Denying Equality and Basic Rights for Women
Last Updated: March 6, 2006
Iran's
constitution dictates that a woman's life is worth half a man's. Women
in Iran are second-class citizens, officially segregated from men in many
aspects of public life. Women are required to use a separate and dramatically
inferior hospital system. State security officers forcibly remove female
spectators from soccer games. For a young Iranian woman caught at a co-ed
party can mean arrest and possibly worse. Women are regularly hanged in
public for "acts incompatible with chastity." Those accused
of adultery are buried up to their necks and stoned to death. In January
of this year, a teenager was sentenced to death for killing a man who
was trying to rape her. The campaign against women in so many aspects
of life has had a profound social impact - in a recent survey 25% of Iranian
women admit to being unhappy with their gender.