1. The Gender Gap in Iran No country in the world has successfully closed the gender gap. However, Nordic countries had the best success and some other countries continue to progress slowly. The World Economic Forum’ s Global Gender Gap Report and its Global Gender Gap Index benchmark genderbased disparity and measures gender equality in four areas: Health and survival, educational attainment, economic participation, and political empowerment. The index compares countries independent of their level of development. According to the 2017 report (1), Iran’ s overall rank is 140th out of 144 countries. On subscales, it ranks 140th in economic participation, 100th in education, 135th in health, and 136th in political empowerment. Iran’ s overall rank dropped from 123rd in 2010 to 140 in 2017. ...