Iran’s Gender Gap Widens

A new report reveals that Iran has one of largest gender gaps in the world.

While women enjoy relative equality in sectors such as education and health, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2014, published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on October 28, progress has been slow when it comes to economic participation and opportunity among Iranian women.

Although Iran performed better than average in certain categories, it ranks 137^th out of the 142 countries surveyed. Perhaps surprisingly, the current result was the worst for the country since publication and analysis began eight years ago.

The study ranks national gender gaps by examining “economic, political, educational and health-based criteria,” and aims to “create greater awareness among a global audience of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them.”

Researchers use four different indexes that affect women’s lives: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.

Scandinavian countries, particularly Iceland, Finland and Norway, dominated the top of this year’s list. Pakistan, Syria and Yemen come at the bottom of the list, with Iran not far behind.

Iran performed especially badly in the economic and political subfields, scoring 139^th for the former and 135^th for the latter. The economic section considers a range of issues, including women’s participation in the labor force, wage equality and the number of women in senior positions. The political category examines female participation in politics.

Currently, there are three women for every 100 members of parliament and 10 female cabinet ministers for every 90 men in the Islamic Republic. Iranian law forbids women from being elected to the office of president, resulting in Iran being given an average score of 0.037 in the political field, which is considerably lower than the global average of 0.214.

With an overall score of 0.581 for 2014, this is the lowest ranking Iran has received since the Global Gender Gap reports were first published in 2006. Its highest score was 0.602 in 2008, when Iran was positioned 116 out of 142 countries.

But it is not all doom and gloom: Iran scored well in women’s health and survival categories, ranking in 89^th place overall. It also fared better than the world average of 0.94 for female life expectancy.

Much the same can be said for education, with Iran doing better than average in all four sub-categories, including literacy rates and female enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education. With a global average of 0.96, it scored 0.957, putting Iran at 104^th in the world in terms of education for women.

The Skeptics

But not everyone accepts the World Economic Forum findings. A senior researcher in women’s studies at one of Iran’s universities told IranWire that it would be wrong and misguided to accept the report’s findings without taking other criteria into account. Even though some of the numbers are worth looking into, she said, it is a comparative analysis so the figures on Iran do not really say much on their own.

She also points out that statistics on countries like Iran cannot always be accurate or reliable, though she insists that “this doesn’t mean that the report is biased.”

According to the Tehran expert, whose work focuses on women in the workplace, the WEF report is too pessimistic, and unfair in its Iran rankings. “There’s no doubt that sexual discrimination in Iran is systematic and conspicuous,” she said, “but our situation is much better than many of the countries in the region. In many places there is no female workforce to be discriminated against. Are there any democracies in the Persian Gulf countries that allow women to attain power? For example, during the sixth parliament [2000-2004], when the atmosphere opened up, a considerable number of women entered parliament.”

She also explained how the report failed to consider the huge role and participation of women in major political and social events such as the Green Movement. If the report had taken this into consideration, Iran would have done much better in the political category.

To some, this might seem far-fetched. Yet the argument makes more sense when Iran’s ranking for political participation is compared to other countries in the region. For example, the report ranks Saudi Arabia higher than Iran when it comes to political empowerment — 117, as compared with Iran at 135 — yet Saudi Arabia does not have any women MPs or women in high-ranking offices. The report gives Saudi a score of 0.25 for the number of women in parliament, but this refers to the country’s “legislative” body, the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia, not parliament. The body has 150 members, all of whom the king appoints, and it cannot pass laws or enforce them. In 2013, King Abdullah announced that women should make up at least a fifth of all assembly seats, but this statement cannot be realistically applied to determine Saudi Arabia’s rankings, so the 0.25 score could be somewhat flawed.

Regardless of how reliable the report is or how seriously one takes it, what cannot be disputed is that Iran has a considerable gender gap. Sexual discrimination permeates society. There are signs that the country is making improvements, but they are insubstantial. Referring to gender gaps around the world in general, lead author Saadia Zahidi says, “there is a lot of work to be done.” Serious changes in the way the Iranian government deals with gender equality must be enacted, or Iran will continue to rank low when it comes to international standards and comparisons.