TEHRAN – Ensieh Khazali, the Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, and I Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawati, the Indonesian Minister of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, signed a memorandum of understating in Jakarta on Friday.

The MOU highlights boosting cooperation on women and family affairs; empowering women; improving health; enhancing security and productivity of family; preventing and eliminating social harms; improving the family economy; exchanging information and experiences; removing challenges and obstacles to women's progress; adopting effective policies to deal with deviations in families; and fighting against corruption by using the capacities of women.

The MOU was signed during Khazali’s visit to Indonesia at the official invitation of Darmawati, to attend Hari Ibu, or Women’s Day, celebration in Indonesia on December 22.

Expressing her satisfaction with the very good relationships between Tehran and Jakarta, Khazali highlighted the need to develop relations in women’s affairs.

She stressed expanding relations in women’s affairs, particularly creating job opportunities for women, reducing violence against women and children, and supporting families.

Referring to the commonalities of Iran and Indonesia, and the good cooperation between the women of the two countries in economic, social, and scientific fields, Khazali presented a report on the progress of Iranian women in various fields of science-technology, health, education, and entrepreneurship.

**** Top 1% most cited researchers

In 2023, 938 top researchers affiliated with Iranian organizations have been identified, which shows a 12 percent increase compared to the previous year. Over the past decade, the number of highly-cited researchers in the country has been growing.

Women are an important part of society, playing an important role in the development of human societies, IRNA quoted Ahmad Fazelzadeh, the head of the Islamic World Science and Technology Monitoring and Citation (ISC) Institute, as saying.

One of the indicators of scientific authority is the number of highly cited scientists in each country, and Iranian women researchers have a special place in the field of scientific authority at the national and international level, Fazelzadeh added.

ISC’s main responsibilities are to introduce highly-cited researchers and to provide the possibility to identify and introduce elite researchers and scholars.

According to its missions, ISC is responsible for monitoring the status of science and technology in Iran, Islamic Countries, and the world.

One of the indicators of scientific authority is the number of highly cited researchers in each country.

 Among Iranian highly-cited researchers, women are also present and have played their part in the scientific authority of Iran.

Using the data indexed in the ISC database, ISC identifies highly cited Iranian researchers in Human Sciences, Social Sciences, Art, and Architecture.

In the latest announced list, highly cited researchers have been introduced in the period of 10 years (2011-2021). The criteria for selecting researchers in this list is the number of citations made to their scientific productions.

According to the recent report of ISC, in the list of one percent of researchers in the world which is based on the Essential Science Indicators  (ESI) database, a total of 135 Iranian female researchers have been recognized in the areas of Agricultural Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Neuroscience and Psychology, Engineering, Material Science, Psychiatry/Psychology, Computer Science, Interdisciplinary, Social Science, generalities and some have obtained the necessary points even in several fields.

Wrong outlook towards women in West

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in a speech on October 20, 2009, said, “There has always been a wrong outlook towards women.

Today, the same wrong outlook exists in the West. Of course, a number of women may become outstanding, honorable, and modest personalities in Western systems.

This holds true for men too. But the general outlook towards women, which has become firmly established in Western culture, is an objectifying and insulting outlook… It [the West] wants women to entertain men's eyes and it wants to use them in an illegitimate way. It wants women to have a special appearance in society. This is the greatest insult to women. Of course, they cover it up with certain beautiful words and give it different names. Respecting women means giving them the opportunity to develop, at different levels.”

MT/MG