“Coat Too Short:” CEO of Iranian Pharma Firm Denied Entry to Health Ministry

The CEO of Iranian biotechnology company CinnaGen says she has been barred from entering the Health Ministry building because “they deemed my coat too short."

Haleh Hamedifar made the announcement in an Instagram post this week accompanied by a picture of herself wearing a coat, a headscarf and trousers.

"I may merely be a representative, but I represent the foremost manufacturer of drugs [in Iran] designed for [the treatment] of special and incurable patients,” this prominent actor in Iran's pharmaceutical sector wrote. “Ironically, just outside this very ministry, patients and their families are staging sit-ins [to protest] the unavailability of imported medications."

Hamedifar thanked her male colleagues who decided not to attend the scheduled meeting at the Health Ministry in solidarity with her. 

Hamedifar received the Book of the Year Award of the Islamic Republic in 1999.

Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on women and girls who do not abide to Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, in a direct challenge to the country’s clerical rulers. 

All women in Iran must conceal their hair with a hijab while in public and wear loose fitting trousers under their coats.

Fatemeh Rajaei-rad, a doctor in Amol, near Tehran, was recently summoned by prosecutors after she attended an official ceremony without a headscarf.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Guidance has published a list of filmmakers banned from working for voicing their dissent against compulsory hijab rules.