Women's Right to Education in Iran: an Emphasis in Higher Education

The Right to Education is one of the basic human rights which is included in the important international statements such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The prerequisite to fully understand the right to education is to ensure accessibility to education. The present study aims to examine the status of Iranian women's right to education in higher education. Legal analysis and trend analysis are used as the methods of the study. The results show, in the constitutions and general laws, the women's right to education is clearly inserted and well defined. In practice, the 40-years-long trend analysis indicates the women have achieved considerable success in two important aspects of availability and diversity of accessibility, and also capability to accessibility, in higher education sector.