Iran is considering a plan to establish its first-ever shelter for battered women, President Mohammad Khatami's advisor on women's affairs said in Monday's press.
Zahra Shojaii said the presidential committee for women's issues was studying plans to set up the center, which would also include an emergency telephone hotline for battered women, the Khorasan paper reported.
Khatami has pushed to give Iranian women greater political and social freedoms since coming to office in 1997.
The Tehran Times newspaper on Monday cited provincial officials saying that growing power for women in society was leading to a higher rate of divorce in some places.
"Women have become less tolerant," it quoted an official as saying in the provincial town of Gonabad, where the report said the divorce rate had risen sharply in the past year – TEHRAN (AFP)
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