AI: Iran women remained subject to discrimination in law and practice

Amnesty International published its annual 2017/18 report on Thursday, February 22, 2018, evaluating the human rights situation in the world, including in Iran.

The report has categorized Iran as one of the most prolific users of the death penalty. In the section entitled, “DISCRIMINATION – WOMEN AND GIRLS,” it wrote:

• Women remained subject to entrenched discrimination in law and practice, including in access to divorce, employment, equal inheritance and political office, and in family and criminal law.
• Acts of violence against women and girls, including domestic violence and early and forced marriage, were widespread and committed with impunity. The authorities failed to criminalize gender-based violence; a draft bill remained pending since 2012. The legal age of marriage for girls remained at 13, and fathers and grandfathers could obtain permission from courts for their daughters to be married at an even younger age.
• All 137 women who registered as presidential candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council. President Rouhani included no woman ministers in his cabinet, despite civil society demands.
• Compulsory veiling (hijab) allowed police and paramilitary forces to harass and detain women for showing strands of hair under their headscarves or for wearing heavy makeup or tight clothing. State-sanctioned smear campaigns were conducted against women who campaigned against the compulsory hijab.
• Iran’s Civil Code continued to deny Iranian women married to non-Iranian men the right to pass their nationality on to their children, a right enjoyed by Iranian men married to foreign spouses.
• Authorities defied ongoing public pressure to open football stadiums to women spectators.
• Women experienced reduced access to affordable modern contraception as the authorities failed to restore the budget for state family planning programmes cut in 2012. Parliament passed a law in October imposing severe restrictions on imparting information about contraception.
• The authorities continued to monitor and restrict foreign travel of women’s rights activists. Alieh Motalebzadeh was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in August for attending a workshop in Georgia on “Women’s empowerment and elections.”