The authorities renewed their crackdown on women human rights defenders and increasingly likened any collective initiative relating to feminism and women’s rights to criminal activity.
Women’s rights activists who had campaigned for greater representation of women in the February parliamentary elections were subjected by the Revolutionary Guards to lengthy, oppressive interrogations, and threats of imprisonment on national security charges.
Women remained subject to pervasive discrimination in law and practice, including in access to divorce, employment, equal inheritance and political office and in the area of criminal law.
Several draft laws that would further erode women’s right to sexual and reproductive health remained pending.
Women continued to have reduced access to affordable modern contraception as the authorities failed to restore the budget of the state family planning programme cut in 2012.
In September, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued national family policies promoting early marriage, repeated childbearing, fewer divorces and greater compliance to “traditional” roles of women as housewives and men as breadwinners.
The policies raised concern that women victims of domestic violence may face further marginalization and increased pressure to “reconcile” with abusers and remain in abusive marital relationships.
Women and girls remained inadequately protected against sexual and other gender- based violence, including early and forced marriage.
The authorities failed to adopt laws criminalizing these and other abuses, including marital rape and domestic violence, although the Vice-President on Women and Family Affairs pushed a draft bill that had been pending since 2012.
Compulsory “veiling” (hijab) laws, which violated women’s rights to equality, privacy, and freedoms of expression, belief and religion, continued to empower police and paramilitary forces to target women for harassment, violence, and imprisonment.