Comparative Study between Status of Women in Iran and Malysia

Gender equality, equity and women`s empowerment are the essential factors for integral human development and also key factors for all countries to achieve economic, political and social development. The main goal of this paper is a comparative study on women`s status in Malaysia and Iran as two developing countries, which are similar from different aspects. The method used in this research is comparative. The result of this study shows that despite the efforts of both countries to improve the women`s status in many key areas such as education, health, employment, according the reports of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and World Economic Forum, especially in Gender Inequality Index and Gender Gap Index, Malaysia is ranked higher than Iran. Why and how a country like Malaysia has a higher score than Iran, it is a question that at the end of this paper was answered.