study the An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Women’s Participation in the Parliamentary election in Iran. It focuses on socio-political factors influencing the participation of women as electorate in the five General Elections between 1991 and 2008.This became necessary because fundamentally women’s participation in politics begins with awareness as a part of the electorate. . The present study from the aim point of view is functional and it is descriptive-correlation from the method view of data collection due to the relation between research variables and one of its significant advantages is the capability of generalizing its results. In this study, the statistical population consists of all women who participated in five National parliamentary Elections in Masjedsoliman city in Iran during the period of 1991-2008. The statistical sample of this research includes 495 women who participated in five National parliamentary Elections in Masjedsoliman city in Iran. For each period 99 women will form the sample. This method ensures adequate allocation of the available sample. In order to gather data has used two questionnaires which as: Demographic information, participation of women in politics. For analyzing the data, descriptive statistics (Mean, Standard Deviation…) and inferential statistics (Khido and Creamer Correlation Coefficient, Krukal-Wallis Test and Mann-Whitney U Test) were applied. Fundamentally, more women were available as sample population for statistical testing so essential to make this a cross-sectional data analysis thesis which was also longitudinal. There is comparative study to show that all over the world women have entered the socio-political ranks and face high political organizational duties. In Iran, women do participate in the middle and micromanagement but their progress in parliamentary election, decision making and policy making has not been immense. The formal statistics show that half of the populations of Iran are women. So, it is necessary that they participate in social, cultural and economic domain to bring about change and sustain new development in the society.