On the occasion of Women’s Day in Iran, Iran’s president and supreme leader presented contrasting roles in society for women. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has previously rebuked President Hassan Rouhani’s cultural policies, but this appears to be the first time that the president has contradicted the supreme leader in an area that the two have consistently clashed.

“If we want our view with respect to the issue of women to be healthy, logical and precise,” Ayatollah Khamenei said yesterday, April 19, “we have to empty our minds of this talk that Westerners say about women, [such as] about employment, about management, about gender equality.

“One of the biggest intellectual mistakes of the West about the issue of women is ‘gender equality’,” he continued. “Why should a job that is masculine be given to a woman? What pride is there in this for [a] woman to do a job that is masculine? I’m disappointed that sometimes women themselves show sensitivity on this issue, that ‘What difference is there between us and men?’”

Khamenei continued that with respect to Islam, in some respects “there is no difference,” but that “the shapes are two shapes. One shape is for one job and one shape for another job.”