The purpose of this article is to study the problems facing the girls and
women between 18 and 50 years of age in the city of Mashhad. The number of
the subjects was 470, and sampling was done in two stages and randomly and
based on a reasonable proportion. The problems were described using foul-
indices: absolute depravation, relative depravation, general depravation and self
actualization deficiency. In the statistical society under study, the typical
woman was about 31 years old, housewife, belonging to a lower middle class.
whose husband had only one wife, completing grade 10 of high school, with an
average of two children, whose first child was born ten years ago. The subjects
described their problems to be economic, social, cultural, legal and natural, and
in that order. They considered themselves as deprived from all the three forms
of depravity, deprived from an economical point of view, deprived from others'
support and deprived from educational opportunities, and in that order. As the
ages of women in the sample increases, the degree of their depravity increases
loo, while the degree of their absolute depravity is directly linked with tl7eir
education. They consider studying as an escape from their problems, most ol'
which are economic. An improvement in the present economic state has the
greatest role in decreasing all forms of depravity, and the father's level of
education, has the greatest reverse relationship with selfactUcili/.ation deficiency
in unmarried cirls and women.