WUNRN
Women's Learning Partnership
IRAN - LIMITS OF ACCESS FOR
WOMEN'S EDUCATION - MORE UNIVERSITY SEGREGATED CLASSES & STUDY RESTRICTIONS
August
16, 2012
- In
recent weeks, Iran has taken significant action to segregate university
classes, including closing certain majors to women entirely. Following
the release of university entrance exam results for the upcoming academic year,
36 universities announced that they will bar women from pursuing 77 fields of
study, such as engineering, accounting, education, counseling, and chemistry.
Additionally,
liberal arts programs including economics, administration, psychology, library
sciences, and literature will begin reducing gender quotas by 30 - 40
percent.
Following
the contested 2009 presidential elections that sparked a protest movement not
seen since the 1979 revolution, Iran has focused on gender segregating classes
at universities, which have long been seen as a hotbed of political dissent.
Science Minister Kamran Daneshjoo has called the segregation effort a top
priority to protect morality. Iran’s parliamentary commission on education
and research has summoned Daneshjoo to explain the recently instated barriers
to women’s full access to education.
This
move is a significant rollback for women’s rights and educational gains, as
women constitute the majority of college graduates, and have outnumbered men at
universities for more than a decade. Gender apartheid and field of study
restrictions at Iranian universities will no doubt harm the quality of
education for female students, as well as job prospects, and have adverse
implications for the next generation of college applicants.