Curbs on Iran female students take effect

[pampango]

In 2012, 60 per cent of those who passed the national college entrance exam were women

Thirty-six universities across Iran have banned women from 77 different majors, including accounting, counselling, and engineering, for the school year that begins on Saturday, Iran's Mehr news agency reported in August. There was no official reason given for the move, but Iranian officials have expressed alarm in recent months about the country's declining birth and marriage rates, seen as partially caused by women's rising educational attainment in the last two decades.

Last week the minister of science, research and technology, Kamran Daneshjou, was quoted as aying authorities in the Islamic republic "welcome the establishment of one-gender universities, schools for only men or women." He said that was the direction "our religion envisions for us."

Daneshjou dismissed Western criticism of Iran's steps, saying: "The angrier Western media gets, the more we realise we are moving in the right direction."

In August, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, argued in a letter to the UN that the closure of certain academic fields to women was part of a push by the Iranian government to stifle "women's presence in the public arena".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201292211424417429.html

"Keep 'em barefoot, uneducated and pregnant." Always ironic when 'our' right-wingers and 'their' right-wingers support similar social agendas even though they see each other as mortal enemies.

[aquart]

1. They are destroying the lives of some very smart women.

I really don't think we have to worry about their nukes. I have complete confidence in their screwing up the science.

[leveymg]

2. The more we isolate, embargo and threaten Iran, the worse this kind of shit will get.

In wars and in build-up to wars, the most repressive Right-wing elements are always empowered. That has happened here, too.

[aquart]

3. Yup.

We just make it harder for surviving #iranelection people to succeed in any way.