Vahideh Molaei is a member of the group Women’s Circle and also serves on Daftar-e ‎Tahkim-e Vahdat’s (Office for Student Solidarity) women’s committee. She spoke to ‎Rooz about movements that are pursuing the passage and implementation of a law that ‎aims at reducing women’s quotas in the universities. According to Molaei, Islamic ‎Republic’s officials are attempting to limit the high number of women who receive ‎university degrees. ‎

Molaei says that women’s rights activists are planning to place the issue of university ‎gender enrollment quotas at the top of their list in their March 8th programs this year. ‎

Molaei adds that she and her colleagues have found new evidence showing that gender ‎quotas have already been implemented in fields such as medicine: “we have seen many ‎instances in which, for instance, a girl and a boy in a certain town received the same ‎score on university entrance exam, but the boy was admitted to study medicine and the ‎girl was not admitted to study medicine anywhere, but only to study other fields, like ‎pharmacology.” ‎

Molaei continues: “I think this is the beginning stages of their plan. In effect, they have ‎already implemented gender quotas in some fields which are less scrutinized. For ‎example, they haven’t implemented gender quotas in mechanical majors, because there ‎the number of boys has historically been higher. But they have implemented gender ‎quotas in other fields to create a ‘balance.’ But eventually they intend to implement this ‎policy in all fields.” ‎

Molaei insists that the women’s movement is opposed to gender quotas: “Obviously we ‎are against discrimination in any field. Based on studies and research that has been done ‎on this issue, we have seen that in some countries there is positive discrimination, ‎meaning they set aside special quotas to increase women’s enrollment, as they do in their ‎parliaments. Meanwhile, in Iran we have negative discrimination. ‎

This women’s right activist concluded, “currently, one of the most important places in ‎which women can show their advancement is in universities, and obviously the ‎government and Majlis have understood this and are trying to stop it. They want women ‎to stay at home.” ‎