Haleh Esfandiari's Blog

Iran Curtails Female Education

August 20, 2012 | 11:47am

Haleh Esfandiari

Why are 36 Iranian universities now barring women from 77 academic fields, including engineering, accounting, education, counseling, and chemistry?

Rather than announcing across the board restrictions on women in higher education, the government has cleverly left it to individual universities to implement these new policies. Universities are acting individually to adopt quota systems favoring men. The goal is to limit the number of women in certain disciplines or to bar them altogether from certain fields of study. Some universities are enforcing single sex classes and are requiring professors to teach the same course twice.

The Ministry of Higher Education has remained inexplicitly silent in the face of these measures, and many interpret this silence as approval. By separating male and female students, university authorities also hope to limit interaction between the sexes.

In recent years, women have been winning more places in universities in competitive, nation-wide exams. These new measures seem intended to redress the balance in men’s favor. So far, no university has adopted a policy of single sex faculty, such as men restricted to teaching male students and women restricted to teaching only female students—although that reversal seems more possible now too. In the early years of the revolution, the regime toyed with the idea of segregating university classes and barred women from some fields of study, including agriculture and veterinary sciences. But segregation proved impractical and was never implemented, and women gradually gained access to all disciplines.

Iran is now reverting to the failed policies of the past. The decision by Qom University, located in a shrine city and the center of religious learning in Iran, not to allow women to study economics, commerce or industrial engineering may not be surprising. But Tehran University’s decision was unexpected. It is Iran’s oldest institution of higher education. It pioneered coeducation when it opened in 1936. Tehran University is now accepting only male students in a number of engineering fields and also in mining, forestry and even mathematics.

What are the politics behind these sweeping new restrictions? Why now? Is it related to the role that women played in the 2009 protests against the disputed presidential election?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government is chauvinist about women generally. Barring women from certain fields of study comes hand-in-hand with the reversal of Iran’s family planning program—one of the most successful in the world. Iran’s Supreme Leader recently described the family planning program as misguided and called on women to have larger families.

But politics may also be a factor in the education restrictions, partly because young educated women were at the forefront of street protests after his contested reelection in 2009. Worldwide, levels of education and activism often overlap. Education can also affect the national social structure. In Iran, for example, the legal age of marriage for girls is 13, but the mean age of marriage is 23. A woman of 23 is likely to have experienced some level of higher education and be less prepared to agree to marry a man less educated than she is.

In 1998, two decades after the Islamic Revolution, Iran was cited as one of the top ten countries worldwide that had closed the gender gap between boys and girls in education. For several years, more than 60 percent of the university student body was female. So what impact will this decision have on the progress achieved in recent years?

After initial hesitation, the post-revolution government built on the foundation laid by the monarchy to provide women with equal access to education at all levels. Traditional families also sought higher education for their daughters because they felt comfortable allowing them to live in other cities to attend universities and live in dormitories or even on their own. Women across the country excelled in university entrance exams. During the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), the fact that 60 per cent of university student body was female was widely seen as a major achievement.

In 2006, a Tehran taxi driver proudly recounted how his daughter was studying at Isfahan University and was sharing an apartment with four other girls. Four young women living alone and unchaperoned in a large and distant city! This would have been unheard before the revolution.

The impact of these recent decisions, which indicate the growing conservative influence, are almost certain to deepen discontent among young women. University degrees are key to employment in an economy where good jobs are scarce. The rate of unemployment among those under thirty already stands at over 20 percent; among women, it is over 28 percent. The decision actually risks mobilizing more women in future protests.

Why is the government reducing gender quotas – reportedly by 30 to 40 percent – for

traditionally accepted fields, such as education, economics, administration, psychology,

library services and literature?

It reflects a fear of educated and powerful women who are aware of their rights

and frustrated about discrimination. Educated women also challenge the culture of men breadwinners and heads of family. The Ahmadinejad government seems to think it can discourage women from pursuing higher education if universities introduce a quota system in favor of men, segregate classes and bar women from many fields of study.

Women may now respond by pursuing higher education through the internet, which the government may have a harder time restricting. Over the last three decades,

Iranian women have shown again and again they can come up with new ways of pursuing their goals and frustrating the government’s best-laid plans.

Read Haleh Esfandiari's chapter on Iran's women's movement in “The Iran Primer”

Haleh Esfandiari is director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of “Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran.”

Tags: Education, Iran, Women

Case of alleged adulteress reflects Iran’s internal divisions

November 17, 2010 | 9:39pm

Haleh Esfandiari

What is Iran trying to do or prove in the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for alleged adultery and later sentenced to hang for complicity in the murder of her husband?

The Ashtiani affair shows once again the internal divisions in Iran. There are those in the regime who wish this whole affair would disappear because they see it as an embarrassment for Iran, and there are those who argue that the government should not cave in to international pressure and are looking for ways to carry out the sentence and hang her. The regime's only concession to international critics was to change her verdict from death by stoning to death by hanging.

As of Nov. 16, Iranian state television had broadcast three separate confessions. Why is Iran giving this case so much attention? Are her confessions credible?

By broadcasting confessions by her, which are certainly coerced, Iran is reacting to the international publicity given to her case. The government wants to say to the world, "She has confessed; she is guilty." By now, the regime should have learned that no one, either in Iran or around the world, finds these television confessions credible. Ashtiani's 'confessions' have only fueled international protests regarding her case by women's movements and by governments and human rights organizations. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil offered in October to take Ms. Ashtiani. He was trying to help the Iranian government to find a face-saving solution out of the quagmire it has created for itself, but the regime rejected his offer.

The government has also arrested her son and two Germans who went to interview him. A court said on Nov. 16 that the Germans had been charged with espionage. Why has this case escalated into an international incident?

The son, Sajjad, was arrested because he had been been talking to the press and was arguing that his mother is innocent. The last straw for the government came when the son met with the two Germans who had gone to interview him. After the meeting the Germans were arrested. They were accused of being journalists, posing as tourists and entering the country under false pretenses. As in several previous cases of detained foreigners and Iranians, the Germans were accused of endangering national security and spying. The same accusations have been made against the two American hikers who have been in an Iranian prison for over a year; a third hiker was released due to illness recently, but she remains accused as well.

On Nov. 2, the White House issued a statement strongly condemning Iran's plans to execute Ashtiani and its treatment of her lawyers and family. Does U.S. or international pressure have any influence on Iran in a case like this?

International pressure makes a big difference and often strengthens the hand of the more pragmatic elements in the regime. In the case of Ms. Ashtiani, as in any other cases involving the violation of human, political and religious rights, condemnation by officials and civil society organizations around the world, helps.

Does this case reflect any broader trends in Iran?

Yes, it reflects the hardening of attitudes in the regime. Since the 2009 presidential elections, many of the the leaders and activists of the reform movement and the Green Movement have been arrested; several have been sentenced to prison terms. The government has also arrested the lawyers who represent the detainees in political and human rights cases. For example Sakineh Ashtiani's lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei fled Iran after he was threatened by the authorities. Her other lawyer, Houtan Kian, was arrested in October. Along with Ms. Ashtiaini and her son, he was forced to appear on one of those television 'confession' spectacles.

Read Haleh Esfandiari's chapter on Iran's women's movement in “The Iran Primer”

Haleh Esfandiari is director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of “Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution” and “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran.”

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The Islamists Are Coming, edited by Robin Wright, surveys the rise of Islamist groups in the wake of the Arab Spring. Often lumped together, the more than 50 Islamist parties with millions of followers now constitute a whole new spectrum—separate from either militants or secular parties. They will shape the new order in the world’s most volatile region more than any other political bloc. Yet they have diverse goals and different constituencies. Sometimes they are even rivals.

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