MYTH vs. FACT: Women in Iran
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By: Research Associate Allyson Socha and Communications Associate Cynthia Markarian
MYTH: Women and girls in Iran are treated as second class citizens, barred from everyday activities like driving and serious professional positions. They are effectively restricted from making genuine contributions to Iranian society.
FACT: While institutionalized restrictions against women are an evident and detrimental factor in daily life, Iranian women do not experience many of the invasive restraints on daily life that women in some Arab countries do. Women have contributed to Iranian politics, academia, and professional domains. Moreover, Iranian women have been fighting for their rights since the Islamic revolution and have achieved significant improvements in their daily lives over time.
Women in Iran confront discrimination daily. Some manifestations of this oppression are public in the form of laws such as the mandatory hijab, prohibition of women entering athletic stadiums, and requirement that women obtain permission from their husbands before traveling abroad. Other forms of legal discrimination are less apparent but even more serious, including long prison sentences for feminist activism and the ability for women to divorce their husbands being limited to situations where the male is imprisoned, mentally ill, physically abusive or addicted.
Even still, the status quo for women in Iran is far from the picture of total oppression that many Westerners imagine. Though the image of women in Iran wearing hijab is still a stark contrast to life before the revolution when women wore modern dress and attended co-ed schools, at the same time, opportunities for women have in many important ways improved since 1979.
Education
Gender segregation in schools - a stark contrast to the Pahlavi-era co-education system - was slowly integrated in Iran after the 1979 revolution as part of education reform to align the curriculum with Islamic values. Despite this physical separation, however, Iranian women have still seen marked improvement in their quality of education and literacy due in large part to an increased government focus on education. The administrative prioritization of improvements on educational policy overall benefited female students in Iran, even if that demographic was not the sole focus of reform. These improvements are evident in the rate of adult female literacy, which drastically increased from 24 percent towards the end of the Pahlavi-era in 1976 to 81 percent in 2016. Though this percentage remains lower than female literacy in the United States, which was at 99 percent in 2016, or in Saudi Arabia at 93 percent in 2017, it is on par with the world average and marks significant progress in educating Iranian women.
Beyond literacy and education in general, women’s participation in universities has also seen significant improvement. The percentage of females in any form of higher education increased enormously from 1978 at a mere 3 percent to 59 percent in 2018. In general, since 1996, the gender makeup of Iranian university students has remained at approximately half female. The United States, by comparison, had 59.5 percent female university students as of enrollment in spring 2021. Within the female university student population in Iran, approximately 70 percent of those in science and engineering programs are women. Female representation in academic professions has also increased. Before the Islamic Revolution, women made up only 1.4 percent of faculty members at universities. Today, this has grown to 24 percent, slowly but diligently progressing towards closing the gender disparity in the fields of STEM and academia.
Health and Family Planning
Historically, Iranian women have benefitted from family planning policies both before and after the revolution. In 1967, the Iranian ministry of health initiated a modern family planning program which incorporated public education and professional development into their health programs. In 1988, after the war with Iraq devastated the country’s finances, government leaders were made aware that “the nation’s dwindling resources could not both support the high cost of reconstruction and provide the social and welfare services stipulated by the new constitution.” To alleviate this demand on government services, the Islamic Republic implemented a new national population policy which encouraged two-child households via improved educational programs and free contraceptives. The government also discouraged pregnancy for women outside the ages of 18 and 35, and promoted three to four year intervals between births. Statistics support the effectiveness of these measures; in 1985, Iranian women gave birth to 6.53 children on average, but as of 2000, about 10 years after the 1989 policy was implemented, this average decreased to 2.4 births per woman. The birth rate as of 2020 had decreased even further to an average of 1.7 children, which may be attributed to economic decline and an overall lack of security discouraging men from marriage and children.
Despite a strong recent history of progressive family planning policies in Iran, progress has stalled and even backtracked under the Raisi Administration. On November 1, 2021, the “Rejuvenation of the Population and Support of the Family” bill was approved by the Iranian Guardian Council due to concerns about declining birth and population rates. The bill tightens existing limitations on Iranian women as it further restricts abortions, bars public health-care providers from offering free contraception, and prohibits voluntary sterilization; in addition, it offers more benefits to childbearing families, such as a prohibition on terminating employment because a worker is pregnant or breastfeeding, and comprehensively covers nine full months of maternity leave.
One consistent bright spot in the area of health and family planning for women in Iran, however, has been improved life expectancy due in large part to a government focus on healthcare. These efforts have included the launch of a reformed primary healthcare system and implementation of health houses to improve care in rural Iran and the nation altogether. The average life expectancy of Iranian women increased from 51.7 years in 1971 to 76.9 years in 2020, an annual growth rate of 0.82 percent. Iran has greatly improved on some negative public health indicators including the infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate. The maternal mortality ratio of Iran has declined at a moderate rate and subsequently decreased from the 2003 rate of 39 deaths per 100,000 live births to 16 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017. Simultaneously, the infant mortality rate of Iran has decreased “gradually from 127.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1971 to 11.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2020.”
Professional Opportunities
Today, Iranian women continuously work to improve their presence in the business and academic spheres despite sanctions, war, and economic crises. Over the past three decades, the percentage of women in the workforce has increased from 10.5% in 1990 to 16.8% in 2020. This is still significantly lower than that of Western countries (in comparison, the United States had a female workforce participation rate of 46.3% in 2020), but is evidence of improvement in Iran. The private sector, Iran’s largest employer of women, engaged 76.2% of the female labor force as of the 2016 labor force survey. Within the private sector, women are most represented in the services industry, which is majority female at 52.5%. Other industries compare with 37% women in the medical industry, 27% in university faculty, and 23.4% in the agricultural workforce.
One of the fastest growing economic sectors in Iran, as elsewhere in the world, is technology. This industry in particular has seen increased participation from the female demographic. The women in tech in Iran are not only participating, but are also helping to drive innovation and entrepreneurship. A few examples of these innovators include Nazanin Daneshvar, founder of one of the major Iranian online retail websites Takhfifan, and Aseyeh Hatami, founder of IranTalent.com, an Iranian online recruitment service.
Further accolades achieved by Iranian women in the professional sphere include the only female winner of the Fields Medal in mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani, and the Nobel Peace Prize 2003 winner Shirin Ebadi. These are just two well-known examples of prominent, greatly accomplished women in Iranian society which demonstrate the capability and versatility of female professionals.
The direct participation and broader representation of Iranian women in the media and film industry has also evolved. Beginning in the year 2000, women’s cinema introduced a new form of female involvement with the annual introduction of new women directors. As of 2020, there were over thirty women directors in Iran, some of whom aim to provide commentary on gender equality and diversity through their work. For example, Rakhshandeh Bani Etemad says her work comments on the “universal struggle of the lowest rungs of society,” and Tahmineh Milani portrays the injustices women must face in a patriarchal society. Despite the increased involvement by female film professionals, however, Iranian national television persists in its portrayal of women according to patriarchal standards. One example of these standards is the common theme of women in domestic roles in television dramas. The television series Sun and Moon, Lost Love, Charmed People, and Stranger, for example, portray women as “passive, simple-minded and imposters.” Male characters, in contrast, are typically employed and represented with emphasized masculinity, being strong and assertive.
Opportunities in professional sports are somewhat limited due to women’s rights restrictions, but some women have been able to break out in this field as well. At age 18, Kimia Alizadeh, a taekwondo competitor, became the first woman to win an Olympic medal for Iran in any sport in 2016. For team sports, women have been successfully competing in an array of activities including the national women’s futsal team, which won the championship held by the Asian Futsal Confederation in 2018. Without medals to prove their skills, though, many female athletes face discrimination based on the appropriateness of their participation in more masculine activities or their ability to independently navigate travel and competition for their sport. Restrictions on female participation in sporting events comes in the form of limitations “on their clothing, their coaches and trainers, and more limited access to appropriate facilities, competitive leagues, and matches.” Even still, accomplishments like Alizadeh’s olympic medal and the persistence of female teams to compete on a global landscape continues the push to expand the opportunities for women in professional sports.
In addition to the participation of women in various fields and industries, the pay women earn in these positions is also relevant to understand their progress. Data which was compiled by IranSalary.com, which is Iran’s “first specialized online platform for remunerations,” between April 2017 and March 2018 shows that female laborers in Iran earned an average 27 percent less than their male counterparts. More recently, the Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum, which ranks the severity of a nation’s gender income gap on a scale of one to seven, ranked Iran at a 0.582 in 2021. This is a greater disparity than previous years and is largely attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic which has seemingly undone some progress towards gender equality. Additionally, the wage gap increases with seniority of the work position; “The few women who manage to climb their way up to a management position in a male-dominated system find that they earn as much as 47 percent less than male managers.” The private sector is the largest source of this disparity, and is simultaneously the nation’s largest employer of women.
Government Representation
Since the 1979 revolution, the ability for women to participate in government has been determined by Iranian institutions such as the Guardian Council, which is responsible for verifying the eligibility of candidates for national elections and ratifying legislation, and has had a history of limiting the inclusion of women in the political scene. In 2020, a Guardian Council spokesman explained that there was no explicit legal ban on a female presidency, but the historical basis for denying women the opportunity to run for higher office was in a misinterpretation of a borrowed Arabic word, “Rejal” (as meaning “men”), in the Iranian constitution. Therefore, Iranian women were previously limited to running for parliament, with further restrictions for participation in leadership roles such as the Assembly of Experts, Guardian Council, and Presidential Post; however, as of 2021, the translation of “Rejal” has been amended to mean “men and women.” The removal of these restrictions means women are no longer officially barred from running for high office, including a presidential campaign.
In addition to institutional barriers, broader socioeconomic factors over the past few decades have also hindered women’s ability to make progress in the political sphere. The economic and infrastructural impacts of the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s caused women’s rights to be a low priority during that period and the subsequent upheavals “delayed the growth of women's activism and calls for progressive change.” An opportunity for women to enter the political space came at the beginning of Khatami's presidency in 1997, which sparked the reform movement and strengthened Iranian civil society. As a result, the empowerment of women was prioritized, and these efforts led to an increase of women in deputy and advisory positions. While the end of the reformist era saw reinstated restrictions on civil activities in Iran, the Zeinab Society, an impactful political-religious organization of women in Iran, successfully allied with reformist women and brought about the approval of Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, the first female minister since the revolution, who served as the Iranian Minister of Health from 2009 to 2013.
The presidency of Hassan Rouhani from 2013 to 2021 included further struggle for women in politics. At the end of his presidency, Rouhani was criticized for “breaking his promises to create a women's ministry and appoint three female ministers.” He instead oversaw a decrease in women's representation over his time in office and only included two women in the executive: Massoumeh Ebtekar, as vice president for women and families, and Laya Joneydi, as vice president for legal affairs. It is also of note that these positions did not require approval by the parliament.
Most recently, after the 2021 presidential elections, new president Ibrahim Raisi’s cabinet received parliament approval and was comprised of all conservative men. The appointment of Ensieh KhazAli as Vice President for Women and Family Affairs in September of 2021 constitutes the sole female member of Raisi’s administration.
Today, the number of female lawmakers in Iran is 17 out of 290, which constitutes 5.86 percent of elected seats in parliament. Though this number is less than some Arab nations, such as Morocco which had approximately 17 percent women in parliament in 2016, Iran still ranks above other convservative nations, including Yemen and Lebanon. Though some explicit restrictions of women in government positions have been alleviated -- largely achieved with the reinterpretation of the constitutional use of “Rejal” to include females -- cultural beliefs and gender perceptions still restrict women to roles which address female and familial affairs.
Ongoing Challenges
Despite progress, Iranian women are not silent about their ongoing struggles for greater gender equality. Shahindokht Molaverdi, the previous Vice President of Women and Family Affairs, routinely criticizes the Iranian government for its ignorance of the rights of women; Molaverdi addressed gender segregation in stating, “The world today has reached the conclusion that the separation of men and women is inefficient, unprincipled and unjust,” and “The time has come that women must fulfill their share in [Iran’s] development prospects.” Other Iranian women also protest discriminatory laws through demonstrations in the streets. In August 2006, the “One Million Signatures for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws” campaign emerged as a major feminist force with the aim of filing a petition to demand change of the restrictive regulations on Iranian women. Though the government arrested many demonstrators, members of the movement were successful in promoting a national dialogue about women’s rights in Iran. Following the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, women in Iran progressed their campaigning experience with greater confidence and determination and made several demands of the administration, including reduced censorship of women’s issues and artistic depictions of women, reforms in how activists are treated under the law, and the destigmatization of Iranian feminism in the public sphere. Rouhani verbally supported women’s involvement in politics and other fields, stating in 2016, “The government sees it as a duty to provide the groundwork for women’s capabilities to demonstrate and let them to step on the path of perfection and be able to demonstrate their talents; this way, the gap and disproportion between men and women can be replaced with moderation.”
Unfortunately for all these efforts, after eight years of Rouhani’s government in 2021, the results proved quite underwhelming. His promise to establish the “Ministry of Women’s Affairs” was never fulfilled, and several publications, such as the magazine Zane Ruz ("Today's Women") were banned. Additionally, numerous female journalists and human rights activists were arrested, including Bahareh Hedayat, the co-founder of the “One Million Signatures” campaign, and Deputy for Women and Family Affairs Shahindokht Molaverdi for “encouraging corruption and prostitution and encouraging individuals to commit sexual perversions” due to her support of U.N. Population Fund, which promotes the end to child marriage and access to modern contraceptives for women.
With the election of Ebrahim Raisi on June 18th, 2021, female representation in the political sphere and an overall focus on womens’ rights again appears to be taking a backseat given the ultraconservative nature of the new administration. Despite difficulties, however, and the ongoing discriminatory laws and social practices that Iranian women suffer, an overall hopefull outlook prevails. It is historically evident that when Iranian leaders – both male and female – are committed to the cause of women’s rights, they can make extraordinary advances towards equitable involvement and representation. Many measures must still be taken towards improving gender equality, but despite appearances, Iran is not quite as far behind Western societies in this regard, as many might imagine.
