In a separate meeting with President Rouhani, the past year performance and the new year’s programs of the four Vice Presidencies, including the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs, were examined.
On Thursday, President Hassan Rouhani had a separate meeting with the Iranian Department of Environment, Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, and the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs in which these organizations presented a report of the past year. Furthermore, the issue of martyr foundation and veteran affairs, along with future plans of these organizations for 2019 were discussed.
After reviewing the reports, the President, with appreciation of their efforts, presented the necessary guidelines for improving the implementation of the current year’s series of measures and programs.
The text of the most important steps taken by the Vice Presidency headed by Masoumeh Ebtekar, the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs is as follows:
In the Name of Allah
Measures taken by the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs – 2018
1- Development of gender equity indicators in cooperation with other bodies and related organizations and communicating them for implementation
2- Development of Action Plans to promote the status of women and family in 31 provinces
3- Implementation of the first phase of the National Family Dialogue Plan in 31 provinces
- Following up on Intergenerational Dialogue Scheme, including the announcement of the Student Short Film Festival with this title in public schools
- Empowerment of nongovernmental organizations working in the field of women and families including:
– Establishing a Joint Action Program for social organizations of women and family in Tehran
– Organizing three regional specialist meetings for “The Empowerment Social Organizations of Women and Family” in the provinces of Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari, Isfahan, Yazd, Tehran and the “Suburban Regions of Tehran” for 600 organizations.
– Supporting 17 joint projects with women and family social associations on employment issues, strengthening the family foundation, promoting health, preventing social harm, and cultural, artistic and environmental issues at national, regional and provincial levels that lead to education for 3394 people, counseling for 1,465 people, and 178 job opportunities
– 30 Memorandum of Cooperation drafts with the organizations resulting from regional meetings of Isfahan and Tehran, ready to conclude a contract from the allocation of credits in 2019, and four proposed plans under review
– Convening eight technical workshops on basic economic policy for entrepreneurship for women
- Rural Women’s Empowerment:
– Signing an agreement with Ministry of Agriculture Jihad and initiating a Women Farmers Plan to produce healthy and organic products and facilitator training
– Supporting rural women’s welfare microfinance funds to create employment
– The Vice President, deputies and directors visited more than 40 villages and met with rural women
– Implementing the training plan for about 750 teachers and about 3,000 female students in the villages around Lake Urmia to manage water consumption, changing consumption patterns; promoting alternative living standards, and improving water efficiency
7- Supporting women’s entrepreneurship and national production including:
– Implementing the first phase of “My Business Plan” to teach entrepreneurship to women and girls in 31 provinces of the country and beginning the second phase for those chosen in the first phase of the election, which make up a sum of 760 people in six provinces
– Launching a campaign named “Women of the Sanctions Era” by identifying and filming women entrepreneurs and displaying them on social networks with the aim of creating hope and motivation and introducing potential for economic growth and relying on the power of women in the country.
– Establishing a system for selecting the top female entrepreneurs through the people’s votes on the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affair’s website with the aim to introduce women’s capacity to tackle economic problems and encourage female entrepreneurs in cities and villages.
- Fighting violence against women and children
– Urging and working with on the approval of the bill to secure women against violence from the judiciary
– Requesting the Parliament to adopt, defend and ratify a bill to protect children and adolescents (after 10 years delay)
- Supporting Social Emergency Response Centers
– Collaboration with the State Welfare Organization to empower Social Emergency Response Centers (#123 help line)
– Visiting about 30 Social Emergency Response Centers in big and small cities of various provinces
- Legal measures to improve the status of women include:
– Preparing and submitting five laws to the government to protect women and children’s rights which include: (1) editing Article 1133 of the Civil Code (divorce), (2) equal blood money for women and men in deliberate crimes, (3) increasing the age of criminal liability for girls and boys from the age of puberty to 18 years (4) increasing the minimum age for girls’ marriage (5) supporting female household heads’ enterprises
– Legal and juridical studies of women’s issues in the areas of “reforming the rules related to the inheritance of women”, “reforming the rules of dowry money” and “reforming the rules on couple inheritance”. Taking into account the views of the experts of the field and universities in the meetings on “equal blood money for men and women” and “fighting violence against women”
- Compiling the Status of Women and Family Atlas in 31 provinces based on the population count of 2016
- 33 visits of the Vice President to 22 provinces as well as 29 provincial travels visits by other authorities in the Vice Presidency
13- Implementing the Social Resilience Plan in 10 provinces of the country for the training of facilitators and the mapping of the 31 provinces
- Interaction with ethnicities and religions including:
– Joint meetings, participation in exhibitions and programs of ethnic and religious backgrounds
- Girls’ Empowerment:
– Inauguration of a Girl’s School in Iranshahr, Sistan and Baluchestan for girls deprived of education
– Organizing marriage rights counseling sessions for girls
– A joint agreement with the literacy movement to train 2,000 nomad girls and educator deprived of education
– Conducting the Iranian Girls’ Festival for the purpose of identifying, introducing and displaying young talent
– Holding meetings for martyr and veteran families to share their experiences with about 150 families.
– Visiting and paying tribute to 31 martyr and veteran homes by the Vice President
- Supporting the presence of women in sports and stadiums
– Efforts and coordination for the presence of women at Azadi Stadium
– Meeting and encouraging female athletes in different sports
– Proposing to cooperate with the Ministry of Education to return gym teachers to girl’s elementary schools by training 76,000 teachers
- Deepening and encouraging new approaches to religious practices
- Supporting traditional coverage to strengthen hijab and support national production in the form of encouraging designers and clothing manufacturers.
– Supporting four specialized exhibitions of Iranian Artistic Fashion and Dress with emphasis on Iranian traditional costumes.
- Empowerment of female household heads
– Implementing the Economic Empowerment of Female Household Heads Plan in informal settlements of 10 provinces in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior
– Signing an agreement with the Ministry of Cooperation, Labour and Social Affairs for the economic empowerment of 6,000 female heads of households
– Setting up a division of labor scheme to support female headed households
21- Confronting the intensification of social trauma in the families of female prisoners
– Visiting women’s prisons in eight provinces and collaborating with the judiciary to facilitate the status of mothers in prison
– Visiting two correctional centers for youth in the provinces
– Signing a memorandum with the Social and Prevention of Crime Deputy of the Judiciary to reduce the harm to prisoners’ children and families
– Proposing and pursuing the use of electronic bracelets with the priority being with mothers who are imprisoned
– Implementing Armaghan 3 & 4 to release female prisoners guilty of unintentional crimes, collecting more than one billion tomans of public donations through headquarters, and releasing some of the prisoners
- Adjusting, preparing and translating to English a bilingual publication of the report on the developments of women in Iran over the past four decades, based on 40 indicators on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution
- International activities to introduce the developments of the Iranian women’s society
– Exchanging experiences and developing interactions by signing Memoranda of Understanding on cooperation with women in countries of Indonesia and Afghanistan. Furthermore, through bilateral visits with the President and Vice Presidents, the Prime Minister and Vice Presidents, and Ministers of Foreign and Women’s Affairs of seven countries. In addition, participating in the Women Political Leaders Global Forum in Lithuania, Women’s Empowerment Principles Forum-Sweden, Intermediate Senior Officials Meeting (ISOM) -Indonesia and the Third International Women and Justice Summit-Turkey. Twenty-five bilateral meetings in Iran with representatives of international institutions, ambassadors and senior officials / Four two-way and multilateral international specialized meetings / Report of Forty-Year-Old Developments in the field of foreign ambassadors and journalists
- Supporting art, theater and films that promote women and children’s rights
– Introducing and appreciating the two top films of the thirty-seventh Fajr Film Festival by defining criteria for women and family friendly films
– Supporting the Women Theater Festival
– Supporting the Film and Photo Festival for Mothers
– Spiritual supporting and encouraging women artists in the fields of music, theater, painting and crafts
- Keeping in touch with media
– Responding with over 130 domestic interviews, 11 exclusive interviews and a press interview with foreign media / 3 visits to the news agencies, PANA and IQNA
- Interacting and cooperating with the Islamic Consultative Assembly Parliament, in particular with the women’s fraction
- Observing and monitoring the increase of female executives in executive agencies towards a target of 30%
– Governmental agencies submitting sectoral reports and presenting their first records in implementation of this resolution
- Teaching women and families to reform consumption patterns
– Cooperating with the Ministry of Energy in the provinces of Tehran, Khorasan Razavi, East Azarbaijan and Guilan named “The Footprint of Water” and establishing a network for reforming consumption patterns among NGOs.
Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs