Iran President Hassan Rouhani appointed two women as vice presidents and one as a civil rights assistant in his new cabinet.
In separate decrees on Wednesday, the Iranian president appointed Masoumeh Ebtekar as vice president for women and family affairs and La’aya Joneidi as vice president for legal affairs.
Ebtekar was a vice president and the head of Iran’s Department of Environment during Rouhani’s first term.
Joneidi is a professor of law at the University of Tehran.
Rouhani also named Shahindokht Molaverdi as assistant for civil rights. Molaverdi was the vice president for women and family affairs in Rouhani’s previous cabinet.
Iran’s 12 vice presidents run organizations linked to the presidency.
Rouhani on Tuesday presented a list of 17 nominees for ministerial positions to Parliament for a vote of confidence.
The list has the names of 17 out of 18 ministries. The nominee for the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology is yet to be submitted to the legislature.
The cabinet list, however, did not include any women for ministerial posts.
There has been only one female minister since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. She was Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, who served as health minister from 2009 to 2013 under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – Roujhani’s hardline predecessor.
At a conference in February titled “Women, Moderation and Development”, he called for a greater female presence in politics and culture.
Separately on Tuesday, Rouhani reinstated Es’haq Jahangiri as the first vice president for a second consecutive term.
Lawmakers will begin holding debates on the nominees on August 15, with the Iranian president being allowed to defend his cabinet picks. Rouhani, 68-year-old moderate cleric, beat conservative Ebrahim Raeisi to the presidency in May after vowing to improve Iran’s civil liberties and rebuild ties with the West.
