Iranian gender restrictions in education

A number of Iranian restrictions on women's education have been introduced in recent years by various conservative Iranian groups.

Overview

As of 2006, women accounted for over half of university students in Iran and 70% of Iran's science and engineering students. Such education and social trends are increasingly viewed with alarm by the Iranian conservatives groups. A report by the Research Center of the Majlis warned that the large female enrollment could cause "social disparity and economic and cultural imbalances between men and women."

October 2010 course restriction

In 2010, Iran imposed restrictions on a dozen social studies courses, including women's studies and human rights, on the grounds that "The content of the current courses in the 12 subjects is not in harmony with religious fundamentals and they are based on Western schools of thought."

January 2011 Allameh Tabatabai University announcement

In January 2011, the president of Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran, Sadreddin Shariati, announced that subjects with large numbers of students would be split by gender. Prior to this, university libraries and canteens were already segregated, and male and female students often sat in separate rows in lecture halls. It was claimed that the Iranian public had already been requesting gender segregation in education in some highly religious areas and in the capital; also, such segregation was said to already be in progress in a number of other Iranian universities. Senior cleric Hojatoleslam Mohammad Mohamadian pushed for segregated classes in 2006, and again in 2009; other governmental requests to allow segregation date back over 15 years.

April 2012

Amnesty International reported that in April 2012, university security personnel at the Roudehen Branch of Islamic Azad University beat female students who were not complying with hijab (Islamic dress) standards. They also claimed reports of quotas restricting women’s admission to specific university programs ("designed to reduce women’s access to specific fields of study") implemented by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. Such restrictions on women’s educational choices were said to violate the prohibition on discrimination and Iran’s obligations under international law.

20 August 2012 course ban

Restrictions

On 20 August 2012, an announcement was made by Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology that 36 universities in Iran would be cutting 77 fields of study from the female curriculum, making them male-only fields. The fields chosen include most sciences and engineering, among others. The curriculum change is to begin being implemented for the 2013 school year and the fields of study limitations for women have been added to the university "leaflets". Universities like the Oil Industry University have completely barred women from attending, citing the "lack of employer demand".

The announcement came soon after the release of statistics showing that women were graduating in far higher numbers than men from Iranian universities and were scoring overall better than men, especially in the sciences.

This reasoning was echoed by Isfahan University, which stated that from those that obtained mining engineering degrees "98% of female graduates ended up jobless." The disciplines related to agriculture were also regarded as "unfit" for female students. Therefore, as a consequence of this move, women will not become engineers, nuclear physicists, archaeologists, business graduates and computer scientists in Iran. Additionally, they are also banned from attending the departments of English literature, translation and hotel management. Another reason given was that because of a shortage of available female dormitories, attendance had to be lowered. A comparison was made, however, to the fact that nursing was made a female-only degree in the same announcement.

The possibility of fields of study restrictions was first reported by the Mehr News Agency on 6 August 2012. The news followed the release of the year's entrance exam scores, showing that 60% of university attendees are women, along with test scores of the past few years showing women largely outperforming men. This included 52% of university graduates being women and 68% of science degree graduates being women. These results have caused concern among the senior clerics of the country, who became worried about the "social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates".

Responses

Iran

• Seyed Abolfazl Hassani, a senior Iranian education official, stated in defense of the announcement that, "Some fields are not very suitable for women’s nature, such as agricultural machinery or mining, partly because of the hard work involved in them."

• The policy change was criticized by some Iranian parliamentarians, such as Mohammad-Mehdi Zahedi, head of the Iranian parliament’s education and research committee. However, Kamran Daneshjoo, the science and higher education minister, gave a "guarded response" to the news, saying that the universities would have to state a reason, but also supported the change by explaining that "90% of degrees remain open to both sexes and that single-gender courses were needed to create 'balance'." Zahedi said in response that Daneshjoo is "expected to present himself to parliament to explain this policy".

• Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi wrote to the United Nations in protest of the restrictions, stating that the Iranian government is "trying to limit the active presence of women in society". She has asked for the issue to be added to "Iran's human rights dossier". The letter was then forwarded to UN special rapporteur for Iran Ahmad Shaheed and to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay. Ebadi also added that the purpose of this policy change is to reduce the number of female university attendees to below 50%, down from the current 65%.

International

• The US State Department Spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, said that: "This decision represents a significant regression for women in Iran, who have outnumbered men in universities for over a decade, and will further restrict the ability of Iranian women to find employment." The State Department went on to release a statement urging Iran to "protect women’s rights" and to uphold its "own laws and international obligations which guarantee non-discrimination in all areas of life".

• In a statement to the journal Science, UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky explained that, while on his trip to Iran for the Non-Aligned Movement meeting, Ban Ki-Moon said in a speech that Tehran should focus on the "need for greater access for women in Iran to a broader range of professions and fields of study".

• On 22 September 2012, Human Rights Watch urged Iran to reverse the new policy, claiming that such restrictions are a violation of the international right to education for everyone without discrimination.

Academics

• In a press release on September 5th, the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies stated that, "To impose, in the 21st century, such restrictions on the higher education of Iranian women … is appalling."

• British professor of medicine and author Qanta Ahmed wrote in The New York Post that the policy change is "just another step toward imposing an extreme Islamist ideology central to which is misogyny, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism." However, as a practitioner of Islam, she explained how the viewpoints of the clerics and others in Iran supporting the change in the name of Islam are making a "heinous distortion" of it, as Islam actually "enshrines the rights of women, rights particularly likely to be trampled upon by men." Furthermore, she went on to state that the reasons behind the change are not religious, but political and that the change is not representative of Islam, but of Islamism.

• Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, suggested in a Chronicle of Higher Education article that women may now turn to the internet to receive online educations, as the women of Iran have shown "again and again they can come up with new ways of pursuing their goals".

• Pakistani author and journalist Bina Shah in The Express Tribune compared the universities' policy change as being the hallmark of a patriarchal system, and that support of patriarchal attitudes and negative actions toward women should be seen as a "mental illness". In addition, she stated that feminism should be seen as a "way of encouraging and empowering women to rise and stand side-by-side with men as their partners, helpmates and friends."

• In The Journal of Turkish Weekly, Betül Durmus considered how the change in university policy is a representation of the sexual division of labor and how it is a discriminatory ideology that seeks to "enslave" women, while idly "granting" them a few opportunities.

See also

• Higher education in Iran
• Women in Iran
• Women's rights in Iran
• Hawza