Iran Universities To Ban Women From 77 Fields of Study 585
New submitter jasper160 writes "An August 20th, 2012 announcement from Iran places restrictions on female university students. Iran will be cutting 77 fields of study from the female curriculum, making them male-only fields. Science and engineering are among those affected by the decree. 'The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.' The announcement came soon after the release of statistics showing that women were graduating in far higher numbers than men from Iranian universities and were scoring overall better than men, especially in the sciences. Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women."
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote to the UN that this effort is "part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena,"
Bringing down the girls! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what you get... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what you get when you base your life on what you imagine your invisble friend in the sky wants you to do.
This is going to cause internal problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Dark ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they oblivious to the fact that their region as once the "mecca" of science and math?...and maybe could be again if they tried?
Science teams are better when ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dark ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Because stupid people historically have been easier to control. It helps you to maintain your power.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's a pretty broad brush you're using there.
I'm glad my daughters don't live in Iran (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately this will backfire on the insecure men who rule Iran. They are afraid of empowering women but countries that do will run circles around them.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. Anyone irrational to believe in invisible men in the sky are prone to be irrational in other aspects of their lives.
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is going to cause internal problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I see another revolution in their very near future.
Yes, most likely paid with US tax dollars.
Re:Lysistrata (Score:2, Insightful)
That trick only works when women have the right to say no.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a pretty broad brush you're using there.
Sometimes a broad brush is the best tool for the job.
Re:Bringing down the girls! (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how there's two jokes in there: the obvious sexist one, and the one where Iranian's votes actually count regardless of gender.
Re:This is going to cause internal problems (Score:4, Insightful)
The Iranian people would like to do this on their own, they do not want US intervention and they would fight US intervention.
The US can apply external pressure, but it would be detrimental if they applied internal pressure.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what you get when you base your life on what you imagine your invisble friend in the sky wants you to do.
No. This is what you get when you have a religion that hasn't had a reformation, and believe that their religion is "true and untainted" and anyone who changes it should be put to death over it. Remember, Christianity and Judaism have both had such. In turn, after the reformations 400+ years ago, the world became a better place especially after the big push of the enlightenment period.
No reformation, no enlightenment period. Religion was still an important part of everything in the day-to-day workings of the people in the enlightenment period. Perhaps even more so than it was before. It was the ability to question, argue, dissent that changed everything.
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:1, Insightful)
Iran had a secular democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Iran had a secular democracy back in 1953. The west, especially England and the US, and overthrew it with a dictatorship, much more ruthless than the present government.
As the left was the great fear, the dictatorship jailed, (effectively) exiled and killed the left. When the people overthrew the foreign-backed government, the only power left in the country were the mullahs, and bazaar shop keepers, and that is who is in control now.
Harvard only began admitting women in 1999, although the first openings of that were in the 1960s. It's amusing to see westerners, who were just invading Iraq and torturing and forcing Abu Ghraib detainees to masturbate on camera, are now all sanctimonious about how Iranian universities are preparing classes. Iran is a paradise of academic freedom for women compared to US ally Saudi Arabia, why don't we hear about that? And why all the concern about women's studies in Iran, something Americans can do nothing about because the US doesn't even have diplomatic relations with Iran, at the same time the US is stepping up pressure on Iran on other fronts? The US is who overthrew Iran's secular democracy in 1953, then the CIA worked with the Savak to wipe out the left. Now they complain the mullahs have too much control over the universities. No Slashdot headlines about women's education in Saudi Arabia. Women can't even drive in Saudi Arabia, where's the noise about that? As there is none, it's clear this is just more propaganda as the war drums are being beaten. As smug, hypocritical, imperialist westerners stick their fingers into the Middle East, torture their people in prisons like Abu Ghraib, kill off and take over new land in the West Bank with US funds - you can be sure the inevitable 9/11s will come in response, as some people will always resist imperialism and foreign tyranny.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh there are plenty of Jews and Christians that want the same thing for the US.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not always bad: My personal deity told me to drink, bang hookers, hack in Lisp, and troll on slashdot.
Re:Before you think of the bad, there may be good (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing in what you said that should prevent women from getting an education.
Just because they get an education, that doesn't mean that they are required to get a job. An education is good even for people who do jobs that don't require one. Education introduces us to different ways of solving problems and different ways of thinking creating a more well rounded person.
Re:Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
The Christian community then does not include the Convservative/Fundamentalist sects that do the exact opposite?
We could use them. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear there's a shortage of engineers in the US. Maybe we should grant asylum to women seeking engineering degrees over here and kill two birds with one stone.
Re:In Other News... (Score:5, Insightful)
What of course is lying through statistics.
Women who exhibit the same patterns as men tend to earn as much as and often more than men. The trick is finding female oranges to compare to male oranges and not female apples to male oranges.
If a woman has the same educational attainment, works the same job for the same number of hours and years in position their pay is typically the same or better. But that almost never happens.
Women have babies, men don't. All of the differences trace back to that inescapable fact of biology and everything else flows from that. If you don't make it clear you aren't planning on having a baby you won't get picked for any position that can't easily cope with a sudden unplanned absence of up to a year. That right there will explain a fair amount of any measured difference. And of course many women DO actually have babies, which interrupts their career track, especially since many choose to take more time away than the purely medically required absence. Women tend to select careers which provide the work flexibility to permit their family obligations, another significant contributer to measured differences. And while we might argue endlessly whether it is good, correct, etc. there are still more cases of the male partner in a marriage getting a job offer that requires relocation disrupting the female's career track. Add all that up and you have most of the difference.
Now add in the fact, again we can argue endlessly about the rightness of it, whether it can or should be changed by social policy, etc., that men and women have different ideas of what a 'good job' is. Whether they can do it or not, women don't tend to seek jobs in a lot of industries that pay rather well but have difficult working conditions, require erratic schedules with a lot of overtime, etc. This preference is fairly uniform whether the female has children or not, plan on having children, is or is not married, etc. There is also a fairly pronounced difference in the selection of majors and all majors do not pay equally.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is what you get... (Score:1, Insightful)
I hate these sorts of absolute arguments from you "capital-A" Atheists. You realize you come off almost as extreme as fundamentalist theists, right?
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whem there is a glut in the market, stop producing so much to maximize profit
Except that is not what you do in a free economy. You only stop producing whem hit the point you can't sell at a profit, because in a free economy someone else would decide to produce and take your market share if the cost of supply was still lower than the price of demand.
If someone talks about cutting supply to maximize profit, they are almost certainly talking about an economy that someone has regulated or restricted others from emtering in some way. That is not a free market. Well outside those incredibly rare cases where someone literally controls the only know source of a mineral or something.
Re:Balance (Score:4, Insightful)
Stopping women from working/learning is a specific example. All of the religions mentioned have faith based rules that are generally not as harmul, but do exist. Not eating pork, no contraception, can't use modern medicine, etc. Simply put, they have rules in place that are based on what their invisible friend in the sky is imagined to have said. ... and yes, I do ealize that some of these once had a historical purpose (not eating pork for example), but I'm sure at one point women were less safe in public as well.
Re:Iran had a secular democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I applaud your post. If I had mod points, they'd be yours. Iranian nukes? Only an idiot can believe that they would attack Israel with a nuke, directly or by proxy. It would clearly and categorically mean a clean and robust regime-extinction event for them. It is the War-For-Profit machine in its myriad guises trying to get traction, nothing more.
Iran is a minor supporter of terrorism compared to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, who have been supporting American-killing terrorists for decades. Why so little public discussion about it? Because they are business partners with the American 1%. There is no better way to cover your ass, and practically no crime that can't be swept under the rug.
Re:Dark ages (Score:3, Insightful)
AC, you haven't been paying attention. The Republican Party takes strong anti-abortion and anti-gay-marriage positions as a sop to their conservative Christian members.
These Republicans are happy to vote for higher taxes on themselves and restrictions on their own civil liberties as long as their leaders promise to keep the women barefoot and pregnant and hang a gay now and then.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:1, Insightful)
You seem to be forgetting something fairly important. Our modern notions of ordered liberty, the rule of law (and not of men) equality before the law, even freedom of religion are all the product of the religious men (sorry ladies, that happened later) of the time. It gave the world wonders. Meanwhile every social system constructed by the godless has quickly degenerated into a Hell on Earth. Not saying that it must be so, but to ignore history doesn't sound very 'reality based' to me. At a minimum it should at least cause a bit of pause, some humility and some deep thoughts as to why that is true.
Re:Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've known many Persians. To a man and woman, they were intelligent, passionate, vocal and idealistic.
I've met a lot of Cubans, and most of the older ones hate Castro with an energy I wish I could bottle. Also, I have never been to Cuba.
More bluntly: I'm assuming you met those Persians outside of Iran, because Iran seems like the kind of place that "intelligent, passionate, vocal and idealistic" people would be better off emigrating from.
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
This. This times a million. To me, there's nothing scarier than the social conservative wing of the Republican party. They demonstrated that science means nothing to them (by spinning Akin's comments as a misunderstood slip of the tongue, rather than just plain wrong), they demonstrated that they're willing to put THEIR interpretation of the bible over anybody else's opinion on how to handle themselves, and they've demonstrated that they're willing to go to great lengths to make sure that their political dogma becomes the law of the land.
Quite frankly, I'd rather shack up with the Paulites and the actual communists than the social conservatives. I don't actually care about their position, but the amount of work they're putting into shoving their stone-age principles down my throat is far greater than that of any other political group in the US. Not to mention that they're also far more successful.
Re:This is what you get... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't understand me wrong. I am all for freedom of creed, but, based on the very same Human History you cite, I can safely conclude that the bad effects of religions are considerably more significative than their good effects.
Re:Bringing down the girls! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you have a typo. Let me fix it.
Iranian's votes don't actually count, regardless of gender.
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it so fascinating. I've known many Persians. To a man and woman, they were intelligent, passionate, vocal and idealistic. So how did a nation with such cultural depth,
Islam.
How could you have missed that fact?
Re:Bringing down the girls! (Score:2, Insightful)
Glory to the Idiotic Republic of Iran!
...really, why would anyone want less women in college!? That's like having less chocolate chips* in cookies! Stupid bastards in charge...
*or raisins in oatmeal cookies, if you wanna be like that. Harrumph.
They can't have sex with anyone they're not married to. That's why they have one-hour marriages to prostitutes before they have sex with them.
Having college women running around that they can't touch must drive them nuts!
Re:Is it too late to get UN sanctions on them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Russell's teapot (Score:4, Insightful)
The burden of proof lies with the party making the more bizarre assertion. [wikipedia.org]