Structural Inequality and State-Sanctioned Oppression of Women
Gender-Based Discrimination Under Iranian Law” is the title of the NCRI Women’s Committee’s report to CSW70, as it focuses on “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.”
The religious dictatorship ruling Iran is one of the few political systems in the world to have institutionalized discrimination against women systematically across all levels of its legislative framework.
At a time when the world is moving toward the abolition of the death penalty, and when the number of women executed in other countries remains in the single digits, the religious dictatorship ruling Iran set a new record of brutality in 2025 by executing 65 women.
The fundamental question is why the fate of these women ends at the gallows.
The answer cannot be found solely in the solitary confinement cells of Qarchak or Evin prisons, nor in the psychological condition of the victims themselves. Rather, it must be sought in legal texts that define “woman” not as a free human being, but as the property of men and a matter of so-called religious expediency. Every knot tightened on the noose of an Iranian woman was first woven into the most foundational laws of this regime.
The execution of 65 women in 2025 is the logical outcome of a structure in which “being a woman” is not recognized as a human identity but rather treated as an existence subordinate to men.
The constitution of the religious dictatorship blocked the path to equality from the very outset. The Civil Code sidelines women by cutting their economic worth and legal credibility in half. Family law endorses child marriage and enforces dead-end divorce regulations to keep women dependent, while the Penal Code, monstrous in nature, takes revenge on women who challenge these barriers, condemning the weakest and most isolated among them to death.
To substantiate this argument, we will examine step by step the obstacles embedded in the clerical regime’s laws that prevent women from accessing justice.
In this booklet, prepared for CSW70, the NCRI Women’s Committee demonstrates, through a meticulous examination of the clerical regime’s laws, how the mullahs have systematically sealed off access to justice for Iranian women through layers upon layers of misogynistic legislation.
The review theme of CSW70 is “Women’s full and effective participation and decision making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls (agreed conclusions of the sixty-fifth session).”
Therefore, in chapters 2 and 3 of this report, you will read about the growing level of violence against women in Iran and whopping gender gap depriving of the most educated women of Iran from the opportunities they deserve.
