Protection of Environment and women’s social position in Iran1 (A Community Level Study)

The article addresses the mutual relationship between environmental improvements and improvement in social status of women. The main question of this article is: Are there any relationships between improvement in environment protection and promotion in the situation of women? The theoretical framework includes Hatfield’s view about the existence of communities between the public and private spheres on one hand and the division of labor theory by gender on the other. Answering the question the documents of some environmental projects in Iran have been chosen. The goal of these projects was to protect environment through local communities and non-governmental organizations’ participation. Content analysis is the method has been selected for implementing the research. A reverse questionnaire was prepared for data collection. The population includes 61 projects in various fields and locations throughout the country. The data indicates some kind of co-variance between the two variables namely environmental improvements and the social status of women in local communities.