The Women of Iran
September 8, 2009
Women in Iran race ahead, but still face gender block
In Iran, women have made remarkable strides in education in the last decades — 65 percent of college undergraduates are female and 70 percent of graduate students are enrolled in medicine. Yet legally, women cannot travel freely without the permission of a male relative and face formidable obstacles when divorcing their husbands.
Iranian-American correspondent Bigan Saliani and producer Richard O’Regan traveled to Iran to explore the tensions between the expectations of many highly educated young Iranian women and the realities of their lives.
For more coverage of women in Iran, visit our Women in Islam extended coverage page.
Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, discusses family, law, education and the perception of women as second class citizens in the Muslim world.
