The Institutionalization of Gender Inequality in the Iranian Education System

November 2025, Article written by by Lili Bazargan

Introduction

In Iran, the regime weaponizes education. Women experience the worst of this weapon. Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there was state legal involvement in gender role enforcement; however, post-revolution, the state actively engaged in reinforcing and solidifying its preferred gender roles (Heidawrifar). The “cultural revolution” brought about by the new theocratic regime defined women’s roles as wives and mothers. Iran’s education system enforces this framework through the interaction of epistemic segregation and hermeneutical injustice, which intertwine to reinforce gender norms and reproduce inequality (Heidarifar). Gender inequality perpetuated through education is a tool of authoritarian reinforcement and promotion of the regime’s patriarchal society model to counter the Western model. Increasingly, the disparity between students’ expectations and the authorities’ ideological perspectives leads civil society to contest the regime’s legitimacy and protest for regime change (Sinaiee). This paper seeks to answer the question: How does the Iranian state-managed school curricula reproduce inequality, reinforce the regime’s power and influence civil unrest? Subsequently, the paper will provide historical and political context to the modern system before analyzing methods of institutionalization and the impact on political unrest and legitimacy. The inclusion of primary source accounts of two former students will provide first-hand accounts.

Historical and Political Context

Both under Shah Reza Pahlavi in the 1930s and in post-Revolution society, Iranian laws regulating women have been portrayed as a national security issue. The Shah’s goal of westernized modernity influenced progressive decisions such as the ban on veiling, which he called the “black tent of ignorance”, blocking national progress. Inversely and nullifyingly, the Islamic Republic reinstated the mandatory hijab law in the 1980s, justifying it as an effort of a ‘protection against Western cultural colonization’. In both cases, turning women’s dress into a security issue allows for state control, as this “pastoral power” is framed as a benevolent protection of the nation. Across both contexts, regimes constructed a crisis, mapped this struggle onto female corporeality, and subsequently presented state intervention as a moral duty to save society (Barjasteh). Looking more specifically at gender segregation policies in education, the Islamic Republic exponentially augmented state involvement. The 1980 Cultural Revolution in Iran was the regime's early effort to Islamize society and establish theocratic rule free from Western influences. Khomeini’s 1980 New Year’s speech explicitly ordered a purge of “East or West-affiliated professors” and the “Islamization” of universities. The regime’s Cultural Revolution Task Force appointed university presidents and oversaw purge committees that expelled 700 of 12,000 faculty members in an attempt to “islamize” curricula. This task force evolved into the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution and continued to enforce discriminatory admission policies, such as barring women from certain fields. In the Islamic Republic’s early years, mounting clashes between Islamist and leftist groups culminated in the Revolutionary Guard’s decree to shut down all university campuses by June 5th. Given their independence from clerical control and their role as incubators of opposition to Khomeini, universities were the strategic and immediate target of the regime’s ideological overhaul (Iran Press Watch).

Methods of Institutionalization

Textbooks

Analyzing gender representation in Iranian EFL textbook series Vision and Prospect reveals gender disparities in visual and textual representation. A study by Mohammad Amin Mozaheb, Narges Sardabi, and Milad Moharrami in the Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Translation Studies examines six categories: visual representation, text visibility, firstness, character action, occupation, and topic dominance. The study specifically looks at Vision I-III and Prospect I-III, the primary series for high school English language course instruction. Vision exhibits less gender inequality than Prospect, but men are nonetheless predominantly thematic in both. Overall, the data collection reveals an overrepresentation of male characters in categories of visibility, fitness, character action, occupation, and thematic dominance. Between the two textbook companies, the overall visual representation is 65-69% male and 31- 35% female. A well-known cause of this disparity is the Ministry of Education’s removal of pictures of schoolgirls from the cover of third-grade mathematics textbooks in 2020. In response to significant civil society backlash, the textbook was redesigned in 2021, resulting in the complete omission of student imagery. The preference to completely remove students rather than to equalize gender representation reveals deep-rooted hatred of the female gender. Additionally, data show a subtler yet systemic embeddedness of disparity across textbooks. Text visibility - meaning how often a gender appears in pronouns, names of characters, direct speech and references - is 60-65% male and 35-40% female, demonstrating consistent skew toward male representation. This imbalance is reinforced by Firstness, or how often males are mentioned first in male-female pairings, occurring 73-80% of the time in Prospect and 65-78% of the time in Vision. Furthermore, gender roles are rigidly segregated: in textbook character action, males dominate physical activities, sports, and technological environments, while females are more visible in domestic and social settings. This occupational bias extends to professional sectors (service, education, healthcare and business) which are overwhelmingly male (70-80%). Lastly, analysis of topic dominance communicates prevailing male-led dialogue and scientific themes, while female presence is higher in cultural and social topics. The data confirms that persistent gender bias in textbooks contributes to the reinforcement of social stereotypes. Although this study analyses high school English language textbooks (Vision and Prospect), similar disparities are evident in Persian and Arabic language materials. The male-dominant tone begins in primary education and steadily augments throughout the higher education curriculum.

Institutional Practices

The institutionalization of gender inequality through the education system is multifaceted, extending beyond school curriculum; it is profoundly reinforced through the combined impact of physical exclusion and restrictive state education policies. Shadi Heidarifar identifies a bidirectional dynamic where gender-based social norms and gender-segregated education policies interlock, creating epistemic segregation that effectively excludes girls from knowledge production within the Iranian school system. His argument posits that gender-based segregation reproduces hermeneutic inequality by reinforcing epistemic segregation, thereby constituting a form of epistemic injustice. Essentially, Iran’s highly gendered social norms and its sex-segregated school system are mutually reinforcing, perpetuating a cycle of gender inequality within the education sphere. Following the 1979 revolution, state regulation immediately sought to reinforce and solidify the new regime’s ideal gender roles, actively positioning women as wives and mothers. This institutionalization was swiftly cemented by legislative change: specifically, the reduction of the legal marriage age from 18 to 13. This policy change is directly correlated with a sharp rise in child marriage, with statistics indicating an increase of up to 30% between 2021 and 2022 (Iran International). By 2022, ⅕ of all recorded marriages were child marriages, reinforcing the regime’s definition of women’s value as solely wives and mothers. The school system represents these highly gendered norms. The compulsory education law permitting girls to drop out of school as early as the age of 12 encourages child marriage. Heidarifar’s research describes the experience of an Azerbaijani Turk woman from Ardabil, Maral, who was married off to her 19 year-old cousin when she was only nine. Although her husband eventually divorced her, Maral’s mother did not permit her to return to school. Her second marriage, entered into at age 14, ended after 16 years, when her husband lost his life in a car crash. Maral recounts, “At least if I had studied and then married, I could have had the right job after the disaster.” The nature of Iranian state policy pushes women towards marriage, makes them dependent on male figures and encourages marriage over education. Therefore, women like Maral are left vulnerable, as her survival was dependent on marriage. Another factor to take into consideration is the ban on mixed schooling, which especially affects rural and nomadic areas of Iran. In contrast to urban areas, over 90% of schools in rural areas are mixed due to teacher shortages, financial constraints, a lack of rural roads, and nomadic movement. Yet, the Ministry of Education enforced a gender segregation policy ending mixed schooling and responded to parents’ backlash by stating that if the policy prevents girls from accessing an education, it would be better for them to get married than to abolish the policy. Gender-segregated policies extend into higher education, even amidst the widely reported increase in female enrollment, literacy rates and degree attainment (UN Women). Although the simultaneous rise in both child marriage and higher education rates may appear contradictory, Heidarifar argues that this perceived tension is illusory, due to limited demographic overlap. The gains in higher education primarily affect women in urban areas, who experience lower child marriage rates, while women in rural and nomadic areas face higher rates of child marriage and much lower participation in higher education. Therefore, both developments can exist simultaneously without invalidating the other. While the differing geographical realities benefit urban women in higher education, the systemic constraints and institutional challenges faced by all women in the system remain largely consistent. Within university, women experience limited access to certain majors identified as ‘masculine,’ such as engineering. Additionally, despite high levels of female students with undergraduate degrees, they exhibit low participation in the workplace; this isn’t a matter of personal choice, but a systemic lack of equal employment opportunity. This is fundamentally rooted in the segregation of academic paths, as women are often channelled into ‘feminine majors,’ which offer limited professional prospects. Reflecting this institutionalized disparity, Iran ranked 140th out of 144 nations for gender parity in the 2018 World Economic Forum report, with women comprising only 19% of the workforce. Despite the lack of working opportunities, women strategically pursue higher education as a mechanism to enhance their negotiating power within marriage contracts. A key element of the Islamic marriage contract is the mahriyeh (dower). An amount of money agreed upon by the couple to be paid to the wife at any time she requests. A higher education degree serves as leverage to secure a higher mahriyeh, thereby offering women a stronger basis for negotiating divorce - specifically, the credible threat of litigating to collect their mahriyeh. The understanding is that a woman with more education should be offered a greater mahriyeh.

Reinforcing Cycle

Epistemic segregation refers to institutional practices that deliberately exclude certain individuals – in this case, specifically girls – from being recognized as legitimate ‘knowers’, thereby limiting their access to knowledge. This first hindrance is intertwined with hermeneutical inequality, a social positioning that deprives girls of the necessary interpretive resources to generate social meaning. This dual exclusion further prevents them from contributing to collective knowledge. In Iran, the institutionalized framing of women as exclusively wives and mothers directly influences legislation that permits girls to leave school as early as age 12. This policy-driven limitation of their potential not only costs girls their education but also validates the societal belief that education for girls is useless, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that drives high dropout rates among girls (Heidarifar). Foucauldian analysis of governmentality reveals how authoritarian powers rely on managing knowledge and meaning, not just coercion. By creating “states of insecurity” and “pastoral power,” the government’s actions are portrayed as working as a moral guardian of the collective good (Barjasteh). The Iranian regime's portrayal of women as inferior and the use of the education system to reproduce this narrative prevent girls’ production of self- knowledge from a young age. The Iranian school system defines girls as inferior by limiting their epistemic capacities. Ideological governance, operating through educational institutions, reinforces state authority and patriarchal state identity. While this process fundamentally serves to suppress political dissent, Alkamcha notes that it can also paradoxically become a catalyst for it.

Political Effects

Since the 1980 Cultural Revolution, the regime's strict intervention in citizens’ lives has led to backlash, often erupting into broader social movements. In 1999, Tehran University dormitories were centres of calls for reform. Police were dispatched to attack the dormitories, and by morning, three students were killed and many more arrested. Rather than stifling dissent, this attack led to a breaking point. In response, thousands of students took to the streets, destroyed public property and organized sit-ins, leading to the birth of nationwide opposition. Although opposition groups and student unions lacked leadership and differed in their degrees of religiosity and political liberalism, they agreed on the separation of religion and state and the necessity of basic civil liberties. For the first time, the masses collectively demanded the removal of Islamic theocracy. The regime responded by closing reformist newspapers and arresting and torturing opposition leaders (PBS). The pushback against the regime is not isolated but prolonged. The regime’s ideological imposition in the education system fuels resistance, leading to movements that challenge the patriarchal and authoritarian structures of the Islamic Republic. Most recently, nationwide protests followed the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was arrested by Iran’s Morality Police for “improperly” wearing her hijab. After her arrest, she died in a hospital while under the supervision of the regime. Female students refused to wear hijabs to demonstrate their anger and protested both in and out of university (Sinaiee). In 2022, what started as a movement for women’s rights and a change of laws on hijabs evolved into calls for greater regime change. The state retaliated by arresting and executing protestors. Some students arrested for protesting were banned from attending school, demonstrating how speaking out leads to a loss of educational access. Additionally, between December 2022 and March 2023, over 1000 schoolgirls across 20 Iranian provinces were hospitalized after suspected chemical and toxic gas poisonings (Alkamcha). Interpreted as state intimidation to discourage girls’ school attendance, many families called out the regime. Authorities admitted “mild poison attacks” but later blamed dissidents and foreign powers by televising forced confessions (Sinaiee). A report published by reformist Etemad newspaper explains how “the education system has turned into an arena for those in power to pursue their political goals.” In this way, schoolbooks and teacher selection are tools to ensure the political and ideological goals of the regime. While these tactics serve to reinforce the legitimacy and survival of the regime, the disparities between students’ expectations and authorities’ ideological perspectives lead to a legitimacy gap, severing ties between the educational system and civil society and fueling resistance from students, their families, and even sometimes teachers against the system’s policies.

Personal Accounts

To gain first-hand accounts of Iran’s systemic gender inequality, this study utilizes interviews with two former female students of Iran’s education system. Both students left the Iranian system in high school to pursue their studies in the United States. Their accounts of their experiences reveal important aspects of the everyday reality of being a girl in Iranian schools. The first student, to whom this paper will refer as Sue, attended gender-segregated private schools in Iran's highly urban capital, Tehran. When speaking of the transition from mixed schools to segregated Kindergarten, she explains this was an anticipated change, something girls are aware of all their lives; therefore, it was neither a shock nor a particularly difficult adjustment. Sue went through the Iranian school system, including a year of middle school online due to COVID, before transitioning to the American system for high school. Her schools in Iran were more secular than most, because of their private nature; however, they were still very religious to “Western” standards. Regarding dress code, students were given a mandatory modest uniform that included a head scarf. They were expected to wear it at all times, especially outside of classrooms or when male workers were present. Female students generally saw these rules as unfair, given that they did not apply to boys and Iran’s hot climate made coverings extremely uncomfortable at times. Sue recalls her elementary school being less strict, demonstrating how the implementation of gender norms in Iran exacerbates throughout educational advancement. Gender differences went beyond clothing. Sue recalls her teachers not mentioning blue-collar jobs (i.e. firefighting) for girls; however, she supposes that gender-based appropriation of careers was less prominent in her generation, especially in a private school. A key difference between male and female schools exists in the number of restrictions, which Sue explains were not as strictly imposed in boys’ schools. For example, boys were permitted to mess around more while girls had different expectations. If someone spoke too loudly, they would be chastised for not behaving like a lady. While these may be very subtle differences, they actively shape societal functioning and women’s self-perception, and reinforce state-manufactured gender norms. Regular political turmoil in Iran also affects classrooms. According to Sue, topics like women’s rights, the hijab, and protests were not permitted in discussions or projects. If such issues were addressed outside class hours when students spoke among themselves on school campuses, administrators would ask them to limit their speech; they acknowledged differing beliefs but asserted that these topics were not to be discussed in school altogether. Although Sue was outside the Iranian system during the Women, Life, Freedom protests, her friends recounted instances of student dissent in their schools. Some students would write “Mahsa Amini” around school; however, given institutions’ heightened religious oversight, these expressions of solidarity were often met with strict institutional suppression. The second former student, to whom this study will refer as Jane, also attended school in Tehran, Iran, from first through ninth grade. She attended a private religious school, explaining that nearly all schools in Iran are religious unless they are international embassy schools. Jane never experienced a mixed school before moving to the United States. Jane believes that beyond the complete separation of girls and boys, the traditional beliefs of many teachers and administrators strongly reinforce inequality and regime-imposed gender norms. In her gender-segregated Iranian schools, if the teacher was female, students were permitted to remove their headscarves; if the teacher was male, which was rare, they were required to keep their headscarves on at all times. Students who were not adhering to the dress code would be warned immediately as teachers and administrators enforced proper dress codes very strictly. Jane asserts that no female student liked wearing a hijab; however, “[they] had no choice but to follow the rules.” Jane confirms that a standard national curriculum was mandated for all pre-university students, meaning academic subjects did not differ by gender. However, this academic uniformity was undermined by a significant practical disparity: boys received substantially greater opportunities in sports and physical education. Consistent with Sue’s account, Jane also noted that discussing contentious topics, such as women’s rights and protests, could get them into trouble if overheard by teachers or administrators. When the Mahsa Amini protests began, Jane was still in Iran and left one or two weeks later. Many of her friends joined protests and sent her videos from the streets. Some were almost caught by the Morality Police. Jane identifies this movement as the first time people really started speaking up about women’s rights. Following her move to the United States, Jane attended a co-ed school and found that the environment granted her more opportunities, such as internships and jobs, which she could not have accessed in Iran. She recognizes a much greater sense of equality of opportunity in the United States. Following her move to the United States, Jane attended a co-ed school and found that the environment granted her more opportunities, such as internships and jobs, which she could not have accessed in Iran. She recognizes a much greater sense of equality of opportunity in the United States. The primary goal of Tom’s NGO is to enable motivated female students from extremely poor circumstances in primarily rural areas to continue their education; many of these students are orphans. Due to the higher quality of private education, the organization provides the resources necessary for most beneficiary girls to attend private schools. Across both private and public settings, the primary concern is ensuring equitable treatment by informing teachers and administrators of the girls’ situation to prevent discrimination stemming from their lower socioeconomic background and non-profit support. As to logistical barriers, the NGO only interacts with the government to renew their non-profit status every two years and to complete tax forms. All supervisors, employees, managers and members of the board of directors and trustees are local women and men from rural and urban areas of the province in which the main office of the organization is located.

Conclusion

Gender inequality in Iran is a self-reinforcing cycle, systematically perpetuated by the state’s education system and the institutionalization of prescribed gender norms. However, as the world witnesses increasing pushback against the Iranian regime’s oppressive policies, cracks emerge in the once seemingly impenetrable regime. This paper does not stipulate an imminent fall of the regime, nor does it argue that women’s rights movements would be a tipping point. Instead, by identifying the mechanisms of discrimination and institutionalization, this analysis demonstrates precisely how gender inequality is structurally manufactured, distributed, and reproduced across Iranian society. The first-hand accounts provide critical insight into the tension between compliance and conviction: while students conform to the strict regulations, their private expression of discontent reveals their true attitudes towards the gender inequality perpetuated by the education system. These attitudes are a significant indicator that public conformity does not translate into private acceptance. Although it remains speculative whether such discontent will escalate into further protests or ultimately guarantee regime change, the evidence clearly establishes a fundamental discrepancy between outward adherence and internal rejection.

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