2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2012.10.031
Management Science Letters 3 (2013) 291–296
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Management Science Letters
homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl
A social work study on the impact of different factors on respect to women
Gholam Reza Tajbakhsha*, Mohammad Reza Iravanib, AllahyarArabmomenic and HajarJannesarid
aAssistant professor in Sociology, University of Grand Ayatollah Brojerdi, Brojerd, Iran
bAssistant Professor, Department of Social Work, Islamic Azad University, Khomeinishahr Branch, Daneshjou Blvd, Isfahan, Iran
cDepartment of Human Science of Islamic Azad University Khomeinishahr Branch, Isfahan, Iran
dMS Student, Counseling Department, Islamic Azad University of Khomeinishahr, Khomeinishahr Branch, Daneshjou Blvd, Iran
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Received April 25, 2012
Received in revised format
20 October 2012
Accepted 22 October 2012
Available online
October 25 2012
Quality of life plays an important role on people's life style and there are many studies to
determine important factors influencing it. In this paper, we study the effect of different factors
influencing respect for women including upbringing children, strengthening families,
participation and community involvement, women's talent political participation increase,
women's confidence in accepting responsibility and consent of the docility of marriage. The
proposed study of this paper selects a sample from all female students who are enrolled in
educational studies in Shiraz university, Iran and using Pearson correlation test, we measure the
relationship between seven mentioned items with respect for women. The results indicate that
except one case, participation and community involvement, all other factors significantly
increase respect for women.
© 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Quality of life
Women's confidence
Respect for women
Women's talent
Political participation
1. Introduction
Quality of life plays an important role on people's life style and there are many studies to determine
important factors influencing quality of life. According to Shrier and Shrier (2009) there have been
dramatic changes in women's work and personal/family lives in many countries including the United
States and these changes have particularly influenced white, middle-class women and women in
medicine and other professions. Having a mutual respect in family relationship plays an essential
role on building good and stable family partnership and in the absence of mutual respect we may
expect some unwelcome incidents. Maghsoudi et al. (2004), for instance, reported some statistics on
women victims of self-inflicted burns in Tabriz, Iran. According to their survey, From 20 March 1998
through 20 March 2002, a total of 412 cases of self-burning were reported to the burn center of East
Azarbaijan, located in the city of Tabriz, Iran. These people were mostly young and the average age
was 25.5 years and 99% of self-burning cases were female and married, housekeepers and illiterate
292
and poor. Nearly three quarter of them had impulsive suicidal intention in their lives and the primary
motivation was marital conflict. Therefore, we can conclude that it is important to learn more on how
to increase mutual respect among families (Edwards et al., 2009; Protschky, 2009). Paranjape et al.
(2010) investigated family violence and associated help-seeking behavior among older African
American women and determined some barriers for help them including negative encounters with
physicians, lack of trust in the system and dearth of age-appropriate resources.
One of important factors, which could influence family relationship is to increase women's talent.
Ibeh and Debrah (2011) extended the talent development literature by studying the level of
institutionalization of female talent development (FTD) practices in African B-schools, comparing
this with the international best practice. They reported that African B-schools, like their international
counterparts, did not have widely adopted FTD practices, and their female–male ratio was less than a
third of graduate management programs. They also investigated the role of indigenous and
multinational enterprises in supporting FTD. Tatli et al. (2012) emphasized the lack of research,
which combines talent management, utilization of female talent and gender quotas and explained the
link between talent shortages and under-utilization of female talent. They showed the relevance of
gender quotas as a talent management strategy for both local and multinational companies.
Sevinç and Garip (2010) performed an investigation on the relationship between parents’ child raising
styles and their marital harmony with children at age 5-6 who were attending preschool in Istanbul.
They studied upbringing styles in three categories including authoritative, authoritarian and
permissive. Based on the results they concluded that there was a positive and meaningful relationship
between authoritative upbringing and marital harmony. In addition there was a negative relationship
between authoritarian and permissive upbringing and marital harmony. They concluded that as the
parent's authoritative style scores increase the marital harmony scores also increases. Besides,
according to their findings, as the authoritarian and permissive scores on the child raising styles
increase their marital harmony scores may also decrease.
Susinos et al. (2008) performed an investigation in Cantabria, Spain, on reconstructing the history of
women's education in Spain during the twentieth century, based on the school life histories of three
women from the same family. Sar et al. (2010) discussed the relative importance of expanding home
visitation services to incorporate strengthening family relationships for the benefit of children. They
explained that home visiting programs substantially address risks of maltreatment associated with the
mother and infant through providing services such as medical care, education/vocational support, and
training on positive infant parenting practices. They performed a research on the effect of these
relationships for children's wellbeing by considering some examples of evidence-based programs to
strengthen these relationships.
Anthopoulou (2010) discussed a relative flourishing in the Greek countryside of small women’s
businesses engaged in the production of local traditional agrofood products and the primary question
was “to what extent do these women perceive their business more as a means of supplementing
family income than as a point of departure for a personal professional career?” The results of the
survey carried out in the Peloponnese (2006–2007) indicated that these were small individual
businesses utilizing local resources including farm production, traditional recipes and family labor.
Brook et al. (2012) investigated reunification outcomes of children of alcohol or other drug involved
parents who were placed in foster care and received the Strengthening Families Program as part of
their child welfare service intervention. They reported that the Strengthening Families Program
participants were significantly more likely to reunify families. Liljestrand and Reatanak Sambath
(2012) analyzed the evolution of some societal and health system factors based on recent national and
international reports in Cambodia. The maternal mortality ratio fell from 472 per 100,000 live births
in 2000–2005 to 206 in 2006–2010. The most important factors have included peace and stability,
G.R. Tajbakhsh et al. / Management Science Letters 3 (2013)
293
improved primary education, especially for girls, economic growth and poverty reduction, improved
roads, improved access to information on health and health services via TV, radio and cellphones,
and increased ability to communicate with and within the health system.
Martín-Fernández et al. (2009) analyzed the impact of work–family conflict as a reason for minor
occupational accidents suffered by working women. They performed a survey on working women in
the Madrid region, who had suffered a minor occupational accident in 2004 and reported that nearly
half of the women with children believed the stress and fatigue caused by trying to combine work and
family played a part in the accident. Additionally, 50% of the women suffered after-impact because
of the accident; children had to change their routine in almost 1 in 4 cases; nearly a quarter of the
respondents said their work situation had been temporarily modified. This recommends for policies
that encourage men and employers to contribute more to solve work–family conflicts.
In this paper, we study different factors influencing respect towards family and their engagement in
family oriented businesses. The organization of this paper first presents seven hypotheses in section 2
and section 3 presents details of our findings. Finally, concluding remarks are given in the last to
summarize the contribution of the paper.
2. The proposed study
The proposed study of this paper considers the following seven hypotheses,
1. There is a meaningful relationship between upbringing children and respect for women.
2. There is a meaningful relationship between strengthening families and respect for women.
3. There is a meaningful relationship between positive participation and community involvement
and respect for women.
4. There is a meaningful relationship between women's talent and respect for women.
5. There is a meaningful relationship between political participation and respect for women.
6. There is a meaningful relationship between increase women's confidence in accepting
responsibility and respect for women.
7. There is a meaningful relationship between consent of the docility of marriage and respect for
women.
The proposed model of this paper is implemented on one of Iranian banks branches located in Tehran
which is the capital city of Iran. The sample size is calculated as follows,
2
2
/ 2 e
N Z p q
×
= α , (1)
where N is the sample size, p =1− q represents the probability, zα / 2 is CDF of normal distribution and
finally ε is the error term. For our study we assume 0.5, / 2 1.96 = = p zα and e=0.99, the number of
sample size is calculated as N=98. We have distributed 125 questionnaire and received 120 ones. All
data have been investigated using SPSS software package using Pearson correlation test.
294
3. The results
In this section, we present details of our investigation using Pearson correlation test on all seven
hypotheses.
3.1. Relationship between upbringing children and respect for women
The first hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between upbringing children and
respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.096 and the level of significance
is 0.041. Therefore, we can conclude that there is a positive and meaningful relationship between
upbringing children and respect for women.
3.2. Relationship between strengthening families and respect for women
The second hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between strengthening
families and respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.084 and the level of
significance is 0.024. Therefore, we can conclude that there is some positive and meaningful
relationship between strengthening families and respect for women.
3.3. Relationship between community involvement and respect for women
The third hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between community
involvement and respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.185 and the
level of significance is 0.065. Therefore, we cannot conclude that there is any strong positive and
meaningful relationship between community involvement and respect for women when the level of
significance is five percent. However, when the level of significance is discounted to 10% we can say
there is some positive relationship between these two figures.
3.4. Relationship between women's talent and respect for women
The third hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between women's talent and
respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.812 and the level of significance
is 0.024. Therefore, we can conclude that there is a strong, positive and meaningful relationship
between women's talent and respect for women when the level of significance is five percent.
3.5. Relationship between political participation and respect for women
The fifth hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between political participation
and respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.159 and the level of
significance is 0.014. Therefore, we may conclude that there is some positive and meaningful
relationship between political participation and respect for women when the level of significance is
five percent.
3.6. Relationship between women's confidence and respect for women
The sixth hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between strengthening families
and respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.812 and the level of
significance is 0.024. Therefore, we can conclude that there is a strong positive and meaningful
relationship between strengthening families and respect for women.
G.R. Tajbakhsh et al. / Management Science Letters 3 (2013)
295
3.7. Relationship between the docility of marriage and respect for women
The sixth hypothesis of this survey is associated with the relationship between the docility of
marriage and respect for women. Pearson correlation test has been calculated as 0.184 and the level
of significance is 0.006. Therefore, we can conclude that there is a strong positive and meaningful
relationship between strengthening families and respect for women.
The results indicate that except one case, participation and community involvement, all other factors
significantly increase respect for women.
4. Conclusion
We have presented an empirical study to find the relationship between different factors for respect for
women. The study designed a questionnaire and distributed among a sample university female
students. The results of our survey have been analyzed using Pearson correlation ratios. Based on the
results of this survey, we can conclude that upbringing child, strengthening families, women's talent
political participation increase, women's confidence in accepting responsibility and consent of the
docility of marriage. However the survey has not found any supporting data to believe there is any
relationship between participation and community involvement and respect towards women.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank all female students who kindly participated in our survey and helped
us perform this survey.
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