In a meeting discussing the legal grounds for women’s political participation, it was revealed that the Iranian regime ranks embarrassingly low even in the Middle East with regards to women’s political participation.
The meeting took place on October 21, 2015 in Tehran, at the Sociology Association of Iran. Shahnaz Sajjadi, member of the Ministry of Justice’s central Lawyers Guild and secretary of the legal working group of the Iranian Hope Foundation, made the above revelation in a lecture on Women’s Political Participation in Iran’s Domestic Laws.
She acknowledged, “We must know that there is a long distance between Iran and other world countries with respect to women’s political participation, because Iranian women make up an average political participation of 4% while women in other countries have between 20 to 40% presence.”
Sajjadi added, “As for women’s quantitative participation, Iran ranks 141 among 170 countries and 14 among 16 Middle East countries.”
She said three years ago, a policy was suggested and adopted at the Islamic counties’ inter-parliamentary union conference to compensate for women’s small presence, obligating Iran to implement it as a progressive policy until 2015 and consider a 25% quota for women in the parliament. “Unfortunately, this policy has not got anywhere so far. It did not receive enough votes when confronted by those who argued for qualification (of parliamentary deputies).”
(State-run ISNA news agency, October 21, 2015)
