identifying strategies for strengthening the social identity of women in educational institutions

international competition for having a greater contribution in the world is ever increasing, thus human resource management plays an important role. in a knowledge-based economy, an all-out participation of women in different social arenas promises optimal utilization of all human resource potentials. in this respect, iran has experienced an extensive presence of women in its higher education. generally, the stronger the social identities of women, the better will the national objectives, as depicted in the country's development plan, be realized. therefore one of the essential challenges of iranian managers is to reinforce the social identity in higher education institutions which train future human resource of the country. in order to identify the strategies of reinforcing social identity, the university of tehran and qazvin azad university are chosen as research sample and data is collected through interviews and questionnaires. twenty people are interviewed from each university and another 419 fill out a questionnaire. this research takes advantage of both quantitative and qualitative methods. the research findings indicate that the mean of the sense of national identity equals 3.61 for university of tehran whereas this figure stands at 3.87 for qazvin azad university. qualitative analysis of data suggest that physical, spatial and symbolic separation of girls’ and boys’ identities leads to a feeling of disappointment and frustration in girls and is detrimental to their self confidence, while destroying it. the lack of ability to link different identities is considered as one of the main causes of failure in balancing different social roles. consequently, this gives rise to unidimensionality of girls and a poor self-esteem. in the light of this, presenting women who have succeeded in positively relating different identities is a way to reinforce and strengthen identity in women. accordingly, the priorities of identity management strategies in universities are as follows: 1. aggregation, 2. combination, 3. division, 4. omission. human being has a folded character, it doesn't only possess one identity but rather it is made up of numerous complex identities. this is further complicated as humans can simultaneously hold social identity, corporate identity and individual identity. these identities are relative and are subject to change over time. this paper aims to identify and analyze dynamics of women in organizations, especially educational institutions, thus offering solutions for identity management.