Many Iranians have been angered by the removal of the images of several girls from the cover of a math textbook. Authorities said the cover was “overcrowded” and erased the girls, though three boys still appear on the new edition of the textbook (image on left).
September 15, 2020 – There’s outrage among Iranians over the removal of the images of girls from the cover of a third-grade math textbook in what critics say highlights gender discrimination and the sexist attitude of the country’s officials.*
The Education Ministry said the original cover showing two girls and three boys playing under a tree was “overcrowded” and that those who reviewed the book from “an artistic, aesthetic, and psychological perspective” had proposed to make it “less crowded.” The ministry added that the girls are included inside the textbook as well as on the cover of other math textbooks.
But the decision has infuriated both women and men who have taken to social media to protest what they see as the removal of women and point out that the first and so far only woman to receive the Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics, was from Iran.
Stanford University Professor Maryam Mirzakhani received the Fields Medal, the most prestigious international mathematical prize, in 2014. She died three years later at age 40 after a long battle with cancer that caused an outpouring of grief among Iranians, including the country’s leaders, who said her passing had caused “great sorrow.”
Many posted Mirzakhani’s photos on social media while others photoshopped or glued her photos on the cover of the math textbooks using the hashtag, in Persian, #womencannotbeeliminated.
“An Iranian woman named Maryam Mirzakhani was the century’s most prominent figure in mathematics. Now you have erased photos of girls from third-grade math textbooks?” user Mahsa Nasrollahi wrote on Twitter.
Politician Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the leaders of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover, said in a post on Instagram that “the policy of elimination [of women] and gender segregation has reached the bottom line.”
“My daughter: paste the photo of Mirzakhani on the cover of the book and be proud that you’re a girl,” Asgharzadeh added.
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