Iran – Separate Textbooks, Separate Schools – Gender Segregation
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 13, 2012
WUNRN
Radio Free Europe
IRAN – SEPARATE TEXTBOOKS, SEPARATE
SCHOOLS – GENDER SEGREGATION
By RFE/RL – February
19, 2012
Iran’s Ministry of Education has announced it will soon publish
separate school textbooks for boys and girls, creating another area of gender
segregation in the Islamic republic.
Iran‘s minister of education, Hamid-Reza Hajibabai, made the
announcement during a press conference in Tehran on January 16. He said the ministry plans to publish
school textbooks that reflect the country’s educational system, which requires
boys and girls to study at different schools.
Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted Hajibabai as saying that in line
with gender segregation in the education system, “education, training, and
textbooks should be adjusted accordingly.”
“In the next year, comprehensive education reforms will occur in all
fields, including teachers, classes, books, and teaching methods,”
Hajibabai said, without revealing any specifics.
This latest development in gender segregation comes after the Education
Ministry issued a directive in August that expanded gender separation of
schoolchildren to preschools.
Gender segregation in schools was gradually introduced in Iran starting after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In 2009, Hojatoleslam Nabiollah Fazlali, the representative of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology, made
a heated attack on the co-education system.
Fazlali criticized coed universities, saying that allowing male and female
students in the same class is like “putting meat in front of a cat.”
Gender segregation has long been a feature of Iranian society. Men and women
are often kept separate in public places like schools and also sometimes at
public weddings.
Written by Frud Bezhan
Categories: Releases