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Iran Universities To Ban Women From 77 Fields of Study
New submitter jasper160 writes "An August 20th, 2012 announcement from Iran places restrictions on female university students. Iran will be cutting 77 fields of study from the female curriculum, making them male-only fields. Science and engineering are among those affected by the decree. '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. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.' The announcement came soon after the release of statistics showing that women were graduating in far higher numbers than men from Iranian universities and were scoring overall better than men, especially in the sciences. Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women."
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote to the UN that this effort 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,"
I'm sure if the world scorns them strongly enough on this they'll come around on human rights issues.
/is sarcasm dead? ok I'll turn out the lights.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Apparently lowering women to the level men want them to be is easier than raising men to the level of the women.
This is what you get when you base your life on what you imagine your invisble friend in the sky wants you to do.
The Iranian people are historically a fairly progressive bunch. Cutting off women who have become wage earners, those on their way, and the modernization of that country is going to seriously piss of the population. I see another revolution in their very near future.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
Too much education means bad attitude for degrading sex and jobs, much less extra kids for clearing minefields.
My opinion might come from living in a "western" country, but I just don't get why some countries seem to want to stay in the dark ages.
Are they oblivious to the fact that their region as once the "mecca" of science and math?...and maybe could be again if they tried?
98% of them might be jobless in Iran, but elsewhere in the world, an education is worth something, regardless of whether you dangle or not. Perhaps what Iran is really saying is "We have too many women in our country, and because we do not wish to reproduce, we would like to offer them to your country."
So, what's your country doing to get these women out of Iran and into a productive job near you?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The ancient play Lysistrata has an answer to this problem. I couldn't think of a more deserving bunch of fellows to end up on the losing end of such a strategy.
I have worked in both a female dominated field (child psychology) and a male dominated field (software engineering). Teams are always better with a touch of gender balance. Every single time.
I find it interesting that the primary reason cited is that women can't jet jobs in the industry, so there is no point sending them through school.
Contrast this to India, where many/most women have been going to school for years, but for traditional/cultural reasons, end up as home makers, and very seldom take long-term careers.
I'm not defending either culture, but at least Iran is being honest about it's sexist traditions. India - not so much.
I have 2 daughters. While the USA still has a long way to go towards full gender equality, I'm grateful that fate has me raising them here in the USA rather than in Iran.
Ultimately this will backfire on the insecure men who rule Iran. They are afraid of empowering women but countries that do will run circles around them.
When I went to university we didn't even have 77 fields of study.
Now, you kids get off my lawn.
I say that for one decade, you place the same restrictions on men that you have on women, and allow women to have the rights of men.
That'll learn 'em.
Hard to fault a system that runs on "majority rule". If that's what the People want then that's what they get. Maybe the Iranian women should do like the U.S. women and protest for the right to vote. (Of course Democrat President Wilson responded by throwing them in prison. So much for free speech.)
I often hear "If you don't like the U.S. then leave" spatted at me. How difficult would it be for Iranian women to leave? Of course nobody really wants to leave their home, so the solution is pretty much DOA.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Well then, the US government better hurry up then with its plans to invade Iran, because, god forbid, it may become a democracy. Again. The US and UK can't stand that.
You can't handle the truth.
Cultures that are more passive-aggressive about their misogyny totally get away with it.
Exempli gratia, the gender pay gap that we see in "civilized," western societies.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I believe Romney has that process patented already.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
This is the same UN that seats Iran on Human Rights organizations to pronounce judgements on free countries. That sees nothing hilarious about appointing Iran to their Commission on Women's Rights. This is the organization this Nobel Laureate turns to for help? Does this poor fool not understand what the U.N. is?
The United Nations was created as a Parliment of Tyrants; by, of and for the unfree hellholes of the world to use as their plaything and propaganda tool. And to siphon as much money out of the 1st world as possible of course by laying on the social justice pity party bull crap heavy and thick. Think about it. When it was created the vast majority of the world's nation states were unfree hellholes, most with a single dicator for life in charge. The people who designed it knew that to be so and explicitly made it one nation state one vote with no counterbalance, no minimum standard of human rights or political freedom to receive full voting rights, no nothing. So the only conclusion to draw from that is the current disfunctional body we see is what they planned on creating. We should then ask some pointed questions:
1. Why? Why did they do what they did. What were their goals? We they simply incompetent on that epic a scale? Doubtful.
2. What now? Is there any point to remaining in the U.N.? Is there any possibility of reform? Really; considering the majority of votes in the General Assembly are still wielded by tyrants and the Security Council is, due to unfree hellholes having a veto, incapable of meaningful action of any kind?
3. What different organizational structure could provide a more useful forum for International cooperation?
Perhaps if this lady were to use the media access granted by her Nobel Prize to instead call for fixing the U.N. we might have a body with the political will to put political pressure on unfree hellholes around the world. But asking the current U.N. to act against it's majority is unlikely to be productive.
Democrat delenda est
Of course, anyone pointing out in the West that the religion (and region) is becoming increasingly radicalized has committed the ultimate sin of political incorrectness. We must pretend that all Muslims are peace-loving, reasonable, people who just love and respect women. The idea that the medieval, violent, and intolerant strain of the religion is becoming more and more mainstream in the Middle East and Asia every day MUST NOT be spoken of publicly.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I know that this comment comes from the perspective of the USA, but I am starting to understand why the Iranian elite are called the REPUBLICAN Guard.
1) Want to make me mad? Announce 77 of fucking something then not detail what those 77 things are! Argh!
2) Provided that "Statician" isn't one ofthose 77 listed, I think that is where I would go if I was a women. Then just tell the guys some made up BS, know they won't know the difference, and volia 77 courses now open to women again.
Of course, "Lyin' about statistics.... that's a stonin'" so maybe not.
1) offer asylum to any women from Muslim countries that oppress women
2) put them up at the Farm
3) give a crash course training them in strategy, tactics, self-defense, hand-to-hand, ordnance and weapons... paramilitary and MacGyver stuff.
4) offer incentives for them to return to said oppressive Muslim countries– say, if they try to overthrow the regime, promise air and defensive support, weapons and billions of dollars in aid for rebuilding if they successful.
.
.
.
*) Reduce domestic defensive spending, cut back on military presence in Middle East
*+1) PROFIT!!!
I didn't recognize Todd Akin as being an Iranian name, but the nature of the thinking seems about the same.
Sounds like something a bunch of stoners might say... oh wait, what?
But the flip side is that if women stay more "private" and at home, kids and families benefit. American physical and mental health has been getting worse and worse as both parents usually work and start eating crap. Now everybody is obese. Everybody is busy and stressed so they spend less quality time with the rest of the family. Kids start hanging out with bad kids. Divorce is still 50% last time I checked. Stress disorders abound.
Yes, but why do women have to be the ones to stay home? Aside from the first 6 months or so of nurturing, any household task that can be handled by a woman could be handled by a man. Having some kind of work/life balance is good. Dumping all those responsibilities on an individual just because of their gender or some historical notion of roles is unjust.
It is mind-blowing to blame Christians for what Muslims do.
With a brush of the same breadth, I can point to the 100,000,000 deaths caused by Marxism and say "this is what you get when you don't believe in God"
If you want to know what Christians actually believe, you should hear them.
www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html
The link above does not deal with female education, but it deals with totalitarian theocracy, which is one of the underlying problems in Iran.
Yet, why don't we allow women to get Football scholarships or serve on the front lines of combat as we do men? Do we pay women the same rates as men for the same jobs and education? Why do racial minorities get preference for college? Why aren't women equal in the factories doing hard labor, except when we needed them in World War II?
It's no secret Iran is behind us in social evolution, as they are in many areas. That doesn't mean the people don't have the will or desire to change. The idiots who demand we put sanctions on them should look right in the mirror.
NO, Islams not opressive towards women.
Insha'Allah! (/sarc) Seriously, considering how rabidly anti-gay Iran's mullahs are, they sure seem to love a good ole' sausage fest; perhaps they ought to find closets to hide in that haven't been built with transparent materials (someone should introduce them to the Bible Belt preacher-types out here; they have far more in common than they probably realize)...
Sometimes a broad brush is the best tool for the job.
And sometimes, the narrower the mind the broader the brush.
The Jewish community encourages women to learn and work. So does the Christian community. Or Hindus. Or Buddhists.
So why again is the broad brush you are using the "best tool for the job" when it covers so many so unfairly?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Iran had a secular democracy back in 1953. The west, especially England and the US, and overthrew it with a dictatorship, much more ruthless than the present government.
As the left was the great fear, the dictatorship jailed, (effectively) exiled and killed the left. When the people overthrew the foreign-backed government, the only power left in the country were the mullahs, and bazaar shop keepers, and that is who is in control now.
Harvard only began admitting women in 1999, although the first openings of that were in the 1960s. It's amusing to see westerners, who were just invading Iraq and torturing and forcing Abu Ghraib detainees to masturbate on camera, are now all sanctimonious about how Iranian universities are preparing classes. Iran is a paradise of academic freedom for women compared to US ally Saudi Arabia, why don't we hear about that? And why all the concern about women's studies in Iran, something Americans can do nothing about because the US doesn't even have diplomatic relations with Iran, at the same time the US is stepping up pressure on Iran on other fronts? The US is who overthrew Iran's secular democracy in 1953, then the CIA worked with the Savak to wipe out the left. Now they complain the mullahs have too much control over the universities. No Slashdot headlines about women's education in Saudi Arabia. Women can't even drive in Saudi Arabia, where's the noise about that? As there is none, it's clear this is just more propaganda as the war drums are being beaten. As smug, hypocritical, imperialist westerners stick their fingers into the Middle East, torture their people in prisons like Abu Ghraib, kill off and take over new land in the West Bank with US funds - you can be sure the inevitable 9/11s will come in response, as some people will always resist imperialism and foreign tyranny.
1) Just about anywhere is better than Iran for women I would guess. The list is long there, the USA is hardly failing in that regard.
2) Cause VS Cauality: Not to rain on your gender parade, but I doubt women being empowered has all that much to do with runing circles around other countries. If you like you could look at various variables, like the when the women got to vote VS relitive economic prowess for various couuntries, etc... but I am not sure the outcome would even tell you all that much. Sounds like a great idea for a thesis or book however!
The Iranian people would like to do this on their own, they do not want US intervention and they would fight US intervention.
Really? Because I recall a lot of Iranians BEGGING for the U.S. to at least express support during the green revolution. None being forthcoming (hardly even a note of acknowledgement) the revolution was brutally crushed.
Now just how do you see the avoidance of brutal crushing in any future rebellion with zero outsside help?
You and others may not like it but the only way to to overthrow a truly tyrannical regime is through violence. The Iranian people alone cannot succeed without help.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is nothing in what you said that should prevent women from getting an education.
Just because they get an education, that doesn't mean that they are required to get a job. An education is good even for people who do jobs that don't require one. Education introduces us to different ways of solving problems and different ways of thinking creating a more well rounded person.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Put a wall up around these backwards bastards. Or better yet... a huge plexiglass dome so they can't fly out, either. These people are stinking up the entire world.
Historically it's ladies who temper the male political ego, eventually moderating the propensity to go to war and to fight.
I don't see this lasting long in the days of social media, having such a large young population in Iran.
Acts like this will energize the Iranian women's population and I predict change will come soon.
Great way to win support from half the world's population while they have a potentially massive war brewing on their doorstep -- not to mention the pretty direct effects of self-imposing a handicap onto their own society in a time of need. What ever are they thinking? Hopefully it's been exaggerated.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
I hear there's a shortage of engineers in the US. Maybe we should grant asylum to women seeking engineering degrees over here and kill two birds with one stone.
I've been really worried lately, what with all the tech and engineering outsourcing to so many other "third world" countries that have improved their education systems so much that they've surpassed the US, that I'm soon going to be lucky to make the same amount as a programmer in India or China. Every country that sets themselves back 50 or 100 years in this global economic race by eliminating half of their available productive technical workforce only improves my chances and makes it that much more likely that diesel-sucking semitrucks will still be delivering tons of beef grown in South America to my local Safeway in my old age. Thanks, Iran!
What a fucking troll.
As long as it is legitimate oppression. Because the woman's body has a way to just shut the whole thing down and deal with the oppression.
So they'll be fine. Everything will work out fine.
Beware of the Leopard.
Oh the moronity!
'this effort 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,"'
That term "passion" is able to be construed fairly broadly. I'll simply say that some behaviors I've encountered which might be termed "passionate" don't always seem entirely productive.
Correlation is not causation and all, but its basically been shown that societies which discriminate based on things like race, gender, and religion, enjoy less economic success than those which don't.
I would speculate this is because it create a barrier that results in something other than the allocation of the people with the most talent and or desire to do $job to that particular job.
The Islamic world wonders why it does not have the influence and power on the world stage the West does and idiocy like this is a big reason why.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Well it looks like we have all these women that are willing to attend school and get an education but we have a cultural problem with hiring women in general. So instead of pounding some sense into our backward citizens that would rather hire a retarded goat than an educated woman, we're just going to stop educating them, because that will totally fix the problem.
And as a bonus, we can further justify hiding them at home to do nothing but raise our children, (aka "keep them barefoot and pregnant") because they're too dumb to do anything us men do. This'll be a great way to maintain the status quo.
A similar line of thinking was used to make education of slaves illegal in the USA some time ago. "They're stupid, so we're not going to educate them." What?? (they also later tried to pull that argument with women iirc)
Society advances and becomes more socially modern over time. It doesn't happen overnight. I get that. Every group can look back at its own personal history and muse "What was wrong with those people??" What I don't understand is why certain groups just take an abnormally long time to move forward, especially when exposed on all sides with the next logical steps. They don't even have to wait for someone among them to come up with a good idea, fight the initial resistance, and manage to get it off the ground and prove it works. The seeds are planted right on their doorstep, and yet they seem hellbent on stomping on them. And in these cases I don't have to look back 200 years to say "what's wrong with those people??" I can just do it over and over, right here, today.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is all about social stability, The idea is to reaffirm the female's role in
homemaking and reproduction, creating a solid foundation for Iran's men to stand on. You
may not like it, and if you're a female you may not like the idea at all but your views ans
perceptions are utterly irrelevant to the elites in Iran. They do realize that women
are capable of the same intellectual achievements men are. However it is also true
that an educated female is less likely to have children and that is something they will
not permit. The iranian elites hope to persevere against the west and they need a strong
healthy well indoctrinated numerous population.
Since their social control is built on islam they have a rich toolset at their disposal, but that is
also very rigid, and they are very fearful of experimentation. You would think they could
permit female liberties if their ulterior objectives were met, such as say permit university
studies after raising 5 children to the age of 18, however with the western element out
there agitating and attempting to upset the foundation their society is built on that is not
about to happen.
Why must so many muslim men in so many muslim dominated countries feel soooo insecure and threatened by women, that they must dominate and suppress women in so many ways?
It there some huge deficiency or other inadequacy in their manhood of these men, that forces them to overcompensate by suppressing women? Are a majority of these men transgendered and need to suppress women, in order to make it less tempting for them to get sex-change operations?
I sorry,but as a women, I cannot understand the rational of these men. I am personally confident enough with my own identity, that I do not want men to be suppressed and locked away in homes and in burkas.
But if so many of these poor muslim men are suffering from sexual and gender insecurity issues, we do need to help them.
"Blowback" is real and US politicians don't seem to learn from history and keep tinkering where they shouldn't be tinkering.
Table-ized A.I.
ban them
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
It looks like the Iran government is directly and intentionally infringing human rights. This is unacceptable.
Willow Wilson is an American writer who converted to Islam, married an Egyptian and now lives partly in her husband's country. I'm not a big fan (I have issues with her understanding of events and her selective condemnation of bigotry) but her memoir Butterfly Mosque is must reading if you pretend to have any understanding of the way people live and think in Islamic countries.
Her account of her trip to Iran is illuminating. She had assumed that Iranian, living as they do in a theocracy, would be even more conservative in lifestyle and dress than the old-fashioned Egyptian Muslims she lives among, and had dressed for the trip accordingly. She was surprised to find that Iranian women actually dress less conservatively than Egyptian women. Iranians, according to her, are not so much cowed by the Islamist rulers as unwilling to take violent action to overthrow them. This she blames on many years of revolution and war.
If her picture is right, neither the Islamists or the more liberal Iranians are in a position to really force their views on the other. People go through the motions of obeying all the religious restrictions on their lives, but push back — hard — when the mullahs go too far. I think this is going to be a moderately unstable situation with no real resolution for a long time
Therefore, Italy shows that a religious people can form a Constitutional democracy without infringing freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
In fact, the USA is one of the most religious countries in the developed world, and is also the most radically pro-speech country I know. In America there is no criminalization of "hate speech", for example.
You think child rearing only requires 6 months of nurturing?
I didn't hear you say "sudo"...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
You don't know what you're talking about. Men are not so macho as in america, and wives often push the politicians into doing aggressive and shady things for status gains.
To born again as a woman in a country like that is a hell of a karma.
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's"
Separation of Church and state was preached by Jesus, and it is no coincidence that it emerged in Christian Europe, even if Europe took centuries to start following that teaching.
People who complain of the medieval European theocracies are guilty of anachronism. The whole world was theocratic then, and it took centuries for someone to think "outside the box".
See http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html
Education introduces us to different ways of solving problems and different ways of thinking...
Yes, I found new ways to solve problem and think differently when I'm high and/or drunk.
But I think most of us are being too "ethnocentric" here. If this is their culture then that is all there is to it. As a sovereign nation they are deciding (for whatever reasons) that women should not be in those fields. Note that previously they were allowed, the change is due to the reality of the workplace - they aren't being hired. So in one regard you can see it as "helpful" to steer women away from certain failure within their culture as it would literally be a waste of their time and talent and end up not benefiting anyone. Sure most of us in the west would prefer that the women be given the choice to pursue whatever they desire academically, but that's just us. And it isn't up to us.
There was a good comment about how in ancient history this region was a pioneer in math, astronomy, architecture, and so forth. And maybe they could be once more if they allowed women into these fields. While that may be true, what if that level of vain national prestige is culturally irrelevant to them?
As far as I know, Iranians are free enough to travel outside the country. There is no reason to believe that if a particular Iranian woman wanted to study a now-banned subject that she couldn't still do so... elsewhere. If it mattered *that* much to her. So be it, let the west (and far-east) have the world's supply of educated women.
Just remember that as distasteful as these practices may feel to us, ours are just as distasteful to them. We like to think of ourselves as the most enlightened, but so do they. Now I do realize that Muslim extremists are not nearly so understanding and do impose their values on every culture they "conquer." For example PBS News Hour just had an interesting segment on the people of Mali who are struggling to maintain tradition that is being strangled by Islamic encroachment that regards them as Satanic.
Why are men scared of women?
Barefoot and pregnant...
yeah those pesky totalitarian 3rd world powers after WW2 totaly forced the democracies to give them money and power through the UN
That particular kind of misogyny happens, but is not universal, on Slashdot.
And SO WHAT some basement nerds think like that? In the real world, women dominate HR departments, so it is hard to believe the feminist claims that they are systematically, unfairly and gravely discriminated against by employers.
Second, there is a difference between acknowledging the reality that women and men are different, and actually discriminating against women based on real or perceived differences.
Women and men have equal _dignity_, but it doesn't mean that their talents and dreams are the same.
Of course, women should be _allowed_ to study and choose their careers, and be judged fairly by their employers, but it just happens that they usually prefer being a psychologist or a nurse or a teacher than being a combat soldier. This is, in fact, (partially) natural. Even if unfair misogyny is completely eliminated, there will still be more male than female soldiers, due to natural differences.
In short:
If you see a woman being unfairly discriminated against when she wants to pursue her chosen career, and you complain, then you are a common-sense person.
If you complain and scream bloody murder because the gender distribution is not 50%/50% in all professions, then you are a crackpot feminist.
and I am very happily married man. But I can definitely see an advantage for men having women in college. In fact, not having women is, well, kind of odd.
Education makes better mothers which makes much better citizens in coming generations. Iran's leaders dont want that it seems.
Hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management are vocational courses of study. There are only so many places at universities, so someone has to be excluded.
It is simply dishonest to call the Holy See a "totalitarian theocracy", when it is a _tiny_ city with no maternity wards. No one was born there. If you have a Vatican passport then you also have another passport and it is trivial to leave. In fact, I think no private person one even owns property in the Vatican.
Basically, if you don't like the rules, you simply need to find another job.
In a secular state, government is compulsory and freedom comes from Constitutional rights and from democracy; in a religious organization, participation is voluntary and freedom comes from the right to get out, or refrain from getting in.
Lastly: wanting religious dogma to be subject to a majority vote is just bizarre.
Seriously, Religion has to go. Its the dumbest pile of shit on earth... no wait... Sarah Palin might... no.. no wait.. Its religion. Religion is absolutely the dumbest fucking thing on the planet.
Remember this next time someone suggests that universities should teach what industry demands.
yeah baby, the pull out method work 100% of the time, trust me I went to college :-)
However, the science and higher education minister, Kamran Daneshjoo, dismissed the controversy, saying that 90% of degrees remain open to both sexes and that single-gender courses were needed to create "balance".
77 single gender courses = 10%
Gee, what are the other 693 degrees offered in Iran's universities?
I won't be the ugly american here (looks notwithstanding). Most Persians I have met are intelligent, college-educated, loving people. They also fled from the opression of the mullahs or the Shah (both of which the US is responsible for).
We have to pretend the fundamentalists christians are too.
The Cool Persian Empire... Iranians used to be founders eternal pieces of culture for the world. Sadly, history is not enough... History doesn't matter if a mullah cut off your head or replaced it with his own head. The current regime of Iran not only is shit but reeks of it, literally.
Iran is readily by-passing their opponents from same shitty league, the Israelis. Arrogant bigotry blended with double standards and self-deceit. Ironic, isn't it? Two fairly intelligent shit-heads colliding... Netanyahu & Ahmadinejad, both puppets for even darker forces. None of them better than the other. Two evils don't make one good.
I hope both countries will have less belligerent leaders, very soon!
Wait, Title IX is Islamic? I knew that Obama was a Muslim.
The burden of proof lies with the party making the more bizarre assertion.
"any household task that can be handled by a woman could be handled by a man. " Agreed and now go and check all the articles about women who are the bread winners resenting their SAHF (stay at home fathers) because they think the men have it easy while they go out an work. And of course, the irony is COMPLETELY LOST on those bread winning women. Men can and do do any household task that a woman can up to and including BUILDING THE HOUSE. Sweety wasn't happy to even chip in the effort to do a few simple chores while the man worked and now is unwilling to support the man staying home and doing the house work because working all day is hard. And to the guys who think hey, everyone work and everyone split the chores. That fails to because, as my ex put it: you like doing those things (in reference to patching roofs, all the yard work, wiring, plumbing, appliance repair, all the car maintenance, etc) so they don't count as chores. Yup. Didn't count because I didn't complain endlessly. So what was "fair" for her was that I work a full day, do all the maintenance (as a hobby apparently) AND do half of her shit. So yeah, that seems fair and the next time I'm down in the 30 degree garage enjoying my hobby of working on HER car so that she can get to work the next day while she sits up stairs in the warm house reading a book, I'll have to try real hard to remember who the privileged gender is.
This is why people get militant against organized religion. This is a travesty.
What is the theocratic reason for reforming a religion? Does that mean it's flawed in the first place? So... what if there's a lot of other stuff that isn't true/real/ideal either and there are a bunch of people following it anyway?
Since everyone is just blindly blasting this policy, and I admit fully that it is very contemptible and the execution flawed, there might have been decent underpinnings. Disclaimer, I didn't read the article.
Here in the US we have a shortage of doctors. One reason is that an ever increasing majority of med-school admissions are female. The average female's career is 8 years vs. 33 for males. Females are becoming over-represented in the awarding of scholarships and loan-forgiveness programs (mostly for filling spots in under-represented areas of medicine - my wife qualified for loan forgiveness for practicing child-neurology in OC, Cali). The AMA severely restricts the number of positions as does the NIH (who pays the salaries of residents).
Now I'm not advocating that we say hey, if we limit the number of females in medicine, we can get 3x the career length with a man and help with the overall shortage of docs (not necessarily PCPs) but I can see how a culture tainted the way (I view) the middle east is coming to that very conclusion giving the data (their claim here being that there is little demand for female graduates).
Actually, no, it doesn't. The NT -- in fact, Jesus himself -- explicitly say that the OT rules remain in force.
Here's the money quote, from Jesus himself, book of Matthew, which just to be clear, is in the New Testament:
It is very clear from the context above, where Jesus says "till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle will by no means pass from the law"; look around you -- leaving the question of heaven alone, it is perfectly obvious that the earth has not passed away -- and so, as he says, not a "jot or tittle" can be considered not in effect.
He goes even further, and points out that breaking those laws will earn you the gutter position in heaven. That doesn't sound like something he is telling anyone to ignore, now does it. Of course not.
There's really no question among honest readers of the bible who have even a passing familiarity with the originals that the OT is fully in force. That whole business about Jesus coming to fulfill can't mean "sweep up and throw away" or he wouldn't have said what he says here, it has to mean he's there to see that people pay attention to it. Also, where the English text says "fulfill", the Greek word is "pleroo", which means "to perform a task"; so what he means there is that he's acting as an advocate for the law. Modern Christians want to read this (ridiculously) as if Jesus' state of "I have come to fulfill the law" meant "ok, we're done with all that now, I've finished it", but that is absolutely unsupportable, given Jesus's statement above.
So no shellfish, camel, rock badger, rabbit, eagle, vulture, buzzard, falcon, raven, crow, ostrich, owl, seagull, hawk, pelican, stork, heron, bat, winged insects that walk on four legs (unless they have joints to jump with like grasshoppers... so grab the chocolate and go catch some... very nutritious, I understand), also no bear, mole, mouse, lizard, gecko, crocodile, chameleon and snail. No mixed fibers, no footballs, no pulling out before ejaculation, no pork, no tattoos, no divorce, no gay sex.
Sorry, Christians. You have to obey the rules in the OT as well as the NT. No question about it.
Read How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) by David P. Goldman for the reason behind this.
In all societies, fertility rates have a very strong inverse proportional relationship to women's educational level. The fertility rate in Iran is crashing - which I wasn't aware of until reading Goldman. It has fallen below replacement level; the population is aging and will be heavy with old people and the cost of supporting them in the coming decades. Ahmadinejad has been exhorting families to have more children to no avail. The next logical step is to enforce a lesser level of education for women.
Bottom line: keep the women dumb and they'll have more babies. History prove this to be true.
Delicious sandwitch production was down over 35%. Something had to be done. Men were starving to death in the streets.
I spent 10 years working at an Australian University in a Computer Science department, I know one of the biggest challengers we faced was the disproportionate ratio of males to females (at times up to 15:1), and no matter what we did would couldn’t find a good marketing method to get this ratio back to even 5:1. This is where I think the Iranian's have had a stroke of genius, I say ban all women, wait a year, then undo the ban and watch the females enrolments triple just because they can.
It would be nice to think this was the Iranian's plan all along.
I believe he's calling out the fact that women have tits. They make milk and men don't. (BTW, if she pumps, the father can still be the one primarily taking care of the kid. But yeah, that's a pain. And while mother's milk is best, formula CAN feed a child)
But anyway, read it again. He's talking about stay-at-home dads.
Seriously.
There comes a time when a government of a country jumps the shark so egregiously that you just have to say: You forfeited your right to govern. The UN (who's your daddy?) is coming to take the keys away. (On the basis of enforcement of even a lowest-common-denominator version of basic human rights.)
This is such a case.
Another such case was the Taliban denying education to women and also, for example, blowing up priceless ancient giant statues which were part of all of humanity's cultural heritage, allegedly on the basis that the statues were dedicated to another fictitious god-like concept, instead of to the one true fictitious god-like concept.
I'm sorry, you've lost the program. You are so fired.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Therefore they should be discriminated against in education. It makes sense if you're a misogynous, primitive tribe. From a western point of view this is very good news. Why? Iran is disenfranchising 50% of it's greatest minds and promoting 50% more male idiots. The more people they exclude, the weaker they become.
All of the religions mentioned have faith based rules that are generally not as harmul
But they ALSO have rules that are beneficial. You have reduced all religious to a negative-only status.
For example, people that live in religious areas are more likely to donate to charity. Should they "stop listening to the friend in the sky" that is telling them to help others also?
Why is it SO HARD for people that hate religion to talk about terrible aspects of a single religion at a time? It really waters down your argument when you paint a world full of scientists and scholars as being no different than lunatics and misogynists.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"An August 20th, 2012 announcement from Iran places restrictions on female university students. Iran will be cutting 77 fields of study from the female curriculum, making them male-only fields. Science and engineering are among those affected by the decree" ..
:)
It's well known that Women can't understand such stuff
--
REF
AccountKiller
But nice try there.
If only we were not on the internet.
Where one could check and see that while the Christianity arrived in the Middle East at about the same time as Islam, it is the later which spread across North Africa and further East in the following 100 years.
AFTER WHICH the golden age and the scientific revolution started in the Islamic world, lasting for 500 years.
You know what is that period referred to as in the Christian world? 6th to 13th century?
The Dark Ages.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Another victory for Religion!!
Your thinking like a non religious person. They are rules by Religious law who are you to say whats good or bad for anyone there? Ya know it wasn't that long ago the women had to cover there heads in church here in the USA. What changed it? Money/Government pressure, the laws of religion never change Governments change them. There is no real religious freedom here in the USA only what the governments allow.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I would speculate this is because it create a barrier that results in something other than the allocation of the people with the most talent and or desire to do $job to that particular job.
So does affirmative action. For those not familiar with this phrase, it refers to the policy - common in many Western nations - of discriminating in favour of an under-represented gender/ethnicity/religious group when allocating jobs, university positions, etc. What Iran has done here is to identify that men are under-represented in certain university courses, and reserve many of the places in these courses (i.e. all of them at some universities) for men, in order to counteract the disparity. The only differences between this and affirmative action as it is practiced in the West are its degree, and that the discrimination is in favour of men rather than women.
I don't mean to imply that I support what Iran's doing here, because that's certainly not the case. I'm not even totally against affirmative action: I think that it can be beneficial, although it should always be considered a temporary measure. But we should at least acknowledge the similarity between the two.
Wait, Title IX is Islamic? I knew that Obama was a Muslim.
Well, if an Islamic (or Christian or Jewish or...) institution were to argue that the requirements of 20 USC 1681, which is the the first part of changes to the U. S. Code introduced by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, "would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization", then those requirements wouldn't apply to that institution, so I guess it's at least accommodating to Muslims (and Christians and Jews and...).
It's not "Islamic" in the sense of the sex discrimination DarkOx says is holding back the Islamic world, though, given that 20 USC 1681 starts out saying "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance", which is banning sex discrimination.
He was probably referring to the 19th Amendment.
The proposed ERA is a bit too extreme. For example, it would mandate paternity leave to be equal to maternity leave, which makes little sense.
It would force the Navy SEAL to accept women.
Depending on the interpretation of the judge, it could force the army to put women and men in the same bedrooms.
In fact, it could even make separated _bathrooms_ unconstitutional.
...or his jihad against women will expand immensely.
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
I am a practicing Christian (a Mormon to be precise) and while I would very much agree with most of your comment, this verse came to mind. (although I think the restoration of what you speak came a few centuries after the reformation)
I think Christ knew the discord that his message of peace and love and charity would cause - how sadly ironic. Personal and societal change is very difficult, what with the cognitive dissonance and all. We aren't much of Christians unless we do what Christ Himself did.
Not every country should be a woman's country.
I hope they marry little girls to men soon too.
Nothing in their religion (nor other old religions like the torah either, especially not the deuteronomy books) says men can't have sweet little or young girls as brides.
Young girls can be very nice and extremely cute.
Go Iran!
Differentiate yourself, along with other republics of near the caucuses, as a pro-male country.
--Mike3USA--
Straw man. I did not say that women cannot handle science.
It just said that, on average (there are exceptions), women prefer to be a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, or a psychologist, than being a combat soldier. Denying this is denying reality. You might as well deny that the sky is blue.
By the way, notice that I mentioned "combat soldier" as a manly profession. I did not mention "mathematician" or "scientist".
The "sexism" that women suffer in certain workplaces is not of the "women cannot handle this" kind. This kind of sexism is almost dead. What women face is objectification: rude talk, and even strict sexual harassment.
However, the same people who promote radical feminism (and deny that women and men are different) tend to also defend hard pornography as "free speech". And when men are exposed to hard pornography (99% of which consists of men horribly humiliating women) since age 11, it is little wonder that they think of women as objects.
And a retarded one at that!
Hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management are vocational courses of study. There are only so many places at universities, so someone has to be excluded.
So why should the "someones" have to be the ones without testicles, as opposed to, say, the ones with the lower entrance exam test scores?
I think the GP's point was more related to breastfeeding, where the greatest benefit to an infant is in the first six months. While it is possible for a woman to pump at work and have the man feed the baby breast milk from a bottle at home, it's much easier for the woman to breast-feed the baby directly, and provides better time utilization of the combined parents' time. Realistically, after the breast feeding period, either parent could raise the offspring equally well. You can extend the breast feeding period longer than 6 months of course, but that initial period provides the best improvement in terms of growth and brain development.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
he did 9/11. so let's now construct a creative narrative that everything bad that has happened in the USA since then is directly his fault
this is the same logic where meddling in iranian politics in the 1950s means the USA is to blame there for everything bad there since. hey, here's a crazy idea: it's 2012. maybe what happens in iran is the fault of gee, i dunno, the actual iranians who live there and what they think? pretty nutty theory huh?
am i excusing the usa for the 1950s in iran? no! if i say bin laden isn't responsible for everything bad in the usa for the next 60 years, am i excusing him for 9/11?!
try applying your mind and seeing that actual iranians have actual bad ideas all by themselves and lose your ridiculous hard on to blame everything bad in the world on the west
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Women in western countries couldn't vote, inherit, own property until quite recently.
In the UK they needed their husband intervention to open a bank account.
Muslim countries are a real disgrace when it comes to the treatment of women, but they are not alone in the discrimination game.
But asking to probe a negative is a logical fallacy. The burden of proof is on the believers.
The net-net, they are crippling their ability to become a functioning modern culture. All Islamic nations, with the possible exception of Turkey, are intellectual and creative black holes if the number of books written, patents granted, papers published, major acknowledged artworks created, are any measure.
while in the west no women study those course any way. Maybe we should ban them for a few years before letting them back in, then maybe we can have more than 3 women per engineering class.
It didn't just stop in the 1950s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqgate
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
right. and if the usa decides to outlaw abortion, that's because bin laden attacked us on 9/11, right? that's the same logic by which you point to various cold war era events and say "therefore, everything that bad happens there is completely the fault of the west for all time"
i'm just trying to get you to see the folly of your nonsense
reailty: what happens in country {XYZ} is the responsibility of the people you live in country {XYZ}
get it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Many years ago, I spent a lot of time teaching Iranian women English. There was a volunteer English teaching group in my city, and one day I was assigned an Iranian woman to teach. Soon another Iranian woman joined her, so I taught 2 Iranian women, and then met others.
It was an extremely unusual social situation. Normally, Iranian women will not allow a man to be alone with Iranian women unless he is the "head" of the family, and then only in a limited way. But these women had been assigned by their families to marry Iranian men who were U.S. citizens. The Iranian men had gone back to Iran, married, and were allowed to re-enter the U.S. with their wives, as is normal for U.S. citizens.
The wives needed to learn English. That's how they came to the volunteer English teaching group. One of the reasons they allowed me to be alone with them is that I was seen as someone at the bottom of Iranian society, like someone who mows lawns. I was seen as someone of no importance, a servant.
Every Iranian woman I met said Iranian WOMEN control Iranian society, and, after spending two years with Iranian-Americans in my U.S. city who were U.S. citizens, during the time I was teaching, I agree with the women. It's not healthy control, but it is control of men by women.
Iran is a modern country in many ways. See, for example these photos of the biggest city, Tehran:
Tehran from the air
Tehran city highway
Basically, I learned this: There are many, many women who live outside the cities, and many inside the cities, who are poorly educated. The poorly educated women have methods of countrol that, effectively, require women to be poorly educated. They don't want change, and they are powerful. With mostly hidden, manipulative ways, they are often able to arrange to get what they want.
(However, I've never been to Iran and don't speak Farsi, the Iranian Arabic language, so what I say is just the opinion of someone with limited experience.)
One of the problems some Iranian women have with education is that, with education, people are expected to have responsibility. Education interferes with the traditional cultural ways. Education interferes with the control over men that most Iranian women want.
Also, Iranian men have various ineffective ways of trying to get control, and, in some ways, have limited control.
If you are in the U.S., there are several problems with trying to get an understanding of Iran:
1) Nuclear power companies in the U.S. want control over nuclear power. They pay to influence the U.S. government against "proliferation" of nuclear power. They pay to control, to some extent, what is written by the media.
2) Those who make easy money from war want war. They pay to influence the U.S. government against methods of peaceful co-existence. Obviously, those who make money from killing other people don't have any moral issues with lying, or any moral issues at all. They want war any way they can get it, as long as they are physically safe, and no one they know is involved with actually fighting a war.
Two examples of those who have investments in war are former U.S. president George W. Bush and his family, and former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney.
Those in the U.S. who profit from killing other people have long interfered with Iranian affairs. From the Wikipedia article about Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the subject of this Slashdot story: She " remembers the CIA's 1953 overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq with rage."
3) Educated Iranian women often very much dislike some parts of the common traditional Iranian culture, as you might expect. They either don't understand the currents in their own culture, or know that speaking against the wishes of other Iranian women would n
when i was at uni a few years ago there was an iranian woman who came over to study cs. she was so fit. i mean unbelievably attractive. then i assume she went back to iran and got rid of facebook after uni. i think we can all learn alot from this. somehow.
>societies which discriminate based on things like race, gender, ...
Less economic success like Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, and China? I think you need to rethink your thesis here, lad.
The women won't tolerate this for long. It's not their problem if the men are not scoring as much. But it's important to educate the men as well.
Christianity arrived earlier, even if it covered little of the Middle East.
At that time, a significant percentage of the population in the most advanced Islamic countries was still Christian.
Maybe it had something to do with the barbaric chaos caused by the end of the Roman Empire?
I have never heard Christians defending that. You must be referring to some very, very wacky fringe. Not very honest.
Separation of Church and State does not mean that religious people cannot have their voices heard.
While a theocratic country is oppressive, an ideological atheist country is oppressive too. Freedom lies in the middle.
See http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ratzinger2.html
I don't know if the government of Iran will directly nuke Israel. But I fear they will allow their technology to fall in bad hands. Pakistan has already leaked nuke technology to North Korea.
Now, even North Korea is less crazy than bin Laden. If terrorists get nukes, then things get ugly.
A bunch of people who don't understand Iranian culture. This is just affirmative action, which only seems to bother people when it's pro male.
I highly suggest people watch this video, it is before this ban on females entering some programs but I think it really slays a lot of the misconceptions about Iranian women:
http://www.globalconversation.org/2010/12/20/misconceptions-islam-women-iran
It is impossible to get into an Iranian University unless your GPA can compete with the females who YES, go to school and then get married and often
don't even use their education. I am all for the free market, if the women do better then they should get into the University....but why are people only upset when this happens to women ? There are so many programs in the US that are doing this exact same thing, they just don't come out and say it.
Why do people think America is somehow better than Iran ? Because it oppresses men instead of women ? Iran is full of women who are smarter on average than American women, and yet many of them CHOOSE to "retire into marriage" just like in Japan where again, women are smarter. It's really sexist to imply that staying at home with your kids and raising them is automatically an anti-intellectual endeavour or "holding women back" somehow. American women aren't better just because they have the freedom to let it all hang out and engage in false rape claims without ever being admonished for it.
Also if you look into this, 90% of programs are still open to women.
http://www.peacejam.org/news/Shirin-Ebadi-Calls-on-United-Nations-Women-to-Address-Oppression-of-Women-in-Iran-789.aspx I urge you to re-read Shirin Ebadi's letter to the UN. OK
You are NUTS! Be coherent, man! THC is a substance in the frontal lobe and one of the VERY FEW things we can smoke, unlike ANIMALS who cannot smoke at all. But it is Islamic law what cries vs intoxication, ANY. If you admit the substances law, you have to admit this one. TOO.
the laws of religion never change
This is extremely naive: even within a particular faith-practicing group, the rules and norms shift with the times. Even seemingly simple rules like "Thou shall not kill" have been subject to extremely different interpretations. By all means, discipline yourself to your imagined set of eternal, unchanging laws if that's what you think your duty is, but if you keep your eyes open (and perhaps get some foreign travel in) you will see that much of our reality--much of what it means to be a person--is created by society alone.
There is no real religious freedom here in the USA only what the governments allow.
Ridiculous: there are practicing faith groups in the US for all major world religions plus thousands of cults, and over 80% of the population identifies with at least one of them. There is no official state church, no religious tests for holding public office, and no imprisonment/deportation/enslavement of people based on their religious beliefs. And, of course, the First Amendment legally bars the government from either favoring or prohibiting a religion. Read a little history to develop some perspective.
Given your lack of perspective, I have to wonder whether you are...
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
" Even seemingly simple rules like "Thou shall not kill" have been subject to extremely different interpretations." By whom..you..me? and none of the above. And no religion can truly have freedom when it cant enforce its law,beliefs ie animal sacrifice,an eye for an eye,till death do us part. Just a very small example of extreme religion non freedoms. And man changes laws not Religions when forced to by taking away tax exempt status.
Jack of all trades,master of none