Women Banned From Universities In Iran

Republished from PhillyD(dot)TV

Not being able to play football with the boys just sucks, but not being able to grow up and go off to a university is just plain sex-discrimination. That’s exactly what Iran has been up when it decided to officially approve of female students being barred from more than 70 university degree courses according to the Telegraph.

This obviously goes beyond not fair which is why Iran’s most celebrated human rights campaigner, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, demanding a UN investigation of Iran’s plan to have 36 universities make 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year “single gender” and exclusive to men.

It’s very silly, to say the least, especially since women have outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year’s university entrance exam. It almost appears as though limiting this trend of somewhat better-educated women is a reaction to a possible fear that this would disrupt the country’s traditional male-dominated attitude concerning the it’s religious leaders. It very well seems that the older clerics of Iran’s theocratic regime have become worried about the social side-effects of the rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.

Knowledge is absolute power and keeping the women of Iran uneducated, married and pregnant is just easier for the men to remain in it.

English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management are just some of the subjects that will now be off limit to female undergrads.

The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a ‘lack of employer demand’ even though the real reason is an agenda to keep the female students uneducated, completely weakening the Iranian feminist movement in its campaign against discriminatory Islamic laws.

“[It] is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena,” Ebadi, a human rights lawyer exiled in the UK says in a letter to Ban Ki Moon, the UN secretary general, and Navi Pillay which was also sent to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. “The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights.”

Barring anyone rom education is one of the worst things anyone can do to someone since all the possibilities one could have in life and the ability to think and reason all stem from learning whether it’s through a vast amount of experience or at the university. It’s definitely a shame how anyone could can consider doing this to anyone.