Dec 2, 2016

The resignations of three Cabinet ministers in October had raised hope among many women’s rights activists in Iran that President Hassan Rouhani would nominate at least one woman to one of the vacant positions. While Rouhani pledged to incorporate more women into his government during his 2013 presidential campaign, he has yet to fulfill this promise.

Upon taking office, Rouhani named three women as vice presidents and also tried to place more women as senior state officials. After the recent Cabinet reshuffle, he named Zahra Ahmadipour as a new vice president as well as head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization. Reports suggest that the president is also considering appointing Zahra Shojaei as the head of Iran’s National Library and Archives Organization. If finalized, these two women will replace their male colleagues Masoud Soltanifar and Reza Salehi Amiri, who have now become minister of sports and youth affairs as well as minister of culture and Islamic guidance, respectively, after winning votes of confidence from parliament.

Ahmadipour is one of three women who currently hold Cabinet positions at the rank of vice president. The other two women are Masoumeh Ebtekar, who has been vice president and head of the Environmental Protection Organization of Iran since 2013, and Shahindokht Molaverdi, who has served as vice president for women and family affairs since Rouhani took office. Elham Aminzadeh served as vice president for legal affairs from August 2013 to July 2016, and currently works as a presidential aide.

Yet it seems that three female vice presidents in the Cabinet is not enough for Iranian women’s rights activists, who remain critical of the dearth of female ministers. In a public statement earlier in November, a group of activists referred to Rouhani’s unfulfilled campaign promise to set up a ministry for women’s affairs and said, “Not only has there been no ministry set up for women, but the incumbent administration has also failed to have a woman in a ministerial position … so that the Cabinet of ‘moderation’ can remain a male-dominated one. … Iran is to hold its 12th presidential election in a few months. A great portion of voters are women. Are they planning to invite this group to the ballot boxes with the promise of setting up a ministry for women again?"

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Iran-based women’s rights activist Marzieh Mortazi Langroudi said the absence of female ministers in the Rouhani administration is due to how “many organizations comment on the Cabinet lineup.” Langroudi added, “The government must take their views into account. In such a situation, I should note that these influential organizations have neither now nor in the past been happy about having women in the Cabinet when they were selecting [potential] ministers.”