Gender and Punishment in Iran’s Law and Jurisprudence

At first glance, due to the identicalness of the nature of men and women, it doesn’t seem that feminity and masqulinity have any important efffect on commiting crime and punishment. However, studying the Islamic criminal texts and Iran’spunishment law reveals that gender plays a role in punishment: punishment exemption, way of punishment, and even the degree of punishing. To find out whether women are exempted or mitigated, or men are also exempted, and which ones are suported by Shariah, it is necessary to reckon al the criminal cases that differ in men and women. The present article studied the exemption and mitigation of punishment in men and women separately. It comes to the conclusion that ere are some mitigations of punishment for women in crimes such as incest, lesbianism, apostasy, and there are some reduced punishments for men in the crimes such as theft of children, qazf, murder of the children, and adultery. The important point is that gender has not any role in different legislation of punishment