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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 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.
Not sure which western country you're coming from, but we see a lot of that here in the US as well. There is a strong call to turn back 300 years of progress and make religion a guiding force in our government and educational systems.
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.
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
In the USA all candidates for office need to be pre-approved by corporate masters or you don't get on the ballot. Or if you do get on the ballot, they won't let you in the debates. And if you have your own events, even if they draw over 10,000 attendees they won't even mention you in the news.
So yeah, it's about as accurate to say that Iran has a democracy as it is to say that the USA has a democracy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Because stupid people historically have been easier to control. It helps you to maintain your power.
Exactly. That's why there's an ongoing war with education in (predominantly though not exclusively) the US. Evolution vs creationism, as a prime example. The rising costs of education is another example.
As you say, intentionally and knowingly wanting to dumb-down your society is done for only one reason - to make them easier to control.
People need to remember this war on intelligence isn't only being fought in Iran - it's being fought in western society as well, including (and sometimes specifically) the US.
People who don't believe in god are not angry, they're confused and worried about the repercussions from people that do.
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I find it so fascinating. I've known many Persians. To a man and woman, they were intelligent, passionate, vocal and idealistic. So how did a nation with such cultural depth, such delightful people, so much going for them go so far off the track. Of course, the religious folks in Florida are trying to amend their state constitution to make all abortion illegal. That would include abortion in the cases of rape, incest and where the Mother's life is in imminent danger. The folks lobbying for this law have declared that a complete human being and citizen of the United States exists the instance sperm hits egg. By this definition, when a doctor collects 20 eggs for in vitro fertilization, each and every one of those eggs is now a constitutionally protected human being with inalienable rights. You must now bring every one of those blastocysts to full term or its murder. The ramifications from fertility all the way through medical science are deeply disturbing. When a doctor reverts one of your skin cells back into a pruropotent stem cell, is that a whole person too? It could be used to clone you, why not.
We need to have a little conversation with the world. Your involvement with the big invisible man in the sky is very special and we don't want to get in the way of your Bromance. HOWEVER, here are 350 scrict global rules you need to follow to ensure we all get along. You know simple things. You don't get to enslave anybody in particular the female half of the human race. You don't get to practice holy war, that's a no no. You don't get a free pass on being ignorant, superstitious, and committedly stupid. You can't simply ignore the real world and engage in dangerous or social destructive practices because your book said it was okay. Most of all, you are not the single purveyors of a one and only true anything. You don't get to shove your beliefs down the throats of other, you don't get to legislate your beliefs down the throats of others and you don't get to use force or duress to make others accept your beliefs. This is neither holy nor moral and when you behave this way god is most unhappy. Haven't you notice the hurricane approaching the Republican National Convention?
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
"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.
Except in some (still widely practiced) denominations, this was read as "God made everything, therefore owns everything, so give everything to God"
My father's church was one of them, that implied this meaning when covering this particular passage in Sunday school.
The teachers were livid when I debated it (among other things); needless to say I didn't have to go to church much after that.
This, from the same group of people who preach "Know Christ, Know peace" (pronounced "No Christ, No Peace")
There are fundies and zealots everywhere, even today. That doesn't make it right.
You mispelled "Tamerlane".
Seriously, the problems of modern Islam are almost entirely a reaction to the obliteration of the Muslim intellectuals by Tamerlane.
Persia specifically, and the Middle East in general never really recovered from that....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"