"The care of human life and happiness

“Iranian police have issued a directive that only saleswomen be employed in women's clothes shops across the Islamic republic, a newspaper reported on Saturday.The move comes ahead of international women's day on Sunday.The Vatan eh-Emrouz newspaper said the order had been issued by the police chief of Tehran."According to the order, all employees in women's clothing stores must be women... but the cashier can be a man," Colonel Mehdi Ahmadi, the spokesman for Tehran police, was quoted as saying.He said the order was to be implemented countrywide and that the police would monitor such shops for compliance."First-time violators will be warned, but if they do so again they will be closed," Ahmadi said.The order comes after Iranian media reports that some owners of women's clothing stores installed hidden cameras to secretly film customers trying on garments in changing cubicles.It is also the latest in a series of measures taken by authorities in recent years to separate women and men in public.Several "women only" parks have been set up in Tehran and other cities, and "women only" taxis have plied their trade on the capital's roads for the past two years.”

Source here .

I would like to wish everyone a happy International Women’s Day.  I would specially like to extend my good wishes to Iranian men on this day, specially Iranian men inside Iran.  I would like to wish them awareness and conscience about the plight of Iranian woman in the hands of Islamic laws.  I would like them to be reminded not just today, but every day that any extra rights given to them is at the cost of the same right taken away from their mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, and wives.  Until Iranian men wake up to how humiliating it is for half of any society to have more rights and power than the other half, Iran will not be freed of laws that bind and limit and degrade its women.  When women as half of a nation are “deprived” of fair treatment by social and legal limitations, the other half is not “privileged,” it is degraded and insulted also.

Gender segregation is barbaric and backwards.  My wish for this International Women’s Day is for this practice to end worldwide and particularly in Iran.