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Khamenei, Rouhani clash on women’s role in society

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have presented contrasting roles for women in society.
Iraqi women walk past a poster depicting images of Shi'ite Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at al-Firdous Square in Baghdad February 12, 2014. An Iraqi daily newspaper stopped publishing after two bombs were planted in the entrance to its headquarters in Baghdad on Monday and after threats from an Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia. Editors and reporters at Assabah AlJadeed said they had received death threats from the influential Asaib al-Haq militia in response to what it had described as an "insu

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.

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