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Iran: Activist to Discuss Country’s Nuclear Program

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Iran: Activist to Discuss Country’s Nuclear Program

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Haghighatjoo, who holds a doctorate in psychology, served in the Iranian Parliament for four years beginning in 2000. After much gender discrimination and an arrest for criticizing the country’s leaders, she became the first member to resign after the anti-reform Guardian Council banned thousands of reformist candidates from the 7th Parliamentary election. In parliament, Haghighatjoo worked on human rights and women’s issues such as family planning and divorce law. 

Haghighatjoo gave a talk at USC last Thursday, Aug. 30, entitled “Islam, Politics, and Gender Equality Movements.” She spoke to an auditorium of about 60 students and university faculty on the gender and religious inequality issues plaguing her home country and many others, and she offered solutions such as electing more feminist politicians and “education, education, education.”

“We need more qualified women,” she said. “And, of course, social, cultural and [religious practices] may also play as a positive or negative force on women. All of us are agents of change.”

Haghighatjoo says it’s particularly important for women to stand with other women, citing other Iranian women in parliament who did not support family planning and sided politically with the male leaders. One man in Parliament scoffed at Haghighatjoo’s divorce law efforts by implying that women are too emotional and illogical to make decisions about divorce.

Read more at Free Times, 5 September 2012.

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Haghighatjoo, who holds a doctorate in psychology, served in the Iranian Parliament for four years beginning in 2000. After much gender discrimination and an arrest for criticizing the country’s leaders, she became the first member to resign after the anti-reform Guardian Council banned thousands of reformist candidates from the 7th Parliamentary election. In parliament, Haghighatjoo worked on human rights and women’s issues such as family planning and divorce law. 

Haghighatjoo gave a talk at USC last Thursday, Aug. 30, entitled “Islam, Politics, and Gender Equality Movements.” She spoke to an auditorium of about 60 students and university faculty on the gender and religious inequality issues plaguing her home country and many others, and she offered solutions such as electing more feminist politicians and “education, education, education.”

“We need more qualified women,” she said. “And, of course, social, cultural and [religious practices] may also play as a positive or negative force on women. All of us are agents of change.”

Haghighatjoo says it’s particularly important for women to stand with other women, citing other Iranian women in parliament who did not support family planning and sided politically with the male leaders. One man in Parliament scoffed at Haghighatjoo’s divorce law efforts by implying that women are too emotional and illogical to make decisions about divorce.

Read more at Free Times, 5 September 2012.

News