TEHRAN – Vice President for Women’s and Family Affairs Ensieh Khazali and Japanese Ambassador to Tehran Ikawa Kazutoshi discussed areas of cooperation in the fields of women and population, IRNA reported.

During a meeting held on Thursday in Tehran, the two officials emphasized the need to enhance cooperation for empowering women and adopting strategies to deal with the aging population.

A comprehensive program for women has been prepared which focuses on two main axes, which are the empowerment of women and efforts to eliminate the social harm to women and the family, Khazali said.

Kazutoshi also stressed that we intend to continue this kind of cooperation regarding health assistance to pregnant women.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he announced that a new coronavirus vaccine has been produced in Japan and we would like to donate it to Iran.

Demographic indicators alarming

Iran's demographic indicators demonstrate alarming records, as the population growth rate is about 0.6 percent, and it is predicted to reach zero in the next 10-15 years, and then record a negative growth rate, Saleh Ghasemi, a demographic researcher, has said.

All countries around the world are moving towards population aging, but Iran will enter the aging phase without gaining economic growth and development, and this will increase the consequences of aging country; In the next three decades, Iran will set a new record in the rate of population aging.

While most of the countries that are in the aging stage today have gone through the path of youth to old age and the stage of aging in a period of 130 to 140 years, but Iran will go through the path of youth to old age in a period of 30 years.

Women’s role in Iran’s development

The proportion of female inventors to male inventors in Iran is significantly higher than the global average and even higher than the leading countries in the field of patents, according to the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology’s report.

Former Science Minister Mansour Gholami has said that the participation of Iranian women in higher education research and development projects has increased from 27 percent in 2000 to 39.6 percent in 2017.

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.

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 former vice president for women’s and family affairs, said in August 2020.

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