Formal education for women in Iran began in 1907 with the establishment of the first primary school for girls. Education held an important role in Iranian society, especially as the nation began a period of modernization under the authority of Reza Shah Pahlavi in the early 20th century when the number of women's schools began to grow. By mid-century, legal reforms granting women the right to vote and raising the minimum age for marriage offered more opportunities for women to pursue education outside the home. After periods of imposed restrictions, women's educational attainment continued its rise through the Islamification of education following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, peaking in the years following radical changes in the curriculum and composition of classrooms. By 1989, women dominated the entrance examinations for college attendance.
Women's participation in education has not slowed despite efforts to impose restrictions on the increasingly female-dominated educational sphere. The changes in women's education have split into increased usage and dominance of the opportunities available to women, and the imposition of strict requirements governing their role in education, including gender-segregated classes, Islamic dress, and the channeling of women into "feminine" majors that prevent the pursuit of certain careers.
History of education for women in Iran
The nature of education for Iranian women changed significantly from the period leading up to the Iranian Revolution when compared to the imposition of restrictions following it. Despite the various obstacles for women entering an educational setting, they manage to comprise the majority of college attendees and outperform their male peers on university admissions tests as well as in graduation rates.
Pre-Iranian Revolution
In the 19th century, Western missionaries opened schools for girls in Iran, such as the Fiske Seminary in 1838, but for a long time, the authorities did not allow them to enroll Muslim students. Iran Bethel School was established by an American Presbyterian missionary organization for girls school in 1874;Woman, Religion and Culture in Iran- Sarah F.D. Ansari, Vanessa Martin- p. 54 the school initially only enrolled European and Iranian Christian students, but received Muslim girls from 1888.
At the beginning of the 20th century education for women expanded slowly, with enrollment of female students in the 1922 academic year totaling just over 7200 students compared with 35,000 of their male peers. In 1935, women first experienced the secularization of Iran's educational system when the University of Tehran was established. As the nation's secularization created demand for professionally trained students, women were encouraged to attend schools. Education became a social norm and a marker of achievement in Iranian society..
On the eve of the Iranian Revolution, in 1976–77, 40 percent of secondary school enrollment was female. These numbers largely reflect the upper echelon of Iranian society, as women who were a part of an ethnic minority or from rural areas of Iran were largely excluded from these educational reforms.
Education from Iranian Revolution, 1979-1989
The Iranian Revolution of March 1979 ushered in a period of conservative leadership that altered the role and conception of the new model female in Iranian society. The period was characterized by the retraction of previously passed laws reforming women's status in the home, and the institution in its place of family and civil law based in notions of patriarchy.
The newly enacted Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran stated the importance of women's economic and social well-being, yet did not guarantee the right to educational opportunities. Instead, the new regime of religious authority cracked down on women's participation in education, barring coeducation. Immediately following the Revolution, universities and many high schools were shut down, not to be reopened for another 3 years. During this time many female faculty were excused from their positions and many women lost their jobs. This included all female judges as well as women who held positions of authority in the government.
Upon reopening of schools and under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, educational curriculum was altered to reflect a new focus on Islamic values. Women were depicted wearing a veil in textbooks, appearing in social studies books as managers of the home and offering guidance on Islam and schoolwork. Men were depicted as providers for the family's needs. Some women did appear in pursuit of farming or factory work, working in hospitals and in schools in these textbooks, mostly in conformity with a gender stereotype of feminine work.
Textbooks and curriculum remained uniform across genders, though the Ministry of Education's "Study of Professions" textbooks differentiated between "male" and "female" specializations and were distributed according to gender. In 1982, gender stereotyped work was institutionalized by the Ministry of Education's introduction of KAr va Danesh, an experiential cooperative day in which students were excused from school to work in various occupations. For females, these experiences consisted of workshops focused on topics such as nutrition, child rearing, cooking, and health.
Course restrictions in higher education also began under the authority of religious leader Khomeini, in which men and women were each barred from studying certain majors. Women were excluded from studying veterinary science, animal husbandry, geology, and natural resources, while men were precluded from subjects such as fashion design, obstetrics, and mid-wifery. Of 108 mathematics and computer science majors, women were only permitted to study 43. The government also established quotas for certain specializations, capping the number of women who could pursue specified majors to ensure against the domination of women in these subjects. To comply with the segregation of sexes in schooling and employment, the segregation of subjects led to the founding of a women's only medical school so that female patients could seek treatment from a female physician.
Out of fear that single women may be corrupted by external society, state scholarships to study abroad were also restricted, offered to male students and married women only. The "Sponsorship for Foreign Students Act" additionally required that married women who received the scholarship be accompanied by their husbands.
Beginning in 1980, female faculty and students were directed to wear Islamic dress by the Ministry of Education. The institution of veiling throughout Iran in 1981 extended the compulsion to women beginning at 6 years of age. At this time many schools limited teachers to instruct only same-gendered students.
Khomeini to Khatami, 1989-2005
In 1989, the First Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1989–1993, offered improvement in women's educational opportunities and involvement in social and economic life as key targets for the incoming administration. Following the death of Khomeini in 1989, President Rafsanjani began a process of scaling back restrictions on women's education. Hurdles to education still existed, with the majority of Iranian women married by the age of 19 at the start of the 1990s. The situation was more dire for rural female students, with half of female Iranians living outside urban areas remaining uneducated.
Progress began to be made toward alleviating some of these restrictions in the 1990s. Quotas restricting the number of women who could study particular fields were eliminated while the Women's Cultural and Social Council, an institution headed by Iranian women who held influential positions in Iran, began studying the effects continued restrictions had on the Iranian economy. This led to a lifting of all remaining quotas or bans on studying particular fields, completed in 1993. By the 1990s many of the restrictions imposed on majors were also lifted, offering women more opportunities to pursue a degree in fields such as veterinary science that were banned under the Khomeini government. More women beyond the few, urban elite that initially enrolled in higher education began to attend school under its Islamic form, no longer hesitant about sending their children to institutions taught by men.
Educational opportunities continued through the rule of Mohammad Khatami, who served as President of Iran from 1997 to 2005. Khatami viewed the home as the proper setting for an Iranian woman, yet did not seek to exclude her from participation in the public sphere. Noting the increasing dominance of women in higher education, Khatami stated that though the increase was concerning, he did not wish to create obstacles in order to reduce this participation. Khatami called for an opening of majors and specialities for women in universities and an end to the quota system.
At the beginning of Khatami's presidency, over 95 percent girls in Iran attended elementary school. In 1997–98, 38.2 percent of Iranian women enrolled in higher education. This number rose to 47.2 percent by 2000. As female enrollment in schooling continued to climb, the segregation of the sexes in academic specialization continued to persist through the end of the 1990s. In the 1998–99 academic year, males dominated enrollment in math-physics and technical fields with 58 and 71 percent of the enrolled class of secondary school students. Women disproportionately comprised the humanities and experimental sciences field with 61 percent enrollment. Gender specialization continued through university level where the fields of basic sciences, medical sciences, and arts were studied by a majority of women, and agriculture and veterinary science, engineering, and humanities were pursued mostly by men. Overall, however, the decade was characterized by a three-fold increase in female enrollment in higher education.
At the turn of the 21st century the government continued to scale back restrictions. By 2000, the government supported the establishment of a Women's Studies course to be offered for graduate level study of topics including women's rights. A 2001 report on women's status in Iran published by his office emphasized the goal of improving educational materials for women to reflect their modern role in society, including the counseling of high school students toward specializations that were traditionally dominated by men. In 2001, the government also authorized the use of the "Sponsorship for Foreign Students Act" supplement for single women to study abroad, a change from the former restriction. Single women could avail themselves of the funds to pursue higher education in foreign institutions, with the consent of their fathers. 2001 is also the year that female enrollment in university-level education exceeded that of men, showing their continued dominance of education.
The statistics of the Khatami presidency show the slow rise of female participation in education. In 2002, women dominated the results of its national college entrance examination, comprising 62 percent of passing students. Women pursuing teaching positions in higher education also made gains during this period, holding nearly half of all assistant professorships at universities, nearly double that held a decade before. The number of women accepted into tenured-track and full-time professorships in 2001–02 remained low at 17.3 percent as it was not nearly as proportionate to the number of educated women in Iranian society.
Ahmadinejad era, 2005-2013