By Steve Bell
The recent unprovoked 12-day war on Iran by the US and Israeli government was a stark reminder of imperialism’s unremitting hostility to the Islamic Republic. Having failed to destroy Iran’s peaceful nuclear industry, and in bringing about regime change, further attacks are to be expected.
The ‘reason’ for the war was supposedly the imminent threat of Iran producing a nuclear weapon. Tomorrow, another ‘reason’ will be used. One hardy argument is the alleged uniquely bad stance of the Islamic Republic towards Iranian women. This follows the example of Afghanistan, where 20 years of war was conducted, in part, to ensure “progress” for Afghan women. Following the debacle of NATO’s defeat, sanctions and asset seizures have, according to the UN, reduced 97% of Afghans to poverty – the majority of whom are the very same Afghan women.
One refutation of any new crusade to free Iranian women is a concrete examination of the position of these women. Far from being uniquely disadvantaged by the Iranian revolution, the evidence is that Iranian women have benefited from the world historic event that they massively participated in.
Of course, we do not suggest that there are no difficulties, or serious problems. Such difficulties are for Iranian women, and the Iranian people, to resolve. External coercion, whether a further war or continuing sanctions, will simply increase the burden on Iranian women.
Gains for Iranian women in longevity and health
The most important single gain of the 1979 revolution was the establishment of a genuinely sovereign Iranian state. For the first time in modern history, the apparatus of power was directly in Iranian hands, not those of foreign imperialist subordinates. This meant that Iran’s resources and wealth could be used for the needs of the people – not the benefit of foreign companies and governments.
In the words of Catherine Z. Sameh, “Perhaps the most important legacy of the revolution was the creation of a vast social welfare state with programs and services that dramatically increased literacy rates and life expectancy for women and men, reduced the birth and fertility rates of women. And increased the percentage of women in universities.” (1)
Life expectancy is the clearest expression of improved living standards. The rise inside Iran is remarkable. In 1975, world life expectancy averaged 58.3 years – with an average for women of 60.5 years and men of 56.1 years. In the same year, Iranian women’s life expectancy was 55.4 years, and 54.3 years for men. By 2025, world life expectancy averaged 73.5 years, with an average for women of 76.2 years, and men of 70.9 years. This year, Iranian women’s life expectancy has reached 79.99 years, and Iranian men 76.22 years.
So, under the US supported Shah’s regime, Iranian women could expect to live five years less than the world average. Under the Islamic Republic Iranian women can expect to live nearly four years longer than the world average. (2)
One of the most important indicators of the improved social position of women is seen in the maternal mortality rate. World averages are incomplete for the Shah’s time – but in 1976 the maternal mortality rate was 274 per 100,000 live births. By 2000, the figure in Iran was 43, and by 2023 in was 15.8. This favourably compares to world averages of 328 in 2000, and 197 in 2023. Iran’s figures are also considerably better than averages for the Middle East and North Africa region, 101 in 2000 and 46 in 2023. (3)
This is one expression of the considerable resources directed towards the extension of health coverage and the training of health personnel. Once again world averages are incomplete for 1976, but in Iran 35% of births were attended by skilled health personnel. Under the Islamic Republic, 89.6% were so attended by 2000, and 99% by 2023. This compares to world averages of 61% in 2000, and 86% in 2023. (4)
Such changes are the direct result of the policy of successive governments, particularly in overcoming the division between urban and rural service provision.
Kevan Harris summarises the issues: “After the revolution… medical education was integrated into primary health-care system, which was expanding across the country. Between 1979 and 1994, the number of medical schools rose from seven to thirty-four, dentistry schools from three to thirteen, and pharmacy schools from three to nine. This shift from elite to mass medical education had long-term effects. One was that Iran started to produce doctors, and a lot of them.
In 1979, the ratio of physicians to the general population was 1 in 2,800. Outside Tehran, it was 1 in 4000. As the 1980s Health Minister Ali Reza Marandi recalled of the pre-revolutionary training system: “Unfortunately, at that time the road to the United States and a few Western European countries was a one-way road, and almost none of our graduates returned. Due to the fact that medical students were being trained mainly in sophisticated university hospitals, they were not capable of responding to the everyday needs of the community.” In contrast, by 2008, the physician-to-population ratio stood at 1 in 690. In 2007, seventeen thousand students were admitted to the universities controlled by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME). Sixty percent of these students were female.” (5)
In 2023, according to the UN SDG profile, the doctors to population ratio was one in 552.
Gains for Iranian women in literacy and education
As for literacy levels, similar remarkable gains have been made. In 1976, world averages for literacy were 74.64% for men, and 56.59% for women. In Iran that year, the rates were 48% for men and 24% for women. By 2023, the world average for men was 90.61% and 84.12% for women. In Iran, the average for men, aged 10 to 49, was 97.1% and for women 96.1% were literate. As above, under the Shah Iranian women were well below the world average literacy, and above it under the Islamic Republic. (6)
Since the revolution, the system of public education has expanded to provide free, compulsory schooling between the ages of six and eighteen. Higher education has been a notable achievement, with the majority of students being women. In these achievements there have been struggles for access by women. But despite obstacles to them doing so, Iranian women inside and outside the state have campaigned and opened the entirety of higher education to their sisters.
Hamideh Sedghi explains: “Women’s educational progress has been unprecedented in the nation’s history and unmatched in other Muslim countries. The conservative clerics and a few reformists continue to view women’s work and their participation in professional fields threatening to their reproductive activities at home. From the outset of the revolution, the government deliberately included women in certain studies while it excluded them from many different fields. It provided access to traditional domestic fields such as hygiene, sewing, cooking and homemaking. But after the war [Iraq aggression 1980-1988] it permitted the increasing number of women who had achieved high scores in their entrance examination at medical schools to enter obstetrics/gynaecology, which was closed to men, paediatrics, dentistry, and family medicine. It also applied a quota system to female students and closed many fields of study in technical and scientific areas and vocational schools. In 1994, it lifted the ban and permitted women to enter all fields of study. In 2002, 71 per cent of entry level college students were women. Alarmed by the large number of women in education, some officials proposed a new quota system to limit the number of women who can enter medical schools and other areas of higher education. But women have made a space of their own, not so comfortably, but as professionals who study and practice as lawyers, doctors, journalists, deputies, corporate executives, professors, lobbyists, writers, film makers, and publishers.” (7)
The higher education system represented a major national acquisition. In 2024, The Times Higher Education placed 36 Iranian institutions in the world 1000 top universities – ranking them fourth in Asia after China, India, and Japan.
In 1976/7, women made up 28.1% of graduates in Iran. By 2023, Iranian government figures indicate that 60% of higher education students are women. The breakthrough was not just in numbers; it also drew in women from poorer urban and rural backgrounds. Golnat Mehran states: “In fact, the process of revolution has widened the circle of women who have left their marginalised existence. It has opened the door for women other than the formerly empowered members of the urban elite whose high levels of education, wealth and family status had enabled them to break through many visible and invisible ceilings that kept their lower-class sisters “in their proper place.” (8)
Many remaining challenges for Iranian women
While insisting that the revolution has substantially aided Iranian women, it would be wrong to ignore the serious unevenness of the process. Notably, despite the key gains in literacy and education, Iranian women are significantly under-represented in the official labour market. According to the World Bank, in 2023 Iranian women composed just 13.59% of the labour force. This itself was a fall from the 2017 figure of 17.36% – that is before the impact of Trump’s first term “maximum pressure” sanctions.
As it is, this is still a higher level than several nearby states, including Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen. But it is well known by researchers that such surveys overlook a great deal of women’s contribution to the economy.
Janet Afary gives some examples: “Forty percent of the nation’s farmers were women, yet they viewed their labor as an extension of housekeeping. Economists observed that “the structure of female employment is increasingly shifting toward private sector positions in professional services for more educated women aged 20-50 years in the urban area.” In contrast, in the pre-revolutionary period, female employment was mostly for young uneducated women in rural areas. Still, many urban women who contributed to the informal economy considered themselves full-time housewives. In a survey of 350 working-age women in the more affluent northern area of Tehran in 2001, about 94 percent were earning an income, but only 53% described themselves as employed.” (9)
Zahra Karimi offers a further example of how women’s domestic responsibilities hide their labour: “In 1996 more than 91 percent of women industrial workers were in the textile and clothing sector mainly in carpet weaving. Decreasing international carpet prices led to a decline in real wages of carpet weavers… When discussing real wages, it is important to note that most carpet weavers are unpaid family workers. Home weaving is compatible with childcare and the performance of domestic tasks, though often stretching the length of the working day.” (10)
Iran is now primarily an urban society where, according to the World Bank, 77% of the population live in 2023, compared to just 48% in 1978. Amongst those sixty-eight million urban dwellers are countless women employed in the huge informal sector, untouched by surveys or legislation. Providing these invisible workers with the recognition, protection, unionisation, and other benefits remains a major social task.
Other issues are less ambiguously a problem. Women’s direct presence in decision making state bodies remains desperately low. Currently, Farzaneh Sadegh is the only woman in the Iranian cabinet – and she is only the second woman minister since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Currently there are fourteen women members of the Majlis (Parliament), just 4.9% of that body. In deliberative bodies of local government, the figure reached 5.1% in 2022.
Of course, the representation of women in Britain’s decision-making state bodies, in a country unaffected by sanctions and imperialist war, was also desperately low as recently as 1979 when they comprised just 3% of MPs, with Prime Minister Thatcher the only woman in the Cabinet.
On many questions of access and legal status Iranian women face difficulties or disadvantage. The UN SDG report in 2022 defined Iranian women’s access to abortion at just 19%, with access to contraception at 80%. In marriage and divorce legislation Iranian women do not have equal rights to men.
The revolution has also created complex and contradictory forms of development. The initial enthusiasm for Islamic renewal led to a restrictive interpretation of shariah law. Marriage age for girls was reduced to “puberty,” defined initially as nine years old. This was lifted to thirteen years old, following pressure from women activists and legislators.
However, living standards rose due to the redistributive policies of government. This, alongside the new opportunities for women in education and higher learning, meant that women were able to postpone the decision on marriage. So, despite the legal reduction of marriageable age, the actual average age of women marrying rose considerably. In 1976 the average age for a woman marrying was 19.5 years – in 1986 it was just 19.7 years. By 1996, after considerable economic growth it reached 22 years. In 2024 the average age had reached 24. (11) Women’s improving economic position allowed them to overcome a deteriorating legal position.
A similar process has occurred around family size. During the Iraq/Iran war, the government encouraged childbirths as a resilience to the losses inflicted by the imperialist backed war. After the war was over the government recognised it would be severely disrupted by a booming population in a devastated economy. Therefore, comprehensive family planning was funded and promoted. The result was that the Shah-era average of seven children per family was reduced to two children per household by the end of the 1990s. Once again, the reality of women’s lives is more complex than ideological attempts to contrast a “pro-woman” Shah, with an “anti-woman” Islamic Republic.
Western governments and media have continuously raised the issue of veiling. Iran has experienced both the compulsory veiling of women, and their compulsory unveiling under Reza Shah. Both policies have led to women being assaulted. The recent Women, Life, Freedom protests were the most recent episode in a difficult struggle which the Iranian people will ultimately resolve. As noted by Val Nasr: “In fact, the protests achieved a notable victory in that observance of the hijab grew lax after the 2022 protests as throngs of women have since routinely appeared in public without head coverings.” (12)
Certainly, the self-righteous attitude of many western observers jars badly against the actions of a growing number of European states where legal sanctions against women wearing the burqa, niqab or hijab are coercive against Muslim women and must be opposed.
Sanctions or solidarity with Iranian women?
Whilst foreign observers can register these developments it is only Iranian women and the Iranian people, who can resolve the outstanding problems in a manner appropriate to their society. Our key contribution is to hinder the imperialist powers belligerence against Iran. This means opposing any renewed military action, and to support the lifting of all sanctions against Iran.
The general function of sanctions is to disrupt the living standards and welfare of the population, not the government. This is nicely expressed in a recent book by Iranian American academics: “Yet unlike “just war” theory – in which non-combatants should be protected – in sanctions regimes, the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is purposefully blurred. If the goal of sanctions is to inflict enough pain on a society to pressure the political elite to change behavior, the target in fact becomes “noncombatants” – ordinary people – violating the very terms of warfare in the current international order. Prolonged comprehensive sanctions regimes distribute pain and death so widely that they function as an invisible war.” (13)
All the evidence on sanctions upon Iran demonstrate that women suffer an increased burden in this invisible war. (14) Those who claim to aid Iranian women by supporting sanctions are acting as oppressors of Iranian women. Solidarity with the Iranian people must be a priority for the anti-war and anti-imperialist movement in Britain today.
Notes
(1) Catherine Z. Sameh, “Axis of Hope: Iranian Women’s Rights Activism Across Borders”, University of Washington Press, 2019, p.142
(2) All figures taken from “Worldometer” site, accessed 22/7/25
(3) All figures taken from UNESCO
(4) All figures taken from WHO
(5) Kevan Harris, “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran”, University of California Press, 2017, p.168
(6) Figures from World Bank, UNESCO, and PressTV
(7) Hamideh Sedghi, “Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling and Reveiling”, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p.235-6
(8) Roksana Bahramitash & Eric Hooglund (eds.), “Gender in Contemporary Iran: Pushing the boundaries”, Routledge, 2014, quoted on p.55
(9) Janet Afary, “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran”, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p.308
(10) Roksana Bahramitash & Hadi Salehi Esfahani (eds.), “Veiled Employment: Islamism and the Political Economy of Women’s Employment in Iran”, Syracuse University Press, 2011, p.179
(11) All figures from Encyclopaedia Iranica
(12) Vali Nasr, “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History”, Princeton University Press, 2025, p.5
(13) Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez, “How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare”, Stanford University Press, 2024, p.147
(14) The Iranian People’s Struggle Against Sanctions – “resilience economics” trumps “maximum pressure
Image: Flag of Iran in map; Graphic by Haideer23; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license; with title of article added to the image.