When Iranian students return to university in September the men and women may find themselves in separate classes, laboratories, canteens, buses and even administration offices.
Iran's higher education minister, Kamran Daneshjoo, has ordered a study to gauge the feasibility of enforcing gender segregation when the academic year starts in September, the khabaronline news website reported this week.
Mr Daneshjoo is a fervent advocate of gender segregation in universities and has repeatedly said the problem with Iranian universities is that they "copy western models in both form and content". In February, Mr Daneshjoo proposed to transform some universities to single-gender ones.
Gender segregation was enforced in all Iranian primary and secondary schools following the Islamic revolution of 1979. However in universities, male and female students attend class together but sit in separate rows of chairs.
In the 1980s, attempts were made to separate male and female students in several universities around the country. Curtains and room dividers were placed in classrooms but were taken away without explanation days later. Family members of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the country's top clerical and political leader at the time, claim he considered segregation insulting to the students and ordered the removal of the dividers.
Segregation in universities has strong support among parliament's hardline legislators. "Mingling of male and female students must be prevented as much as possible," Ali Karimi Firoozjaie, a higher education committee member, told Khabaronline. Mr Firoozjaie said a segregation policy is supported by families, parliament and the top clergy.
Advocates say gender mixing in universities "causes moral corruption" and distracts students from their studies.
They have appealed to religious authorities several of whom have recently said that gender segregation should be enforced by the state.
Ayatollah Safi Golpaigani, one of the top Shiite sources of emulation, said in a decree last week: "Mingling of male and female [students] thwarts scientific achievements and causes great corruption. The costs of segregation [for the government] are affordable however heavy they may be."
Students in several universities have signed petitions and staged protests against segregation. In April, Tehran University students held a rally to protest against a requirement to use separate campus buses, boarding the buses together.
"This plan is totally ridiculous," said Sanaz, 22, an architecture student from Tehran University, who would only give her first name. "It will badly damage our academic performance because they simply don't have enough people to teach separate classes. I wonder what their next step will be, to draw curtains in corridors or have separate passageways?"
Some observers say the pro-segregation movement was drummed up by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,, whose government is embroiled in a standoff with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a similar way to when his government enforced stricter dress codes in Mr Ahmadinejad's first term, segregation would alleviate the pressure on the president from the hardline camp.
Shadi Sadr, a London-based human rights lawyer and women's rights activist, said: "Many supporters of hardliners voted for Ahmadinejad because they expected him as a hardliner to enforce a stricter dress code and to limit social contact between men and women. The government has had to resort to a propaganda campaign now and ahead of the upcoming parliament elections [in February 2012] in an effort to conciliate them with promises of taking action on those demands.
"They've chosen this time to talk about their segregation plans because student protests are not likely to happen now that students are in their summer holidays."
Hardliners are also troubled that more women are attending university than men. For more than a decade girls have surpassed boys in the national university entrance exams at undergraduate level. In 2009, of those who passed the exams and enrolled in undergraduate courses, 62.7 per cent were women and only 37.3 per cent men.
Nourollah Haydari, a member of parliament's higher education committee was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying this week: "[Bigger] presence of women in universities deprives men of education and job opportunities,".
The higher education ministry under Mr Ahmadinejad has quietly been taking measures to change the disparity, such as limiting women's admission to certain courses. Iran University of Science and Technology, for instance, is not admitting women in any but two of its post graduate courses this year, Daneshjoo News, a student news website reported last month. Several courses, such as mining engineering, have been off the list of choices for women even at undergraduate level for many years.
msinaiee@thenational.ae
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- Use the existing EU budget to direct more funds towards defence-related investment
- Engage the bloc's European Investment Bank to drop limits on lending to defence firms
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Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
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Despite the extreme distance, flying to Fairbanks is relatively simple, requiring just one transfer in Seattle, which can be reached directly from Dubai with Emirates for Dh6,800 return.
Touring
Gondwana Ecotours’ seven-day Polar Bear Adventure starts in Fairbanks in central Alaska before visiting Kaktovik and Utqiarvik on the North Slope. Polar bear viewing is highly likely in Kaktovik, with up to five two-hour boat tours included. Prices start from Dh11,500 per person, with all local flights, meals and accommodation included; gondwanaecotours.com
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Juventus v Valencia, Tuesday, midnight (UAE)
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Global institutions: BlackRock and KKR
US-based BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $5.98 trillion of assets under management as of the end of last year. The New York firm run by Larry Fink provides investment management services to institutional clients and retail investors including governments, sovereign wealth funds, corporations, banks and charitable foundations around the world, through a variety of investment vehicles.
KKR & Co, or Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, is a global private equity and investment firm with around $195 billion of assets as of the end of last year. The New York-based firm, founded by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, invests in multiple alternative asset classes through direct or fund-to-fund investments with a particular focus on infrastructure, technology, healthcare, real estate and energy.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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