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Women's Resources and Their Political Efficacy in Iran
Women’s Resources and their Political Efficacy in Iran
By: Mohammad Hossein Panahi
Professor of Sociology; Allameh Tabataba’i University
Many studies reveal that women have lower internal political efficacy than men, which affects their political participation. Surprisingly, it is shown that this gender gap persists despite women’s increasing participation in workforce and higher education. Few efforts have been made to study and explain women’s internal political efficacy in some western countries, such as the United States. However, the situation of internal political efficacy of women in the developing nations, like Iran, is yet to be studied. The aim of this paper is first to find out the level of the internal political efficacy of women in Iran, and then try to explain it through the resources available to them, such as income, political knowledge and free time, and other variables. The data was collected from a sample of about 700 people from the population of the Tehranian women aged 18 and more, using a questionnaire. Our main hypothesis was that the higher the level of the resources of women, the higher the level of their internal political efficacy. Our descriptive findings indicated that from our respondents 25 percent had low, 52 percent had medium, and 23 percent had high level of internal political efficacy. In fact, about 70 percent of our respondents believed that women had equal or higher capacity than men for political activities, which is quite impressive for a developing society. Explanatory findings revealed that the women’s overall resources (including their political knowledge, free time, and income) had significant impact on their feeling of political competence. Other variables, including political attitudes, political experience, religiosity, and reference groups also had significant impact on their internal political efficacy.
Key Words: Political efficacy, Iranian Women, Women’s resources.