TEHRAN – The participation of Iranian women in higher education’s research and development projects has increased from 27 percent in 2000 to 39.6 percent in 2017, Science Minister Mansour Gholami has said.

In all levels of education, the share of women has risen from 5.3 percent in 1978 to over 50 percent or even 60 percent during the past seven years, he noted, IRNA reported on Sunday.

Also, Iranian women have been able to obtain the top ranks of the university entrance exam, except for the technical and engineering field, compared to men with a quorum of 2 times, Gholami said.

Over 4,500 women enrolled in doctoral courses each year, and in the past three years on average, the number of doctoral theses registered by women is equivalent to 40 percent of the total dissertations registered in the database, he further explained.

While the share of the female population in higher education was only 281 per 100,000 populations in 1978, now, it reached 4,747 people (4.7 percent, almost 20 times), and the gross female enrollment rate (total number of students aging 18 to 24) has risen from 2.1 percent in 1978 to 41.2 percent (20 times) this year, Gholami noted.

In 1978, only 18 percent of women were faculty members working in higher education institutions, while this number reached up to 30 percent by now, he concluded.

Women’s participation above global average

The participation of Iranian women in research and development fields is higher than the global average, according to the UNESCO 2020 report on Women in Science.

Iranian women's participation in research and development has increased from 27.7 percent in 2019 to 31.2 percent in 2020, which is above the global average of 30 percent.

The increase in the share of women in research and development is mostly due to their increasing share in knowledge-based companies, Masoumeh Ebtekar, the vice president for women’s and family affairs, said in August 2020.

FB/MG