|
|
|
Meanwhile, parents’ support for their daughters’ education and notable enthusiasm on the part of girls themselves to pursue their education have merged to produce desirable effects on the educational status of women in Iran. Consequently, statistical differences between the number of male and female students are on the decline. As mentioned previously, nation-wide academic performance of female students in Iran now stands 5 percent above that of the male students. Achievements of women at higher educational levels are also improving, and the number of female students and graduates in different fields has increased noticeably in recent years. Contents:
Statistical analysis of literacy trends in 1976, 1986 and 1991 indicates that women have been advancing in their efforts to narrow the literacy gap with men. Before the Islamic Revolution, over 50 percent of the Iranian female population did not know how to read or write. In the post-revolutionary years, women have shown an increasing willingness to become literate. Nonetheless, the difference, though decreasing rapidly, still remains tangible. According to the 1976 statistics, only 35.5 percent of the Iranian female population or 4.7 million were literate (Table 6). In the same year, the men’s literacy rate was 58.9 percent (8.2 million). The first post-revolutionary national census in 1986 indicated that women’s literacy rate had climbed to the level of 52.1 percent and that 9.8 million women had become literate by that year (Table 7). And, finally, the 1991 census showed that in that years, 67. 1 percent of the total female population of over 6 years of age (14.9 million) were literate. The corresponding figure for the male population was 80.6 percent or 19.1 million (Table 8). The number of students and enrolment ratio by gender for the primary, secondary and technical school levels for the four academic years 1976/77, 1986/87, 1991/92 and 1993/94 were as follows: Primary Schools
(Table 9 in the Appendix) Junior secondary schools
(Table 9 in the Appendix) Senior secondary schools
(Table 9 in the Appendix) Technical schools
The number of students who finished their education at the three levels of primary school and junior and senior secondary schools in academic years 1976/77, 86/87, 91/92 and 93/94 is given in Table 10 and Table 11. Gender ratios between boys and girls finishing the primary and junior secondary school levels indicate the following trends in a period of 15 years: Graduation from primary and secondary schools
During the academic year’s 1988/89 to 1993/94, female students, on the average, constituted 30 percent of the total enrolment in universities and institutes of higher learning. Average breakdown of figures in different fields were as follows:
Table 13 represent the number of students (by gender) enrolled in public universities during the academic year’s 1988/89 to 1993/94 while Table 14 has the same data for private schools. In academic year 1993/94, female students constituted the following enrolment gender ratios at various higher education levels:
In the same year, the female student population at the university level showed the following breakdown, according to main fields of study:
Statistics on the enrolments of female students in universities in the academic years 1988/89-1993/94, indicate the following major changes in this five-year period. In social sciences and basic sciences, the number of female students increased three-fold and six-fold, respectively, at the post-graduate and doctorate levels. In technical and engineering fields, increases were on the order of five-fold and twelve-fold, respectively. In agricultural and veterinary sciences, there was ten-fold increase in the number of female students at the doctorate level. In medical sciences, women’s enrolment double in this period, and in arts the increase was nearly a hundred percent. In the academic year 1992/93, women constituted 31.5 percent of the total number of 59,194 students who received university degrees. Gender ratios of graduates, according to fields of study, were as follows:
A comparison between academic years 1987/88 and 1992/93 shows the following achievements in women’s graduation from universities in the span of five years:
In summary, according to statistics presented in Table 15 and Table 16, the number of women’s graduating from universities and higher education institutions increased almost two-fold between 1987/88 and 1992/93. The number of women staff members at universities almost doubled from academic years 1987/888 to 1992/93. Of the 30,262 academics serving on the staff of universities throughout the country in the first semester of 1992/93, about 18 percent were women. At present, 5.7 percent of professors, 16.5 percent of associate professors, 21.9 percent of assistant professors and 36.9 percent of university instructors are women. 2,220 women are staff members of faculties of medical sciences, which is 18 percent of the total. The number of men and women teaching in academic years 1976/77, 1986/87 and 1991/92 is shown in Table 12 in the Appendix. In the period under analysis, trends were as follows:
In addition to the figures mentioned above, there are a number of teachers who are paid on an hourly wage basis employed in different schools across the country. Of the 47,016 teachers who work on an hourly wage basis in academic year 1991/92 about two-thirds were women. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[ Culture & Tourism | Economy | News & Media | Religion | Iran Information | Women | Embassy | Index | Search ]
