EDITORIAL: Something deeply concerning has been happening in Iranian girls’ schools. Last Tuesday, at least 35 students of a school in Tehran province’s city of Pardis were taken to hospital suffering from a mysterious case of poisoning, adding to hundreds of cases of respiratory distress reported in the past three months in other towns, mainly in the holy city of Qom.
The police chief in Tehran told a news agency that the suspected poisoning was being investigated, and that “our priority is to find the origin of the case, and until then we will not judge whether it was intentional or not.” It is important, indeed, for the police not to jump to any conclusions without completing investigations. Yet considering that only girl students in different cities have been experiencing similar physical distress, there is no doubt about that it is the result of deliberate planning.
The intention behind the plan is obvious. As the country’s deputy health minister told IRNA news agency on Sunday, “after the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed.” We in this part of the region have already seen such assaults on female education.
Before they were ousted in a military operation Pakistani Taliban had destroyed many girls’ schools in the erstwhile tribal areas as well as some settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
And in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where hardliners have gained an upper hand over pragmatists, all secondary schools for girls have been closed down.
Those seeking university education find the door slammed shut on them. But in the Islamic Republic of Iran there are, never have been, any restrictions on female education, though the dress code for women is strictly implemented (just recently, protest spread all over the country for five long months after the morality police arrested a young Iranian Kurd woman for not ‘properly’ wearing the hijab, and died in custody).
In fact, various reports, including UNESCO’s, speak of gender parity, even disparity in girls’ favour, in primary and secondary schools, and that women comprise half, if not more, of students in the higher education institutions.
Nonetheless, differences between moderate and hardline sections in the Islamic Republic’s power structure, often find reflection in the education system. The then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for instance, having an overt anti-women bias, introduced new curriculums in schools suggesting, among other things, that marrying at an early age would protect women from social problems.
His successor, Hasan Rouhani, on the other hand, rejected gender-based education stating that his administration won’t discriminate between men and women in education or employment. Apparently, some extremist elements now are using fear tactics to impose their regressive agenda.
The state apparatus is fully geared towards controlling dissidence and there are reports that it has arrested four persons linked to these poisonings and hopefully they would be tried and awarded exemplary punishment for their heinous crime.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023