[ 15.10.1999, Multikulturně > Ženy ve světě ]

• Iran plans to improve the way women are portrayed in school books as part of adrive to encourage a more open attitude to the role of women in society, newspapers reported on Wednesday.
  ``The image of women in elementary school books will be revamped .... This will also be done in textbooks for secondary schools,`` newspapers quoted Education Minister Hossein Mozafar as saying. The move reflects a rising consciousness in the Islamic republic about the social inequality between men and women and growing demand by the female population for higher status.
  Women`s groups have complained that textbooks predominantly show women as mothers, sisters and wives carrying out domestic duties. Women played an instrumental role in President Mohammad Khatami`s landslide election in 1997, hoping that the moderate cleric would help improve their lot.
  Mozafar said women accounted for half of the workforce at his ministry, but that they held few high-level posts. ``The weak presence of women in administrative levels is mainly due to the ignorance about their abilities,`` he said. ``We have to correct existing views (on women) at the Education Ministry and ... there is a need to create the social conditions for the acceptance of women.`` Published Sunday, August 22, 1999

• A government study has shown that young women in the conservative holy Iranian City of Qom are more depressed than those in the more liberal capital Tehran, a senior official was quoted as saying on Sunday. Qom is the stronghold of Iran`s Shi`ite Moslem clergy and has a deeply conservative religious culture.
  "The study shows that the level of depression in the city of Qom is more than that in Tehran. This goes back to the suppression of girl`s interests and existing restrictions." The survey was conducted recently among women between the ages of 17 and 22.
  All Iranian women live under social restrictions, including a conservative dress code. Iran imposed strict rules limiting women`s freedoms after the 1979 Islamic revolution, but rules are more strictly applied in conservative cities like Qom.