[KENNETH MATIBA]

In Iran, the Islamic punishments have encouraged a culture of violence against women, especially within the family and has spilled into violence against children. This has been commented upon by many within the country. The fact that men receive a lighter punishment if they commit a violence against women undoubtedly encourages such violence. We saw how women could be killed with impunity during alleged adultery. Stoning to death for adultery, although technically admissible for both sexes, has also been carried out mainly against women.

Newspapers are full of accounts of wives, sisters, daughters, and children murdered and its inevitable corollary: the killing of the husband. The family has become an institution of violence. The psychological effects of these laws, reflecting as they do in the legal world the constant degradation women have to face in government offices, courts, streets etc, that is wherever they come face to face with officialdom, is profound though unmeasurable. Perhaps the increasing suicide rates of women is a window to the despair. A number of psychiatrists working in Iran have commented on this .