Representation of housewives in Iranian cinema in the 90th

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

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Department of Social Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22059/jisr.2024.328128.1229

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how housewives are represented in Iranian cinema in comparison with their real situation. According to the Iran’s Sensus in 2016, the majority of the Iranian female population (63.2%) are housewives. The trend of increasing literacy and higher education among women and on the other hand the relative stability of women's employment shows that many of housewives, are educated and have higher university degrees. that the quality of life of these women has improved . In this article, by documenting the social growth of housewives in Iran, The theoretical literature used in this article to analyze Lopata theory.the media seems to preserve and strengthen the existing values in society and reflect the dominant values at the cultural level. The image of women in the media in general is inferior and this inferiority is exacerbated for housewives in comparison with employed women. In this research, textual analysis method and Saussure’s semiotic technique have been used, we used both syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis techniques to discover the obvious and hidden meanings of the text. In this respect, number of six movies made in the 90s were analyzed. The criterion for selecting the movies was either that the main character of movie was a housewife or that the subject matter of it was about housekeeping. The most important findings of the study are that, firstly, Iranian housewives are in fact protesting against their unjust situation in the family and want to have an independent financial source and the cooperation of men in housekeeping activities. Second, statistical data show an increase in higher education among Iranian housewives that has improved their quality of life. However, the representation of these women in the analyzed movies is still stereotypical and inferior.



Keywords: women, housewives, representation, cinema, femenism, film

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Quarterly of Social Studies and Research in Iran

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 12 June 2024

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