For adult women, stats are not that impressive in comparison to the LMI average, but they are not what many Westerners usually imagine, and generally better than the Middle East/North Africa average (e.g., the labor force participation rate in Iran is 33% and the Middle East/North Africa average is 27%. The trend seems promising to me, too: e.g, the primary completion rate for females went up from 81% in 1990 to 97% in 2004, topping both the LMI average of 96% and the Middle East/North Africa average of 86%. What is interesting is a great leap in contraceptive use, considering that this is, after all, an Islamic republic: from 23% in 1980 to 74% in 2000, compared to the 2004 LMI average of 76% and the 2004 Middle East/North Africa average of 59%. Iran's fertility rate is now 2.1, the same as the LMI average and better than the Middle East/North Africa average of 3.0.
You may compare them to (still officially) secular Egypt's stats and trends <http://devdata.worldbank.org/genderstats/genderRpt.asp?rpt=profile&cty=EGY,Egypt,%20Arab%20Rep.&hm=home>.
As for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he assumed the presidency last August; and power in Iran is much more distributed, ultimate control on many things still resting in the hands of Ali Khamenei. I doubt that conditions of women in Iran would be all that different from what they are now even if you or I were running the country.
In any case, what Iranian women have achieved ought to be publicized better, so that Americans and others can see that it is worth defending from the threat of economic sanctions and worse. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>