Iran Press/Iran news: Masoumeh Ebtekar noted that she recently submitted a special report to the government to extend the number of women in decision-making posts, saying that: "We had a report today in the cabinet session on the percentage of women appointed to decision-making posts in the government."
According to the decree of president Rouhani, Ebtekar said in an interview with Iran Press that 30 percent of the decision-making posts should be to allocate to women in high profile posts or on decision-making posts in different levels.
"I presented a report which is a halfway report on how well we have been able to go forward on this issue and we have a 36 percent increase the number of appointments of women in the 12th government and we have about 5.5 percent amounting to 67 women are appointing as high-level deputy ministers in the government," she added.
As the official reiterated this shows an increase from about 31 to 67 women now, and this means there is a serious will in the government to increase the number of women in decision-making posts.
Ebtekar added, "So this trend has to continue. We have now about 18.8 percent of decision-making posts that are allocated to women in the whole government so we need to still move ahead and we need more momentum maybe to be able to reach the 30 percent target in the next two years."
"But I think that the advance has been favorable and acceptable to us and we are monitoring all the changes both the ministries and also the governors in the provinces. We have the scorecard for every minister and the governor and we inform them how well they have been able to perform in appointing women," she said.
Ebtekar went on to say about especial measure to improve women's situations in the rural area and underlined: "In the rural areas in regard to the decision-making posts, we see women elected as local official in rural councils particularly and we also have about 2,300 women elected as officials in charge of managing the affairs of the villages which is the highest official in villages and we also have many women in village councils."
"So this is also an important development and we see that there is more and more attention for women's function at the levels in different areas and I think that there is a lot of changes coming along in the future," she added. 101/218/303
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