All the president's women

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the nomination of at least three women to be ministers in the new cabinet on August 16, 2009, inviting criticism from his narrow base of supporters. Ahmadinejad does not support personal and political freedoms of Iranian women. Ahmadinejad's naming of three female nominees for his cabinet seemed not only out of character, but also out of step with political reality in the Islamic Republic. When Ahmadinejad announced his nominees, the clergy made their distress known in private meetings and through their tribunes in mosques and in elected office. Many argue that Ahmadinejad nominated women to appear somehow responsive to the hundreds of thousands of women who protested the procedural irregularities in the June 9 election. The most serious challenge to Ahmadinejad's women nominees has come from the best- known feminists and reformists. The nominations spurred a series of debates about interpretation of the Qur'an, hadith and sunna.