For example, according to Article 18 of Iran’s Passport Law, a married woman still needs written permission from her male guardian to travel abroad.

Women in Iran are unable to hold any positions within the judicial, religious and military systems, nor are they able to serve as members of the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Discernment Council or the Guardian Council, the three highest councils in the Islamic Republic.

Women under law cannot be president or supreme leader of Iran. According to Article 115, the president of the Islamic Republic must be elected from among the “religious and political men.”

In addition, the Iranian state has added discriminatory features to the criminal code – one such feature is the principle that the value of a woman is one-half of the value of a man.

That principle applies in matters involving compensation for a killing and in what a son or daughter receives from a family inheritance. They also apply in the weight given to legal testimony or in obtaining a divorce.

Such laws, policies and practices continue to mark women as lesser citizens, legally and socially unequal.

The state also has imposed systematic segregation in schools, hospitals, universities, transportation, sports and other major areas of day-to-day life.

For many decades, Iran’s gender apartheid had relegated women to the back of the bus with a metal bar segregating them from men.

Under the government’s direction, universities have set limits on women’s options and have banned them from many fields of study.

Iran has generally barred female spectators from soccer and other sports stadiums since the 1979 revolution.

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