Women and the media

 

Iran has a long history of women’s activism. The women’s social movement began in early 1905 during the Qajar monarchy and During the Pahlavi monarchy from 1920 to 1979, women made major progress in education, employment, and political participation. Since the revolution in 1979, Iranian women have experienced the Islamization of their country and enforcing certain Islamic traditions, however, the level of education, literacy rates, and the percentage of women attending university all increased dramatically. In Iran, 97 percent of women are literate. Never before have so many women been educated as journalists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and artists.

Increasing the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through the media and new technologies of communication is one of the noticeable success of women in Iran.

The Iranian women, by employing various media, have raised their general knowledge about their own rights and the ways of demanding them from the concerned authorities. Nowadays, we are witnessing women's active presence in different types of mass media including electronic, print, and new age media. Their active presence in mass media accompanied by a gender-based approach is considered as one of the most important factors that has affected the policy-making process. That is to say, in some cases a documentary report, film, article, or news created by a knowledgeable woman working in the media has helped the public, particularly the relative authorities to become more familiar with women's issues.

The allocation of more than half of the university seats to female applicants for graduate programs in journalism, communication sciences, and program making, provision of legal protection of women in media by the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology, and the establishment of the first Iranian Women News Agency (IWNA) in 2005 with an aim to disseminating information on women as well as mentioning their capacities and concerns are among the notable measures implemented. The IWNA has shown the world Iranian women’s active presence in social, cultural, and academic life.

 

 

 -The Iranian Women’s New Agency (IWNA) participated in the Elecit 2007 exhibition as the first women’s electronic newspaper in the world, IWNA Managing Director Sadiqeh Qannadi

-Political Elite, Women, and Journalism in Iran -Author: Eva Patricia Rakel

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/13097Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_review_Beijing20.pdf

-National Review on Women's Status in the Islamic Republic of Iran

https://doi.org/10.1163/156913308X336507