The Mehr News Agency reported Monday that women have been banned from such fields as engineering, accounting, the restoration of monuments and chemistry, not to mention education and counseling, usually viewed as “traditional” fields for women.
It said that 36 of the country’s universities have closed 77 fields of study to women. It wasn’t clear if the other universities in the country would soon follow suit or were resisting the new restrictions on women.
The effort to confine women to “traditional” fields of study started brewing several years ago when women came to outnumber men in higher education. The effort was promoted by many conservative clerics.
President Ahmadi-nejad would have nothing to do with the idea, but for more than a year now he has been largely neutered.
Mehr said that the Art Schools of Tabriz, Mazandaran and Kashan have announced that their spaces for new students are open to men only. That suggests a rather puzzling interpretation of a “traditional” role for women.
The closure of these many fields to women were not included in the university brochures that were distributed in recent months, suggesting that the closures are a sudden development.
Following the election protests of 2009, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi pointed the finger at universities as the breeding ground for subversive behavior and called for a greater focus on Islamic principles in universities.