Tag: education

Missed education opportunities for women under the mullahs’ rule

The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) recommends that economic and social policies should “strengthen education, training and skills development to enable women to respond to new opportunities in the changing world of work.”

The Iranian regime, however, has been moving in the opposite direction and systematically restricted women’s educational opportunities since taking power.

Although Iranian girls have overcome the obstacles and pushed their way through the universities and made up more than 50 per cent of university and college graduates over the past ten years, the Iranian regime has also made its utmost effort to limit and eliminate their opportunities for education, something that is crucial to women’s economic empowerment.

Women are banned from studying in more than 77 college fields which limits and undermines their economic participation and empowerment.

A government official has acknowledged that 2 million girls have graduated from Iran’s universities in the past 20 years, comprising over 60 percent of college graduates, but unemployment rate among women has increased. (The state-run ISNA news agency, February 13, 2016)

The clerical regime’s misogynistic policies have also brought about widespread illiteracy among women and girls. Some two-thirds of more than 11 million illiterates in Iran are women and girls.

Illiteracy rates among girls and women in Iran have become a cause for concern, with the situation being grave in over 40 cities. (The official website of the Iranian Majlis, December 7, 2015)

In summer 2016, the National Statistics Center of Iran declared that the average unemployment rate for young women in Iran reached 47.3 per cent in summer 2015. (Euronews – July 22, 2015)